Background

How can social pedagogy assist professionals in safeguarding young people? In Salford, action research introduced professionals to social pedagogy, following a Serious Case Review (SCR) of a seventeen-year-old young woman (Child N, SSCB, 2015). This small scale action research took place between October 2019 and March 2021 and involved a social work academic, social workers, Child in Need coordinators, youth workers and family support workers. The SCR had already led to the introduction of Young Person Plans (YPP) within Salford, seeking to create a new relationship between professionals and young people and embrace contextual approaches to safeguarding.

The SCR identified a lack of professional oversight and care, missed opportunities to promote her welfare and an unhelpful emphasis on procedures. This resulted in failures by professionals to look for the young woman or report her missing from semi-independent accommodation, visit when she moved in with her older boyfriend and following several emergency admissions to hospital. As in so many SCRs, there was confusion when reconciling a young person’s voice with the duty to safeguard. In the case of this young woman, professionals didn’t obtain her wishes and feelings or assumed she was responsible for her choices, actions and situation.

The resulting Young Person Plans sought to involve young people in assessment and planning and social pedagogy was introduced to strengthen professional practice with young people beyond bureaucratic frameworks.

Introducing Social Pedagogy

Social pedagogy starts by influencing the relationships between individuals and society (Hämäläinen, 2015). It has been described as providing ‘educational solutions to social problems’ ( Hämäläinen, 2003, p. 71) and where care and education meet (Cameron and Moss, 2011). Social pedagogues use everyday opportunities to build relationships and develop young people’s ‘social functioning, inclusion, participation, social identity and social competence’ (Hämäläinen, 2015, p. 76).

In this guise, professionals are teachers, facilitators, mentors and enablers of young people. Social pedagogy equips professionals with an ethical orientation (Eichsteller & Holthoff, 2011a) rather than a route map or framework. This means professionals apply values as first practice (Moss, 2006), establishing authentic relationships and recognising young people as rich and resourceful.

What difference might social pedagogy’s ethical orientation make in the case of Child N? By drawing upon their values and emotions and working through the medium of relationships, professionals would look for her when missing, visit when she moved to her boyfriend’s home and follow up the admissions to hospital. A genuine relationship entails professionals finding out about her interests, hopes and needs and informing her of choices, including in this instance the right to be ‘looked after’ (Section 20, Children Act 1989).

These actions communicate to the young person they are valued and cared about, integral features when building trust and professional relationships. Professionals who take a holistic interest in young people can understand their lived experience, including wishes and feelings independent from bureaucratic and legal frameworks. In doing so, social pedagogy strengthens contextual approaches. For example, SCRs reveal that professionals know little about young people’s activities and relationships and become entrenched in a cycle of risk assessment rather than creating changes to their environment.

Action Research

Action research builds on the experience and expertise of professionals to inform learning and organisational change. Like social pedagogy, action research reflects the situated, emotional, contingent, and intuitive dimensions of professional practice. Action research enables social pedagogy to be interpreted, constructed, and applied, taking account of professional roles, spaces, and priorities.

The action research introduced professionals to social pedagogy by sharing a series of conceptual tools, that reflect social pedagogy’s ethical orientation:

• 3 P’s — the personal, professional and private — a tool helping professionals exercise judicious use of self (Eichsteller & Holthoff, 2011b) when considering what information to share about themselves to establish authentic and helpful relationships
• Head, Heart and Hands — strengthening holistic reflection by considering thoughts, emotions and actions
• Image of the Child — replacing problematised constructions of young people by recognising their rich potential as social actors
• Lifeworld — understanding a young person’s experiences and how these influence feelings, understandings and actions
• Relational Universe — considering a young person’s ecology, their interests, networks, experiences and pathways
• Common Thirds (Husen, 1985)— creating new professional and young person identities, through shared activities and discovery

The action research involved experiential, inclusive, and interactive workshops with games, storytelling, art, literature and films, introducing the conceptual tools. The activities resulted in dialogue and enabled professionals to share and learn from practice, by considering social pedagogy in the light of their own experiences, skills, emotions and values when safeguarding young people. The workshops also modelled approaches that could be used when working with young people.

Throughout the action research, review and reflection activities undertaken by participants, alongside additional evaluation workshops, generated information and materials to evidence the impact of social pedagogy. These professionals also applied their understanding of social pedagogy by updating information leaflets for young people and Young Person Plan Guidance and designing and delivering workshops for colleagues and other professionals.

The Impact of Social Pedagogy

Social pedagogy’s conceptual tools provide a holistic approach that can inform and help professionals to consider their role, context and the characteristics of the young person. Social pedagogy validates and enriches professional practice when safeguarding young people, by building confidence in existing practice and stimulating new ways of thinking and being.

Principles and Values

Social pedagogy has resonated with professionals’ values, beliefs and motivations in working with young people. The term ‘ haltung’ in social pedagogy signifies a deep commitment to values and this was important to the professionals, one of whom described this as:

A set of beliefs that inform your daily actions. (Youth Worker)

Professionals recognised social pedagogy’s principles and values inform practice:

a set of principles working with and not doing to. (Social Worker)

Social pedagogy has become a tool for me to use. I have social pedagogy in mind when chairing YPP meetings and make recommendations using the principles. Social pedagogy tells us that building trusting and authentic relationships are vital when working with young people. (Child in Need Coordinator)

A way of working with young people where you see the young person as an equal, caring human who has agency. (Social Worker)

Embedding Reflection

The ability of social pedagogy to deepen reflection by taking account of tacit and intuitive practice was also highlighted:

While training to become a youth workers we spend a lot of time and energy on reflection and applying theory to practice. Once you start work reflection is often lost due to time and commitments. Give yourself time to reflect and think about social pedagogy theory and how to use this in your work. We do a lot of it already. It’s about identifying it. (Youth Worker)

A social worker explained how social pedagogy increases professional confidence by making the unconscious explicit, describing herself as:

A nurturing and warm practitioner who always places my young people at the centre of anything I do. Social pedagogy has enabled me to recognise that the skills I utilise every day with young people are helping them to build their self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-worth.

