Contextual safeguarding in North Lanarkshire Council

Published 29/10/2024.  Last updated 04/11/2024

The Community Learning and Development (CLD) service in North Lanarkshire consists of adult learning, youth work, family learning, resettlement and learning, and improvement provision. The focus of provision is to improve outcomes for children, young people, adults and families through learning, with a particular focus on engaging learners from more vulnerable communities.

As part of the council’s approach to improving outcomes for children and young people, CLD is a key strategic and operational partner in the rollout of developing ‘getting it right for every child’ (GIRFEC) pathways in relation to contextual safeguarding (CS) and extra-familial risks and harms (EFRH).

The improvement issue

North Lanarkshire’s Children’s Services Partnership identified the need to develop a response to EFRH. Among other things, they wanted to:

  • ensure that partners and community planning teams were providing a consistent response to instances of EFRH
  • develop a clear approach for providing access to support – from preventative through to intensive support
  • ensure that teams were taking the context of social media into consideration in responding to EFRH
  • improve ways in which young people’s voices are heard.

What North Lanarkshire did

The CLD youth work manager is now a panel member of the CS steering group (CSSG). The CSSG works with other professionals to explore and map locations of concern and community safety planning. These activities help inform its approach to safeguarding. The CLD team use this information to plan and deliver community-based activities for young people that can help to move them away from situations that put them more at risk.

The CLD team has developed a whole-family approach to EFRH to help support parents and families. This includes signposting parents to locality-based advice and guidance as well as to online parenting programmes, and delivering sessions on how to handle teenage behaviour.

All areas of CLD practice are contributing to the actions of the CSSG. This includes collating resources and sharing them with partners. These resources are helping to raise awareness of EFRH, within services and with young people.

CLD staff along with members of the Promise team and Who Cares Scotland used a CLD youth work approach with young people to co-produce a peer education session about CS and EFRH. This is building on other initiatives, such as Mentors in Violence Prevention and Child Online Exploitation and Protection.

The council ensures that all CLD staff receive up to date child protection training. Staff have also completed CS training and attended briefing sessions.

Attracting additional funding has helped to support the up-skilling of support workers within the youth work team. The funding has also meant that staff have been able to implement detached youth work to appropriate locations of concern, which have been identified through the peer mapping

CLD staff are working productively with community safety colleagues to help keep young people safe. This includes using CCTV in locations of concern, which is then shared with CLD staff, as well as partnership working with local business and community members to promote the safety of young people.

What the sustained impact has been

CLD staff report increased confidence in the use of non-stigmatising language and working with other professionals to use a trauma-informed approach. This has helped CLD staff and other professionals to explore the “bigger picture” around a young person and move away from stereotypes associated with young people in conflict with the law.

Staff and partners’ awareness and understanding of the young people who are not engaging with professionals have increased. For example, staff can identify better if a young person is experiencing, or has previously experienced, exploitation and the impact this has on the young person’s learning, peer groups, personal development and community safety.

As a result of the contextual safeguarding meetings, CLD are now contributing details of young people’s participation to their individual chronologies. Information is shared more effectively in multi-agency and/ or wellbeing meetings, which are now using a more strength/asset-based approach to working with young people. This approach is helping to sustain young people’s participation in community-based diversionary activities, where relevant.

As a result, CLD staff are now key to contextual safeguarding.

Andrew Gillies (Senior Education and Families Manager - Social Work) 

“CLD Youth Work is a key partner in our implementation of Contextual Safeguarding to protect young people at risk of harm in the community.  Youth work in North Lanarkshire has been fundamental to how we reach out to young people, build relationships, understand their perspectives in order to address the harms they face from exploitation or violence. This combats stigmatisation and the erosion of young people’s rights to safety in their communities.”  

Nicole Savage (Senior Officer Children and Families - Social Work) 

“Young people have a tough time, and they need people to champion them. They need stickability and local knowledge. They need relationships built up over time, in their own communities. Building the capacity between services to reframe our young people’s experiences and bring out their strengths is what helps us stay on the rollercoaster with them to reach better outcomes. Having CLD and SW work in tandem in communities to assess need and meet resource flexibly is an asset and one that we recognise has been sorely chipped away at over the years. 

The Contextual Safeguarding approach wouldn’t work without relationships and shared values, and the adaptability to meet young people where they are at… four key evidence based approaches to supporting young people exposed to extra familial harm are supporting better mental health through relationship building and trauma recognition, facilitating educational engagement, supporting families, carers and parents and developing networks of prosocial and culturally supportive activities; CLD and Contextual Safeguarding supports all of this and reinforces the rights based call to action to improve outcomes for our marginalised young people.” 
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Contextual safeguarding in North Lanarkshire Council

Published 29/10/2024.  Last updated 04/11/2024

The Community Learning and Development (CLD) service in North Lanarkshire consists of adult learning, youth work, family learning, resettlement and learning, and improvement provision. The focus of provision is to improve outcomes for children, young people, adults and families through learning, with a particular focus on engaging learners from more vulnerable communities.

