Transitional Safeguarding

The practice problem

Safeguarding young people from extra-familial risks or harms is complicated through the fact that binary notions of childhood and adulthood continue to prevail in society and within social care. There are a range of arguments for more fluid and transitional approaches for young people entering adulthood:

  • Adolescents have distinct safeguarding needs compared to younger children. Risks, harms and routes to protection are often not only intra-familial but also contextual and extra-familial, underpinned by complex social and developmental factors.
  • Adolescence and the transition to adulthood involves a whole host of changes within young people’s lives, making this a particularly challenging and vulnerable time. Prevailing views of young people in society may mean they are more likely to be perceived as ‘a risk’ than ‘at risk’.
  • While children’s services’ systems of safeguarding and support usually end at 18, experiences of harm and trauma during childhood, youth and early adulthood may continue to affect people across the life course, with unmet needs requiring complex (as well as potentially costly) interventions later in life.
  • The public services safeguarding systems for children and adults are based on different conceptual, legal and procedural frameworks. The divergence between these systems creates ‘gaps’ through which adolescents and young adults may fall. Neither system has been designed with attention to adolescents’ developmental needs or behaviours, nor do they reflect the evidence that transitioning into adulthood is a process that extends well into the twenties.

What is Transitional Safeguarding?

Transitional Safeguarding is an emergent concept, which aims to stimulate evidence-informed multi-agency local safeguarding systems change across services for children’s and adults’ safeguarding. The term was coined following a review of practice evidence by Research in Practice and engagement with the sector. Innovation based on Transitional Safeguarding will be informed by evidence of the distinctive developmental needs of adolescents transitioning into young adulthood, and better reflect the connected nature of harm and its impact for individuals, services and society.

Transitional safeguarding has three distinctive characteristics:

  • It is an approach or perspective and not a definite model which requires fidelity in its application; 
  • It is a bottom-up approach which is locally conceived and context-specific;
  • It requires whole system change within an organisation and across inter-connected organisations

The case studies

Local areas engaging with Transitional Safeguarding are already beginning to apply the approach in systems re-design and service delivery. This developmental stage has made researching innovation in this context exciting, with opportunities for the Innovate Project to map closely how developments unfold and what challenges and opportunities are encountered along the way. We have considered with our case study sites why Transitional Safeguarding was chosen for that context and how local factors influence the way it is interpreted and implemented. We have explored the specific facilitators of, and barriers to, innovation which are encountered in each site. Learning is ongoing about the effectiveness of the Transitional Safeguarding approach and how it might be scaled and spread elsewhere.

Resources

Articles and briefing papers

Nathalie Huegler and Gillian Ruch, (2021) ‘Risk, vulnerability and complexity: transitional safeguarding as a reframing of binary perspectives’, in Practice: Social Work in Action, free to download at https://doi.org/10.1080/09503153.2021.1932787

Latest blogs on Transitional Safeguarding

Dr Gillian Ruch discusses the challenge of relationships, risk and power being at the heart of innovation in social care contexts. What was moving to adulthood like for you? Getting to grips with the concept of transitional safeguarding

Find out why transitional safeguarding is so fundamental to the way in which we interact with young people, and how we can implement and innovate it in future. Rhetorical reflections on innovation, Transitional Safeguarding and extra-familial risks and harm

Webinars


This webinar by Nathalie Huegler and Gillian Ruch (University of Sussex) and Susannah Bowyer (Research in Practice) sets out key considerations for how young people's safety needs can be better supported during transition to adulthood


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The work of project partners, 'Research in Practice'.


The concept was first coined by Research in Practice’s strategic briefing Transitional safeguarding- adolescence to adulthood, published in 2018. This was followed up in 2021 by their Knowledge Briefing ‘Bridging the Gap: transitional safeguarding and the role of social work with adults’ produced in collaboration with the Office of the Chief Social Worker for Adults, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, BASW, Care and Health Improvement Programme, NWG Network, and police colleagues.

Dez Holmes has also produced a longer video on supporting young people to transition to adulthood and safeguarding from harm: Risks, Resilience and Relationships: Safeguarding adolescents into adulthood.

A short video introducing Transitional Safeguarding and how it will be featured in the Innovate Project has been produced by Dez Holmes and Susannah Bowyer, from Research in Practice.

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Who is involved with this strand of the project?

  • Professor Gillian Ruch from the University of Sussex led the case study research conducted within the Transitional Safeguarding Strand of the Innovate Project.
  • Dr Susannah Bowyer and Dez Holmes from Research in Practice provided their expertise as the originators of Transitional Safeguarding theory. 
  • Dr Nathalie Huegler and Dr Jeri Damman from the University of Sussex undertook ethnography, conducting surveys, and interviewing professionals, young people and families.
  • Rebecca Godar from Research in Practice worked with each site to consider how administrative data management systems could be used to support service delivery and evaluation.
  • Professor Lisa Holmes from the University of Sussex undertook Cost Effectiveness Analysis, exploring the value for money of the innovations

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