Michelle Lefevre

From sexual violence within friendship groups to being groomed in community contexts for transporting drugs, extra-familial risks and harms continue to challenge traditional safeguarding approaches in the UK. These issues inhibit young people’s safety and wellbeing and reduce their opportunities to develop as they grow. Offering a bold and hopeful alternative, this book draws on a major multi-disciplinary research project involving practitioners, parents and young people. It asks how we can move beyond thinking about safeguarding young people from risks and towards creating the systems and conditions in which all young people feel safe and are enabled to flourish. Through critical perspectives spanning diverse cultural and geographical contexts, and using reflective questions to prompt deeper thinking, the book reimagines adolescent safeguarding, showing how institutions can shift from risk-centred responses to delivering what all young people need to live full lives and to be safe in the process.

Available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Based on the findings of the Innovate Project, a four year pan-UK study to identify the processes of innovation in care, this book asks: how can services be re-envisioned and transformed through innovation? The authors provide an overview of the project findings and offer insights into the core conditions necessary for socially just and practice-congruent social care innovation that responds to the distinctive, contemporary safeguarding concerns facing young people. Essential reading for anyone engaged in social care practice and innovation, as well as those undertaking continuing professional development, this book will aid the reader in developing a conceptual understanding of their experiences and support them in designing more informed responses to the challenges they face.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. During adolescence, young people are exposed to a range of risks beyond their family homes including sexual and criminal exploitation, peer-on-peer abuse and gang-related violence. However, it has only been over the past two decades that the critical safeguarding implications of these harms have started to be recognised. Social care organisations are increasingly experimenting with new approaches but continue to experience challenges in supporting affected young people and their families. This book analyses the results of the first rapid evidence assessment of social care organisations’ responses to risks and harms outside the home across 10 countries. The authors highlight key areas for service development, give insights into how these risks and harms can be understood, and consider wider implications for policy and practice.

Practitioners must be able to listen, talk, communicate and engage with children and young people if they are going to make a real difference to their lives. The key principles of collaborative, relational, child-centred working underpin all the ideas in this bestselling, practice-focused textbook. Using an innovative ‘Knowing, Being, Doing’ model, it features reflective exercises, practice examples, vignettes, cutting-edge research findings and theoretical perspectives. This new edition includes: • Updated references to policy, legislation, professional requirements, practice tools and research, including around unaccompanied young refugees and asylum seekers, and child sexual exploitation; • New learning from ethnographic and observational research of social workers’ direct practice with children; • Added focus on the context for practice, including the role of supervision and organisational containment in developing practitioners’ emotional capabilities. With detailed coverage of key skills, this book will equip students and practitioners with the critical thinking and tools needed for effective practice in order to promote the welfare, protection and rights of children and young people.