Tuesday the 29th of June will see the formal launch of Bridging the Gap: Transitional Safeguarding and the Role of Social Work with Adults – A knowledge Briefing.

After working in many areas across the country for the past four years on exploitation and the transition into adulthood the NWG Network was delighted to bring their knowledge and experience of this area and be part of a small project group that developed the knowledge briefing. Special mention to Dez Holmes (Director) Research in Practice for her leadership with the briefing and to Fran Leddra who despite responding to the many challenges of the pandemic ensured that this priority briefing was developed. Also, many thanks to the areas from across the country who supplied the case studies for the briefing.

It is really encouraging that the briefing has been so well received and supported. Below are responses from the National Youth Agency (NYA), the National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum (NLCBF), the STAGE voluntary Sector Partnership and NAMSS.

Effective Partnership working will be crucial to the implementation of transitional safeguarding.

We look forward to working with areas as they further develop their responses in this area and to further sharing practice, learning, research, and resources to support local area responses.

The NYA welcomes the Transitional Safeguarding briefing and in particular, the principles that underpin the approach. The importance of building and maintaining relationships, focusing on the individual’s needs (rather than the need to fulfil process) and utilising strength-based and participative approaches (when coproducing solutions) are all key to great youth work. Applying these approaches to safeguarding, as well as recognising the need to have greater fluidity for service provision between children and adult services, will support positive outcomes for individuals.

Youth workers are applying a contextual approach to safeguarding day in day out. Good youth work supports young people to develop the awareness, knowledge, and skills to navigate risks, helping to safeguard and enhance welfare. The NYA encourages any local partnerships adopting a Transitional Safeguarding model, which contextualises risks within the changing lives of young people rather than viewing them as discrete issues, to engage with local youth work partners; to do so can only enhance what we are all trying to achieve.

National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum welcomes the publication of ‘Bridging the Gap’ and urges focus on care leavers.

The National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum (NLCBF) brings together key local authority staff including leaving care managers, practitioners, and most importantly young people to share learning, develop good practice and improve services for looked after young people and those who are care experienced. A clear concern from across the 121 local authority members is that even though care experienced young people are entitled to a range of support from their local authority they, like many other young people, can be victims of criminal or sexual exploitation. NLCBF members recognise the systems put into place to protect care for experienced young people are complex.

We acknowledge there can be gaps in the support available to those who experience exploitation as they reach adulthood. We recognise that harm and coercion do not stop at 18 and that ongoing protection for our young people is critical.

NLCBF welcomes the recent publication (June 2021) of the briefing: Bridging the Gap: transitional safeguarding and the role of social work with adults. As a forum, we look forward to continuing discussions with our adult safeguarding boards and social work colleagues to ensure good joint working with Personal Advisers and everyone who supports and protects our young people.

As leaders of the STAGE partnership, we so welcome this ground-breaking Transitional Safeguarding report, and particularly the very clear statement that ‘a person cannot consent to abuse. Having the capacity and ‘making unwise decisions’ is not consenting to be abused’.

The report is more than joining up two binary systems of children and adult safeguarding arrangements and expecting young people to move seamlessly across the two. This is about being each person being at the centre of what we do. It is about viewing adolescence as a developmental phase and safeguarding in this context being all about relationships.

The report launched today has the potential to stop women and girls from falling through the net. We hope that in turn, our colleagues from adult social work, safeguarding and police will find our toolkit further enhances our ability to improve our collective response. As local areas develop their responses to transitional safeguarding it is important, they are listening to excellent learning to be found within the voluntary sector and we need to be brought to the table as equal partners. By working together with a shared purpose to safeguard women and bring perpetrators to justice, we have the tools to seriously challenge sexual exploitation in all its horrifying guises.

We can do this better together; as stated by Fran Ledra, Chief Social Worker for Adults in the introduction to the report, ‘it’s our responsibility to learn more about this issue. Let’s learn together and build mutual respect so we can build a genuinely multi-agency robust response to tackling sexual exploitation across the country.

Read the full statement from the STAGE Project HERE

NAMSS welcomes this important report and fully supports the initiative to ‘bridge the gap’ so that equality of access and support is available wherever it is needed.

Transition can be very challenging for anyone moving from one setting to another; school pupils moving into Further Education can often find that their support networks for mental health or safeguarding issues disappear. This ‘cliff edge’ at both 16 and particularly 18 must be removed. Whatever issues young people face at 17, they do not magically dissolve at 18 and it is a significant inequality that we identify an 18 + person as so distinctly different from those pre 18 and do not cater for their needs, or give access to services, on the same level.

This report makes clear that coming of age does not mean an individual needs less support. On the contrary, many young people will need to be safeguarded well beyond their teenage years. Safeguarding has been well established for under 18s across the education sector and this timely and comprehensive report makes clear that our focus needs to be extended to include all young adults in all our communities.

You can access the Bridging the Gap: Transitional Safeguarding and the Role of Social Work with Adults – A knowledge Briefing HERE