5 - Reimagining Community Safety as community safeguarding in response to extra-familial harm

Summary

Introduction

A central argument to the development of CS has been a need to shift responses to EFH away from criminal justice (particularly youth justice) systems and towards child protection systems (Firmin, 2017; Lloyd and Firmin, 2019). Prior to this, many young people affected by EFH were not viewed as being within the remit of child protection systems, and the contexts in which they came to harm were equally considered out of scope for social work intervention. Efforts to implement CS sought to achieve this shift in two ways. Firstly, by integrating reference to extra-familial contexts (like peer groups and public places) into social work activities (such as when recording referrals or conducting assessments) that had traditionally focused on familial contexts. Secondly, by promoting that child protection, rather than criminal justice, legislative frameworks and associated structures provide the scaffolding for coordinating responses to EFH. The merits and challenges of this have been debated elsewhere in this book (see Chapters 2 and 7, for example) – and some ways forward proposed. However, in the latest testing of CS, the role of a third legislative framework, and associated operational structure, has come into view: Community Safety.

In the UK, CSPs are legislatively responsible for coordinating council responses to crime and disorder. This has often resulted in them leading local responses to contexts associated with higher numbers of crime or antisocial behaviour (ASB) reports, as well as sanctioning (through civil orders) those deemed responsible for those crimes/behaviours.

In local areas adopting CS, social workers have found themselves initiating child welfare assessments of contexts that have also been responded to via Community Safety disruption activity. Individual young people on social work plans due to the exploitation they have experienced have also faced Community Safety sanctions for the ASB they have displayed as a result of that exploitation. In both scenarios, Community Safety responses have risked undermining child welfare approaches to contexts and young people affected by EFH. Yet from a legislative, policy and practice perspective, the principal driver for decision making in the case of such contexts or young people is unclear. If part of one response may undermine the other, which one should take precedence?