An introduction to contextual safeguarding

In 2015, Professor Carlene Firmin coined the term ‘contextual safeguarding’ to describe an approach to safeguarding young people that looks at additional ‘contexts’ for harm outside of the family home and beyond the control of a child’s parents and carers.

In this podcast episode, we speak to Carlene about the concept of contextual safeguarding and how practitioners can incorporate contextual safeguarding practices into their work with children and families.

💬 About the speakers

Professor Carlene Firmin MBE is a Professor of Social Work and Director of the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding at Durham University. She is also Co-Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Social Work, co-convener of a special interest group on Social Work and Adolescents for the European Social Work Research Association, a Global Ashoka Fellow, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the Churchill Fellowship Advisory Council, and an Associate of Strathclyde University’s Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice. Her book, Contextual Safeguarding and Child Protection: Rewriting the Rules, won the Routledge Prize for a Sociology Monograph in 2020.

Shirley Maginley is a Senior Consultant in the NSPCC’s Professional Learning Services, with over 20 years’ experience supporting professionals and organisations across sectors to strengthen their knowledge, policy and practice in keeping children safe. She draws on her experience in youth and community development to help organisations improve their safeguarding arrangements and create safer environments for children and young people across diverse settings.

📚 Resources mentioned in this episode

> Visit the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding website 

> Access further contextual safeguarding resources, including resources on context weighting, safety mapping and safety summits