Despite high-profile media reports of harming and abuse of children in their own homes, recent data shows increasing risks to children are often the familiar, ordinary, ‘every day’ situations. Children can be vulnerable to harm in wider contexts including relationships with their peers, schools and their neighbourhoods – delegates at a safeguarding conference will hear.

Delivered by Birmingham-based charity Services For Education, the online Safeguarding Conference on Thursday, March 27, will focus on ‘contextual safeguarding’ – an approach to understanding and responding to young people’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families.

One of the conference organisers – Jo Perrin, a seasoned Education Adviser at Services For Education with a strong background in safeguarding – said many recent high-profile situations have had a contextual safeguarding element.

“Only by understanding all the risk areas in a child’s life can we understand the actual lived experience of the child and their full vulnerabilities. Our legal processes and our practices have, to a large degree, developed to focus on risks to children in their own homes – where parental figures may have significantly harmed a child or somehow colluded in that harm.

“Whilst none of this is wrong, and it has protected generations of children, schools need to be aware of what is happening outside the immediate school environment,” said Jo.

Jo will be joined by the rest of the safeguarding team from Services For Education, including Lucie Welch and Emma Mudge, along with a panel of experts including Headline Speaker Dr Rebecca Brown, Research Associate in the Contextual Safeguarding Team at Durham University. Rebecca will talk about the recent ‘In the name of safeguarding’ study and the ways Contextual Safeguarding can be used to build safety in the context of education and close by.

Other speakers include Sabrina Hewitt, Exploitation & County Lines Specialist and Trauma Informed Practitioner who was herself criminally exploited from a very young age and who now works directly with young people and their families who have been either involved in or affected by exploitation and county lines, and Clair Graham, Head of Service for Contextual Safeguarding working within the EMPOWER U – the Exploitation and Missing Hub at Birmingham Children’s Trust.

Prof. Luna Dolezal, Professor of Philosophy and Medical Humanities at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter, will discuss the idea of “shame competence” and why we need to understand shame and its effects, and also need to recognise and avoid shaming.

The online, full-day conference will start at 9.30 am and will examine the complexities of Contextual Safeguarding, providing essential knowledge, practical advice, and best practice guidance for professionals working with vulnerable children. Further information on the conference is available at https://www.servicesforeducation.co.uk/online-safeguarding-conference/

ENDS

For further information:
Public and media relations for Services For Education:
David Clarke
E: [email protected];
M: 07808 735255

Jo Perrin of Services For Education

About Services For Education: An education and training charity based in Birmingham, Services For Education brings music and learning to life. Services For Education employs more than 200 staff delivering music tuition to children, and expert training and development to teaching and school support staff. It has annual income of £6.9m (Y/E August 2023). Part-funded by the Arts Council, England it also has its own fundraising and subsidised commercial operations.

• Services For Education’s School Support Service provides expert training and development to teaching and support staff in nearly 600 schools in the West Midlands and increasingly across England, to improve practice and ensure teachers are best equipped to respond to developments in curriculum and policy. As a leading provider of safeguarding education, Services For Education works with 400 schools delivering training in-person and on-line. It also delivers innovative programmes to support the physical and emotional health of children and young people through Health for Life and other community-based activity.
• Services For Education’s Music Service, one of the largest in the country, works with 98% of Birmingham schools and each year teaches music to nearly 32,000 children – as well as running 113 free ensembles. It provides 27,000 musical instruments free-of-charge so all children have access to playing and enjoying music together and its Youth Proms at Symphony Hall give 4,000 young musicians the opportunity to perform to an audience of more than 10,000. It also runs music schools, has a world music department, provides private music tuition to all ages as well as working with partners to deliver music and choral opportunities to disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. Its award-winning Online Music Educational Resource was completed and launched free to schools in 2021 to appeal to a young IT-connected audience attracted to learning online and to complement traditional tuition.

www.servicesforeducation.co.uk

Issued on behalf of:

Services For Education
Unit 3 Holt Court
Holt Street
Birmingham Science Park
Aston
Birmingham B7 4AX