2 - The challenge of safeguarding binaries

Summary

Introduction

This chapter will explore the ways in which binary notions are impeding safeguarding efforts at both a practice and policy level and will consider the human and economic cost of the current approach. The six key principles of Transitional Safeguarding will then be outlined, with an explanation of how each principle is deliberately intended to respond to and redress identified problems. In keeping with the theme of boundary-spanning, this chapter will then describe how each of the principles exemplify the ‘both/and’ ethos of Transitional Safeguarding at practice level and at the level of leadership and wider policy.

At its heart, Transitional Safeguarding is concerned with boundary-spanning, and as such is an issue of systems leadership that supports practice change. This fundamental characteristic is precisely because Transitional Safeguarding seeks to redress the binaries and inflexibilities within the current safeguarding systems, whether these are related to age, service siloes, or professional disciplines, and/or the wider way in which citizens are conceptualised. There have been significant efforts in recent years, including new statutory duties, to ensure a more fluid transitional experience for some young people – notably, those with special educational needs and disabilities, and those leaving care. However, within the safeguarding arena, a binary notion of childhood and adulthood has endured, with safeguarding responses for those over aged 18 and those aged under 18 operating to wholly different thresholds, legislation, and policy paradigms (Cocker et al 2021). This divergent approach, with little fluidity between adult's and children's safeguarding systems, means that some older adolescents and younger adults are not receiving the support they need to be safe and feel safe (Holmes and Smale 2018). As argued elsewhere (Holmes 2022a), the transition to adulthood is a process, not an event, and this process varies depending on a young person's experiences, environment, and context. While many harms facing young people under 18 continue into adulthood, and although young people's brains continue to develop until their mid-twenties (Sawyer et al 2018; Prior et al 2011), the current safeguarding approach operates to a rigid notion that adulthood suddenly occurs on a person's eighteenth birthday.