As part of the council’s approach to improving outcomes for children and young people, CLD is a key strategic and operational partner in the rollout of developing ‘getting it right for every child’ (GIRFEC) pathways in relation to contextual safeguarding (CS) and extra-familial risks and harms (EFRH).

The improvement issue

North Lanarkshire’s Children’s Services Partnership identified the need to develop a response to EFRH. Among other things, they wanted to:

  • ensure that partners and community planning teams were providing a consistent response to instances of EFRH
  • develop a clear approach for providing access to support – from preventative through to intensive support
  • ensure that teams were taking the context of social media into consideration in responding to EFRH
  • improve ways in which young people’s voices are heard.

What North Lanarkshire did

The CLD youth work manager is now a panel member of the CS steering group (CSSG). The CSSG works with other professionals to explore and map locations of concern and community safety planning. These activities help inform its approach to safeguarding. The CLD team use this information to plan and deliver community-based activities for young people that can help to move them away from situations that put them more at risk.

The CLD team has developed a whole-family approach to EFRH to help support parents and families. This includes signposting parents to locality-based advice and guidance as well as to online parenting programmes, and delivering sessions on how to handle teenage behaviour.

All areas of CLD practice are contributing to the actions of the CSSG. This includes collating resources and sharing them with partners. These resources are helping to raise awareness of EFRH, within services and with young people.

CLD staff along with members of the Promise team and Who Cares Scotland used a CLD youth work approach with young people to co-produce a peer education session about CS and EFRH. This is building on other initiatives, such as Mentors in Violence Prevention and Child Online Exploitation and Protection.

The council ensures that all CLD staff receive up to date child protection training. Staff have also completed CS training and attended briefing sessions.

Attracting additional funding has helped to support the up-skilling of support workers within the youth work team. The funding has also meant that staff have been able to implement detached youth work to appropriate locations of concern, which have been identified through the peer mapping

CLD staff are working productively with community safety colleagues to help keep young people safe. This includes using CCTV in locations of concern, which is then shared with CLD staff, as well as partnership working with local business and community members to promote the safety of young people.

What the sustained impact has been

CLD staff report increased confidence in the use of non-stigmatising language and working with other professionals to use a trauma-informed approach. This has helped CLD staff and other professionals to explore the “bigger picture” around a young person and move away from stereotypes associated with young people in conflict with the law.

Staff and partners’ awareness and understanding of the young people who are not engaging with professionals have increased. For example, staff can identify better if a young person is experiencing, or has previously experienced, exploitation and the impact this has on the young person’s learning, peer groups, personal development and community safety.

As a result of the contextual safeguarding meetings, CLD are now contributing details of young people’s participation to their individual chronologies. Information is shared more effectively in multi-agency and/ or wellbeing meetings, which are now using a more strength/asset-based approach to working with young people. This approach is helping to sustain young people’s participation in community-based diversionary activities, where relevant.

As a result, CLD staff are now key to contextual safeguarding.

Andrew Gillies (Senior Education and Families Manager - Social Work) 

“CLD Youth Work is a key partner in our implementation of Contextual Safeguarding to protect young people at risk of harm in the community.  Youth work in North Lanarkshire has been fundamental to how we reach out to young people, build relationships, understand their perspectives in order to address the harms they face from exploitation or violence. This combats stigmatisation and the erosion of young people’s rights to safety in their communities.”  

Nicole Savage (Senior Officer Children and Families - Social Work) 

“Young people have a tough time, and they need people to champion them. They need stickability and local knowledge. They need relationships built up over time, in their own communities. Building the capacity between services to reframe our young people’s experiences and bring out their strengths is what helps us stay on the rollercoaster with them to reach better outcomes. Having CLD and SW work in tandem in communities to assess need and meet resource flexibly is an asset and one that we recognise has been sorely chipped away at over the years. 

The Contextual Safeguarding approach wouldn’t work without relationships and shared values, and the adaptability to meet young people where they are at… four key evidence based approaches to supporting young people exposed to extra familial harm are supporting better mental health through relationship building and trauma recognition, facilitating educational engagement, supporting families, carers and parents and developing networks of prosocial and culturally supportive activities; CLD and Contextual Safeguarding supports all of this and reinforces the rights based call to action to improve outcomes for our marginalised young people.” 
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Related content

Inspection reports for Community Learning And Development in North Lanarkshire Council