Transitional Safeguarding: The Case for Change

Abstract

Recent developments within safeguarding policy and practice have included changes to the law regarding safeguarding adults, and a variety of innovations in safeguarding adolescents. Despite these developments, safeguarding has retained a distinctly binary notion of childhood and adulthood with little attention paid to the period of transition. Harm, nor its effects, cease at 18. Yet safeguarding support is usually withdrawn as young people approach 18. For many young adults, there is little or no support available through statutory adult services, creating a gap through which young people fall. This article sets out the case for a more transitional approach to safeguarding young people into adulthood. It argues that there are compelling moral and economic drivers for an ecologically and developmentally informed approach, which is participatory by default, and in which the design challenge is to create not a discrete service, but a whole system approach.

Keywords:

• adolescent
• exploitation
• safeguarding
• transition
• transitional safeguarding

Disclosure statement

The author reports no declarations of interest.

Notes

1 Safeguarding enquiry duties apply to adults with care and support needs, who are unable to protect themselves from abuse or neglect as a result of these needs (DHSC 2020).

2 R. v R [1991] UKHL 12 (23 October 1991) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1991/12.html

3 Known as ‘Gillick competency’, following a legal ruling Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech AHA [1985] UKHL 7 (17 October 1985) http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1985/7.html

4 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf

5 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/313/regulation/2/made

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dez Holmes

Dez Holmes is the Director of Research in Practice, an organisation that promotes evidenceinformed practice amongst children’s and adults’ services.