Core Signs of Safety Tools and Techniques

Signs of Safety and Contextual Safeguarding - an example

Group Supervision in a case of extra-familial harm

23 Feb 2021

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Contextual Safeguarding is a whole system approach to understanding and responding to young people's experiences of significant harm beyond their families. Many local authorities in the UK that are using Signs of Safety are also using Contextual Safeguarding and work is now underway to look at how the approaches align and can be used together so that workers, families, children, young people and those in the broader community experience a collaborative and integrated approach. You can read more about this collaboration here.

This is an example of how Signs of Safety practice and learning methods could be used in a situation of extra-familial harm. Liam is 17 years old and lives at home with his mother and younger sister. He was recently attacked and seriously injured by some young people outside his house. Liam's older brother was involved in a gang when he was younger and has recently left prison. Liam has had some problems in school and has been diagnosed with ADHD. The professionals involved don't know why Liam was hurt and they don't think he is directly involved with drugs or criminal exploitation, although some of his friends have been linked to incidents in the past.

The Signs of Safety Group Supervision process has been used to help the worker to draft an initial Danger Statement, Safety Goal and Safety Scale and prepare questions to support the process of assessment, analysis and planning. Questions have been drafted to consider the views and experiences of all involved and the different contexts for safeguarding in this situation; young person, family/home, peer group, school/college and neighbourhood.

Suggestions are included for how tools and resources originally developed by members of the Contextual Safeguarding Network could be used to support Signs of Safety assessment and planning https://www.csnetwork.org.uk/