Harm Outside the Home

Children can experience abuse and exploitation outside the home. This is often referred to as “extra-familial harm”. Harm can occur in a range of extra-familial contexts, including school and other educational settings, peer groups, or within community/public spaces, and/or online. Children may experience this type of harm from other children and/or from adults. Forms of extra-familial harm include exploitation by criminal and organised crime groups and individuals (such as county lines and financial exploitation), serious violence, modern slavery and trafficking, online harm, sexual exploitation, teenage relationship abuse, and the influences of extremism which could lead to radicalisation. Children of all ages can experience extra-familial harm.

Where there are concerns that a child is experiencing extra-familial harm, practitioners should consider all the needs and vulnerabilities of the child. Some children will have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by others and will require support appropriate to their needs to minimise the potential for exploitation. All children, including those who may be causing harm to others, should receive a safeguarding response first and practitioners should work with them to understand their experiences and what will reduce the likelihood of harm to themselves and others.

Darlington Safeguarding Partnerships is committed to ensuring all young people in Darlington who are vulnerable and at risk or victim of exploitation or go missing are offered support to reduce vulnerability and build resilience to exploitation. We aim to implement systems to best respond to harm happening in contexts beyond the home. To achieve this, we work in partnership to help raise young people’s awareness of exploitation, reduce/irradicate the risk of exploitation and support young people on their journey to a positive and healthy future.

To support this the Partnership has developed Harm Outside the Home Multi-Agency Procedures [PDF document] which provides an understanding of Harm Outside the Home and the pathways to follow in response to this.

What is Contextual Safeguarding

Contextual Safeguarding is an approach to understanding, and responding to, young people’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families. Traditional approaches to protecting children/young people from harm have focussed on the risk of violence and abuse from inside the home, usually from a parent/carer or other trusted adult and don’t always address the time that children/young people spend outside the home and the influence of peers on young people’s development and safety.

Contextual safeguarding recognises the impact of the public/social context on young people’s lives, and consequently their safety. Contextual safeguarding seeks to identify and respond to harm and abuse posed to young people outside their home, either from adults or other young people. It’s an approach that looks at how interventions can change the processes and environments, to make them safer for all young people, as opposed to focussing on an individual.

Research illustrates that young people's experience is not only influenced by their family, but also by their peer network, wider community and society in general.

The model of contextual safeguarding was developed by Dr Carlene Firmin at the University of Bedfordshire.

For more information visit the Contextual Safeguarding website [external link]

To access policy and practice resources visit the virtual hub of the Contextual Safeguarding Practitioners Network [external link]