Transitions & Safeguarding
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Transitional Safeguarding is an 'approach to safeguarding adolescents and young adults fluidly across developmental stages which builds on the best available evidence, learns from both children’s and adult safeguarding practice and which prepares young people for their adult lives' (Holmes & Smale, 2018). It focuses on safeguarding young people from adolescence into adulthood, recognising that transition is a journey not an event, and that every young person will experience this journey differently.
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Bridging the Gap: Transitional Safeguarding and the Role of Social Work with Adults states that transitional Safeguarding is not simply transition planning for people moving from children to adult social care services.
It is about activity that often falls outside of traditional notions of both ‘transitions' and ‘safeguarding’, emphasising a needs-led, personalised approach. It requires practitioners, leaders and all involved in services for children and adults, to consider how they might work together and think beyond child/adult silos for the benefit of young people at a key life stage.
Transitional Safeguarding aims to work with young people/adolescents and inform multi agency safeguarding practices across both Children’s and Adults’ Services.
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RESOURCE: Maya's Story
This resource, adapted from Real Safeguarding Stories, can be used in team meetings or to support your own reflection on working with a child person as they turn 18 years old.
Maya's Story is a springboard to quality discussion and learning in professional or community settings. Watch the video in its entirety or pause at key moments to consider the story so far, opportunities missed, potential consequences, and any gaps in practice.
Download Maya's Story.
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Discussion Ideas
How might Maya have experienced your service before/ after she turned 18?
How did the transition between Child and Adult Safeguarding impact Maya?
Were there warning signs and/ or missed opportunities for support?
How can we ensure transitions are made successfully so that young people do not become 'lost in the system'?
What options are now open to Maya?
Please complete this short survey to let us know how this resource has impacted on practice. Your feedback will be anonymised and shared with Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire and Luton Safeguarding Children and Adult Partnerships.It will help us to create further resources to support safeguarding practice.
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Young people experience different risks from earlier childhood safeguarding issues. These risks are not necessarily from families, but may be from peers, partners, and risks from the wider and global community. Many of the environmental and structural factors that increase a young person’s vulnerability continue into adulthood, which can result in unmet needs and costly later interventions.
The key principles of a transitional Safeguarding approach are that it is:
- Evidence-informed;
- Contextual - moving beyond a child and their family, and considering the wider systems, contexts and spaces in which a young person experiences harm and safety issues; including sexual exploitation outside of the family, relationship abuse and domestic abuse;
- Developmental - understanding the distinct developmental needs and strengths of this life stage and creating services and pathways that reflect the individualised nature of transition to adulthood. It encourages greater fluidity between children and adult safeguarding processes and requires an active effort to align systems to create a smoother more holistic offer for people being supported;
- Relational - being person-centred;
- Participative; and
- That it attends to issues of equalities, diversity and inclusion.
Bridging the Gap sets out that everyone involved in safeguarding adults – in strategic roles such as Safeguarding Adults Boards, commissioners and strategic managers, and in practice roles, such as social work supervisors and practitioners – have a valuable contribution to make to transitional Safeguarding. Practical ideas include:
- Shared learning and development opportunities;
- Greater emphasis on co-design;
- Flexible commissioning frameworks;
- Improved local needs analysis; and
- Sharing examples of innovation across local areas.
Read more: Pan Bedfordshire Safeguarding Procedures- Transitional Safeguarding
Local & National Resources