With special guest facilitator, Luke Billingham
For practitioners, managers, leaders and policymakers in youth safeguarding systems
In this workshop, we will define the youth safeguarding system as a purposeful multi-agency collaboration, undertaken at the levels of practice, operational management, and strategic leadership, and in partnership with young people, families and communities.
The uniting aim of youth safeguarding is to create safety with young people, prevent further harm, and nurture their awareness, agency and wellbeing. We suggest this definition has four important implications for relational practice:
Centring young people’s awareness, agency and wellbeing as the goals of youth safeguarding, without placing on young people the responsibility for reducing harm.
Recognising the vital influence of non-professional relationships in the lives of young people within youth safeguarding systems.
Highlighting that the effectiveness of youth safeguarding extends beyond the scope of any one agency or sector, and emphasising the quality of collaboration within partnerships.
Underlining the interrelatedness of all the different parts of the youth safeguarding system to one another. The term system indicates the complex and changing nature of adolescent safeguarding, which requires curiosity and flexibility from leaders, managers and practitioners, rather than rigid forms of management.
By the end of this one-day workshop, you will be able to:
Identify the features of youth safeguarding systems and your capacity for fostering relational practice, identifying key barriers and opportunities for change.
Articulate core capabilities and benefits of relational practice within youth safeguarding, understanding how these capacities contribute to nurturing youth agency and wellbeing.
Explore tools and approaches for nurturing conducive conditions within your own professional roles and organisational contexts, drawing insights from the paper's recommendations.
Develop your own action plan outlining steps to advocate for, implement, and embed relational practice within local youth safeguarding systems