A Holistic Approach

Another professional describes using the head, heart and hands as part of holistic practice:

Recognising that as a professional you can use your whole self to engage, work with and build a relationship with a young person and this requires thinking, practical action and care and emotion. (Youth Worker)

Building Relationships and Common Thirds

A social worker highlights the importance of the professional relationship:

Social Pedagogy has taught me the importance of building trusted relationships with young people for them to be able to increase positive factors in their life. This is achieved through a strengths-based approach, time, consistency, flexibility and listening without judgement. Social Pedagogy is REAL Social Work practice!!

This social worker continued to explain as strengthening Common Thirds this relationship, and the young person:

Everyone has a hobby and strength!! Find that passion with young people. Playing football daily with a young person I worked with increased his self-esteem, self-worth and empowered him significantly. It created a safe space for him to talk about his hopes, wishes and feelings. It allowed time to laugh and be your true self! This supported a trusted relationship to be developed. Building on this strength transferred into all areas of this young person’s life.

Reimagining Young People

Holding onto a positive image of the young person helps professionals to reimagine young people’s potential rather than viewing them as sites of risk or socialisation:

How we see young people is important — and a rich child is one who is complex, dynamic and has many facets, as opposed to being seen or situated as problematic. Seeing a young person as someone who has skills, experience and who can think for themselves and be empowered to change themselves and you. (Child in Need Coordinator)

A youth worker argues for starting with the young person, rather than bureaucratic frameworks:

Social pedagogy means we can work with the person rather than focus on the process. Social pedagogy strips that back and looks at what is best for the young person. We get to know them as people rather than a number or statistic. Social pedagogy allows us to start with the person and focus on other things after.

Linking Voice to Care

Viewing young people positively and outside of professional agendas promotes participation. As a Child in Need coordinator explains:

Bringing young people into the conversation, understanding what is important to them and how they view themselves in the world? I see it as an essential aspect of contextual safeguarding to recognise the lived experience of the young person. I use my role to communicate care to young people and demonstrate that we are listening.

Connecting Young People to Communities

In social pedagogy, the professional relationship is a means to connect young people to their communities and other services. In Salford, the integral role of the youth service has strengthened cooperation and helped to challenge procedural approaches that distance professionals from young people. The Senior Youth Work Manager describes how social pedagogy has strengthened cooperation, so youth workers:

..help social workers connect their young people to their local communities, using activities like the Common Third and being more caring and authentic with young people using the 3 Ps.

Redefining Risk

Social pedagogy encourages new conversations about young people, communities and safeguarding. It redefines assessment and intervention by considering a young person’s relationship to the community. Professionals observed that social pedagogy replaces the language of risk, including terms such as compliance, resistance and hard to reach with that of ‘care, persistence and change’.

Professionals argued that building relationships takes time and the significance of a lift, trip out, or simply walking a dog should not be underestimated. This holistic approach to risk is captured by a discussion involving several professionals:

It is the responsibility of professionals to communicate care by sharing spaces with young people, by doing things for and with them. It means redefining risk so the question becomes not whether a young person is in school but are they happy in school? And before closing cases consider if the quality of a young person’s relationships, interests and pathways have improved and not just the presenting risks or behaviour.

Therefore, social pedagogy is a holistic approach that considers risk as cpart of a young person’s experiences and needs. Their participation in safeguarding should address this and not be an adjunct to bureaucratic or legal frameworks.

Jameel Hadi is a qualified social worker with over 20 years of experience working with young people, within youth justice, safeguarding, and leaving care services. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Social Pedagogy. If you are interested in training and workshops informed by social pedagogy that develop services within young people’s social care, including complex and contextual safeguarding please contact.

Additional References

Cameron & P. Moss (Eds.), Social pedagogy and working with young children. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishing.

Children Act 1989. London: HMSO.

Eichsteller, Gabriel & Holthoff, S. (2011a). Social Pedagogy as an Ethical Orientation Towards Working with People — Historical Perspectives. Children Australia, 36(4), pp.176–186.

Eichsteller, G., & Holthoff, S. (2011b). Conceptual foundations of social pedagogy: A transnational perspective from Germany. In C. Cameron & P. Moss (Eds.), Social pedagogy and working with young children (pp. 33–52). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishing.

Hämäläinen, J. (2003). ‘The concept of social pedagogy in the field of social work’. Journal of Social Work, 3 (1), 69–80.

Hämäläinen, J. (2015). Defining Social Pedagogy: Historical, Theoretical and Practical Considerations, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 45, Issue 3, April 2015, Pages 1022–1038.

Husen, M. (1985). The Common Third, about community and values in educational work, https://michaelhusen.dk/om-dette-site/.

Moss, P. (2006). Structures, Understandings and Discourses: possibilities for re-envisioning the early childhood worker. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 7(1), 30–41.

Salford Safeguarding Children’s Board (June 2019), The Young Person’s Plan (YPP) in Salford — Guidance, Safeguarding young people in vulnerable circumstances.