9 - Innovations in Transitional Safeguarding

Summary

Introduction

One of the key tenets of the Transitional Safeguarding approach is that local areas use the key principles to develop their response according to local needs. We have been encouraged to see the proliferation of responses in relation to Transitional Safeguarding and the many ways in which local areas have developed their own Transitional Safeguarding workstreams. This shows how they have had to think deeply, juggling this development activity among a plethora of demands and priorities across organisations and partnerships in their own areas.

This chapter describes a range of examples from localities across England where Transitional Safeguarding is being taken forward through initiatives aiming to improve the safeguarding experience of young people. These are showcased to prompt and inspire others to consider how their local area or service might be able to do things differently, in order to ensure that young people can be and feel as safe as possible. No one area has the complete solution, and all are on a journey with this work. Some of these examples have been able to access modest funding to augment existing resources; others have reconfigured their resources. The current pressures on public sector services needs to be acknowledged; people are driving and creating change using whatever power and influence they have in their professional roles, because ‘doing nothing’ is not an option. They are creating solutions, working together across boundaries, and leading change with young people.

These examples provide a picture of what is emerging locally to put the principles of Transitional Safeguarding into action. The way in which change happens is a process, not a single transformative event. To try to make sense of the range of initiatives that currently exist, we have developed four typologies which help situate and understand each of the examples within the system transformation that needs to be achieved. There are common themes, blocks, and barriers as well as enablers, that come from reviewing these initiatives, which we discuss towards the end of the chapter. Chapter 10 then explores the aspirational whole systems change that Transitional Safeguarding aims to achieve; the examples in this chapter help us begin to visualise what this might look like.