Contextual Safeguarding Approach Course

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This course helps you to develop your understanding of contextual safeguarding and recognise that young people can be vulnerable to significant harm in various social contexts beyond their families.

Contextual safeguarding, founded by Carlene Firmin and her team, is an approach that looks beyond traditional child protection responses. It is widely acknowledged that our current child protection system struggles to respond to risk and harm that happens outside the family, for example child sexual or criminal exploitation.

The contextual safeguarding approach offers evidence-based tools applicable to all practitioners tackling harm and abuse outside the family home. Using a multi-agency approach, we explore the contextual safeguarding framework and learn how to apply it through safety planning, context weighting, and mapping. By the end of the session, you will understand how to strengthen partnership approaches to safeguarding children and disrupting exploiters.

About the course

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By the end of the course, practitioners will be able to:

  • Understand the principles of Contextual Safeguarding and how to apply them in practice.
  • Understand how Contextual Safeguarding and Relational Safeguarding can work in unison to create a holistic, robust safeguarding plan for children and their families.
  • Learn how to assess contexts of harm and effectively use assessment frameworks
  • Understand safety mapping, context weighting and partnership working
  • Identify how to disrupt exploitation through partnership working
  • Recognise the importance of trauma-informed practice and quality-assured language.

What our learners say

“I felt that the course was exceptionally delivered, with the right balance of teaching and group interaction. It was also delivered in a fashion that was down to earth and explained in an easy and understandable manner. It was also interesting, this was also enhanced by the passion that the team delivered the training had for the subject.”

“What a fantastic couple of days! the training was so informative and thought provoking. The way it was delivered meant that everyone in the room engaged. The content was tailored to our team’s development needs and everyone came away saying how much they learned.”

Who is this course for?

This course will benefit anyone who has safeguarding responsibilities in their roles who work in the following sectors:

  • Education
  • Children’s Residential Care Homes
  • Healthcare
  • Police
  • Social work
  • Youth service
  • Foster care
  • Housing

How is the course delivered?

Our course will be accessed by learners online, streamed live via Teams, with the ability to watch and interact with our live trainers and other course participants. It will be a blended style of learning, with the same content and structure as our traditional face to face course. We are dedicated to ensuring the experience for our learners continues to be of the highest standard.

Cost

£70 per delegate.

Discount available for multiple bookings. You can also commission us to run the course in your workplace if you have a large number of staff wishing to attend. Please get in touch to find out more.

Timings

9.30am-3.00pm

Upcoming Training

3rd December 2024 Book your place

19th March 2025 Book your place

4th June 2025 Book your place

8th October 2025 Book your place

4th March 2026 Book your place

Meet the Trainer

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Dr Sarah Hall has extensive experience as an academic researcher in child exploitation, influenced by her early career in youth work and parent support. Sarah is passionate about the importance of family-centered, holistic support for families affected by child exploitation.

CPD Accredited

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