Holding It Together? Professional Perspectives on the Role of Relationships when Relocating Young People due to Extra-familial Harm

Carlene Firmin,Rachael Owens

doi:10.1007/s42448-021-00106-5

Abstract

Abstract When young people come to harm in extra-familial contexts, professionals may move them a distance from their home community to protect them, and in doing so disrupt relationships in which they have encountered harm. However, relocations can also fracture young people’s protective relationships with family, peers, and professionals; relationships that have been positioned as targets for intervention in cases of extra-familial harm. The extent to which these relationships are considered during relocations is under-explored. Utilising semi-structured interviews with 16 social work professionals in England and Wales, we assessed their accounts of using relationships prior to, during, and following relocations in cases of extra-familial harm. Three themes emerged: using relationships during relocations to provide consistency, to collaborate, and to create safety. Professional accounts prioritised young people’s relationships with practitioners, over relationships with families, peers, and their wider communities, when using/seeking opportunities to offer consistency and to collaborate on safety plans. They also depicted a struggle to engage with the complex web of family, peer, and community relationships associated to young people’s protection in both their home communities and those they had been moved to; relationships that were critical for creating safety. Implications for practice and future research are discussed, highlighting the potential merits of offering integrated research and practice frameworks that hold together young people’s relationships with families, peers, communities, and professionals, in response to extra-familial harm.

Highlights

During adolescence, young people’s exposure to harm in extra-familial, as opposed to familial, contexts increases (Brandon et al, 2020)
In England, growing concerns about this issue resulted in the UK Government grouping the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that occurs in extra-familial contexts under a definition of ‘extra-familial threats’; stating in national guidelines that these forms of harm may warrant a child protection response: As well as threats to the welfare of children from within their families, children may be vulnerable to abuse or exploitation from outside their families
These extra-familial threats might arise at school and other educational establishments, from within peer groups, or more widely from within the wider community and/ or online. These threats can take a variety of different forms ... including: exploitation by criminal gangs and organised crime groups such as county lines; trafficking, online abuse; sexual exploitation and the influences of extremism leading to radicalisation (HM Government, 2018: 22)

Summary

Introduction

Young people’s exposure to harm in extra-familial, as opposed to familial, contexts increases (Brandon et al, 2020). In England, growing concerns about this issue resulted in the UK Government grouping the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that occurs in extra-familial contexts under a definition of ‘extra-familial threats’; stating in national guidelines that these forms of harm may warrant a child protection response: As well as threats to the welfare of children from within their families, children may be vulnerable to abuse or exploitation from outside their families These extra-familial threats might arise at school and other educational establishments, from within peer groups, or more widely from within the wider community and/ or online. For the purposes of this paper, we present three areas of research and associated practices that have been used in England to design responses to EFH (and to the aforementioned challenges), whilst centring relationships as a part of a protective response

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Results

Conclusion