Keeping Children Safe? Advancing Social Care Assessments to Address Harmful Sexual Behaviour in Schools

Report title: Keeping Children Safe? Advancing Social Care Assessments to Address Harmful Sexual Behaviour in Schools

Authors: Jenny Lloyd, Joanne Walker and Carlene Firmin, Child & Family Social Work (February 2020)

The findings presented in this article are based on cumulative evidence from two studies. The first aimed to explore enablers and barriers to addressing harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) in schools. In the second study, researchers worked alongside social care practitioners to test an assessment of a school environment as part of a wider programme of work to build Contextual Safeguarding systems into children’s services departments. Analysis of these two studies was undertaken to build an assessment framework for responding to abuse in schools for further testing in the future.

Study one was carried out in four local authorities in England and seven secondary and further education providers of varying types.

Study two was an action-research project carried out in one local authority in England that was embedding a Contextual Safeguarding approach to child protection within its statutory children and families service. Between December 2017 and March 2018, the project team, formed of social work practitioners and supported by the research team at the University of Bedfordshire, piloted a school assessment within one high school in the local authority using the methods developed by the research team in study one.

School contexts and harm

Within social care settings, assessments are used to identify if and why harm is happening and what would need to change to increase safety. Both studies demonstrated that in order to understand harm in schools, practitioners need to examine the nature of the schools themselves and the relationship between the school context and harm occurring or facilitated there. Both studies identified HSB occurring within schools – such as sexual harassment, bullying, and abuse – and assessed the capacity of schools and multi-agency partners to prevent and respond to HSB.

Behaviour log

How incidents were recorded illustrated how they were viewed and recognised by school staff. For example, although students in all schools suggested that sexual harassment was a daily occurrence, this was not quantified within behaviour/safeguarding reports in any of the schools, suggesting that many incidents go unreported or unrecorded. Instead, in the school in study two, behaviour and safeguarding logs predominantly focused on violations of school uniform code, despite students discussing (in focus groups) daily incidents of online sexual bullying and harassment.

Direct engagement with students provided opportunities to identify types and prevalence of harm that may not be recorded in behaviour logs. Additionally, they highlighted how specific forms of harm were aggravated by the school.

Social work observations

When considering harm happening in schools, observations were used to identify any information about the relationship between students, staff and student interactions, the physical layout of the school, and any identifiable risk or protective factors.

Observations of school environments included school meetings, classes, transfer between lessons, and break-time.

Observations built a picture of how HSB was responded to in practice in the school and illustrated the ways in which risk and protective factors were identified, understood, and managed.

Policies and procedures

Reviews of relevant policies and procedures supported understanding of the strategic and operational guidelines in place to respond to HSB. School policies were reviewed relating to safeguarding, behaviour management, bullying, and, where available, HSB. Reviewing policies elicited the school response to HSB on paper. The method demonstrated thresholds for response relating to different forms of HSB, definitional understandings, and the positioning of the response to HSB within wider safeguarding, behavioural, and criminal responses

Child protection approaches to assessment

When harm happens in schools, methods used to assess families do not necessarily engage with, or identify, school-specific factors. Study two sought to adapt and align methods developed in study one with those used within a child protection system. A school assessment framework was used to document findings and assess the level of harm within the school.

Central issues emerging from the assessment are risks associated with:

• Harmful sexual behaviours from problematic language and unwanted touching from peers through to CSE [child sexual exploitation] concerns in the community
• Substance misuse amongst students and associated mental health concerns.

There is an interplay between factors in the neighbourhood (CSE risks, gang-association, street-based victimisation, older peers), peer group norms (associated to drug use and CSE); school-based norms (associated to sexual harassment, drug use and a lack of confidence in disclosing concerns); and limited parental influence (impacted by domestic violence in some cases, lack of engagement in others and parents feeling ill-equipped to effectively challenge drug use and online behaviours).

Aligning with the process used in England to assess levels of harm by families, the school in study two was assessed as a “school in need”, which aligns to the Section 17 “child in need” status given to children and families. Therefore, the assessment determined that:

• The school and pupils are unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for them of services by a local authority;
• The school and pupils’ health or development are likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for them of such services.

The resulting plan, developed in partnership between the local authority children’s social care, school senior leadership, local youth service, and voluntary community services, therefore offered voluntary support. Although the assessment itself was broader than HSB and included issues such as violence and drug use, the plan in relation to HSB made recommendations to:

• Address harmful norms associated with sexual harassment among students, with complimentary activities to ensure that the policy framework in place to address this issue equates with that already in place for other forms of bullying;
• Increase student confidence in disclosures and consistent staff responses – including in addressing a range of harmful behaviours and developing consistent safeguarding responses to young people from different backgrounds.

In drawing upon the methodological insights gleaned from study one, study two employed these research methods as part of a school assessment, resulting in a plan levelled at supporting the school. This process highlighted opportunities for developing assessments into school contexts when there are concerns of abuse at school.

Implications for practice

• The findings of these studies demonstrate the value of assessing the nature of HSB between students in relation to the context in which it occurs, that is, schools.
• It offers methods through which traditional pillars of the child and family assessment can be extended to ask questions about the capacity of school professionals to safeguard young people from sexual abuse within an educational setting.
• The creation of the school assessment framework offers a route by which schools, and local authorities, can work together and begin to test the inclusion of Contextual Safeguarding within statutory safeguarding guidance for schools and multi-agency partners.

Read more in CYP Now’s Contextual Safeguarding Special Report