Contextual Safeguarding: one entry point to intersectional social work with adolescents

Carlene Firmin and Patriche Bentick

Chapter 17 in Handbook on Intersectionality and Social Work, 2026, pp 225-238 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Since 2015, social work responses to the harms young people face during adolescence – particularly harms that are extra-familial – have undergone a radical transformation. During this time, social workers have increasingly identified Black young people, particularly those who are young men and/or who are neurodivergent, who are harmed in extra-familial contexts. Scholars have expressed concern that such practice may lead to increased surveillance and controls on Black young men and young women, without affording them appropriate protection. In this chapter, we apply a Contextual Safeguarding lens to social work case studies of extra-familial harm. Contextual Safeguarding is a conceptual framework that promotes social work responses to the contextual conditions in which extra-familial harm occurs. Using this analysis, we ask whether the approach facilitates greater recognition of the contextual and systemic drivers of harm that Black young people experience and, consequently, offers one route to intersectional social work responses to extra-familial harm.

Keywords: Contextual Safeguarding; Extra-Familial Harm; Intersectionality; Social Work with Adolescents; Black Young People (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035324453
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