Carlene Firmin
Biographic Data
| ID | 3560336 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carlene Firmin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carlene |
| FAMILY NAME | Firmin |
| SIGNATURE | FIRMIN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1201-5256 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Why ‘Common-Sense’ is Complicated
From being sexually/criminally exploited by adults in public spaces, to being sexually or physically harmed by peers in their schools, young people are significantly harmed beyond their families. Historically, many of these children have been criminalised rather than protected, and despite mounting concern from governments, and efforts at structural reform, many countries still struggle to offer welfare-orientated responses that effectively targe…
The Impossibility of ‘Good Mothering’ in Child Welfare Systems When Referred for Non-Traditional Harms
Due to harmful narratives within child welfare and child protection services and systems, mothers in contact with these services who aim to meet the symbolic representation of the ‘ideal mother’ frequently find themselves being portrayed as the ‘bad mother’, even when their referral is ‘non-traditional’ (i.e., not specifically due to their perceived harmful actions or inactions). Through ‘ideal mother’ symbolism and narratives, there is disenfran…
From ‘risky choices’ to ‘risky contexts’? The state of play of UK child welfare responses to adolescent ‘extra-familial harm’. National and international implications
In the UK, professional responses to abuse adolescents experience beyond their families have undergone transformation in the past 30 years. We present data from 40 local authorities in England, Wales, and Scotland to assess the ‘state of play’ of child protection responses to significant harm adolescents experience beyond their families, commonly referred to in UK child protection guidance as ‘extra-familial harm’. Data were collected via a two-y…
Future dialogues
Social work plays an important role in addressing a myriad of global and local challenges. In the face of humanitarian crises, climate change, widespread social and health disparities, and rollbacks in the protection of human rights, equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), social work communities are actively seeking and developing new knowledge to confront these issues and mitigate their impacts while holding firm to their value base. Amidst t…
A line in the sand
For over a decade, UK policymakers have responded to global ambitions to protect children from exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms by recommending that social workers coordinate local responses. This has required a significant shift in the design and delivery of social care services. In this article, we report findings from a three-year Institutional Ethnography of six social care sites that used three innovation framew…
Relocating Adolescents’
In the UK, there has been increased awareness of the harm adolescents face beyond their families. There is no national strategy for safeguarding adolescents. One intervention that comes with particularly high costs is relocation placements by children’s social care that move adolescents some distance from their communities. This research aims to contribute to the evidence about the relocation of adolescents exposed to, or at risk of extra-familia…
Binaries and Blurred Lines
Social care responses to extra-familial harm require social workers to work across the binaries of welfare and justice, victim and perpetrator, parent and professional, risk and protection. This paper examines the ethical consequences of working in this manner, through qualitative data (focus groups, interviews, observations, case file analysis and documentary review) from three children's social care organisations in England who trialled new chi…
Known to services’ or ‘Known by professionals’
Efforts to shift from criminal justice to welfare-based responses to exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms, have centred relational approaches. In particular, the role that relationships between professionals and young people can play in providing a sense of safety as well as a route to wider support services when young people come to harm beyond their families is under consideration. In parallel, trauma-informed practice…
Contextual Safeguarding
Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home
There is an absence of evidence supporting the use of ‘out-of-area placements’ to address risks adolescents face beyond the home. Approximately one in ten adolescents in England and Wales are ‘relocated’ from their hometowns by children’s social care teams due to these risks. Initial findings from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England situate these relocations as a ‘failure’ to safeguard teenagers. Using participatory approa…
Serious Case Reviews and Extra-Familial Harm
The interpersonal harms that young people experience beyond their families have been documented internationally as have the challenges of protecting those effected using existing child welfare systems. Concern about this in the UK has led to development of ‘contextual’ child protection systems—capable of targeting the peer group, school and community contexts where extra-familial harm (EFH) occurs. This study examined whether reviews of serious i…
Green Lights and Red Flags
Young people experience significant harm in a range of social contexts and from adults and peers unconnected to their caregivers. The recognition of this by policymakers in England, Scotland, and Wales has resulted in child protection policy frameworks increasingly requiring social work responses to the extra-familial contexts where such harm occurs, as well as to the young people affected. This paper presents results from an embedded research pr…
From ‘no further action’ to taking action
In 2018, England’s safeguarding guidelines were amended to explicitly recognise a need for child protection responses to extra-familial harms. This article explores the feasibility of these amendments, using quantitative and qualitative analysis of case-file data, as well as reflective workshops, from five children’s social care services in England and Wales, in the context of wider policy and practice frameworks that guide the delivery of child …
Considerations in the use of local and national data for evaluating innovation in children’s social care
Purpose This paper aims to explore the possibilities in using such national, statutory data sets for evaluating change and the challenges of understanding service patterns and outcomes in complex cases when only a limited view can be gained using existing data. The discussion also explores how methodologies can adapt to an evaluation in these circumstances. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the use of data routinely collected by loc…
Contextual Safeguarding and Child Protection
This book offers a complete account of Contextual Safeguarding theory, policy, and practice frameworks for the first time. It highlights the particular challenge of extra-familial routes through which young people experience significant harm, such as child sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, serious youth violence, domestic abuse in teenage relationships, bullying, gang-association, and radicalisation. Through analysing case reviews, obse…
Keeping children safe? Advancing social care assessments to address harmful sexual behaviour in schools
International evidence suggests that schools are locations where systems, practices, and cultures can enable harmful sexual behaviours. However, in England, welfare assessments primarily used by statutory social services largely target young people and their families, with limited capacity to assess environments beyond the home. Where young people display harmful sexual behaviours within educational settings, social care systems are yet to assess…
Relocation, relocation, relocation
From sexual exploitation and serious youth violence, to recruitment into drugs trafficking lines, young people encounter a range of risks in their neighbourhoods. Safeguarding partnerships in England face a practical challenge in addressing these ‘public’ types of significant harm, when using a child protection framework designed to respond to risks within the ‘private’ space of families. In the absence of a safeguarding system equipped to reshap…
Beyond referrals
From sexist comments and harassment through to contact offences, schools are locations where young people experience sexual abuse from peers. This paper reports findings of a multi-site study into levers for preventing peer-sexual abuse in educational settings in England. Data gathered through practice observations, case and policy reviews and focus groups with professionals and students were analysed through the lens of both a whole school appro…
A Route to Safety
During adolescence, risk to young people's safety shifts from familial to community contexts. Contextual safeguarding has emerged in response to this dynamic; by providing a conceptual framework through which to incorporate extra‐familial contexts (and those who manage them) into traditionally family focused child protection systems. This paper uses Geographic Information System mapping techniques to explore the extent to which bus boarding data …
Abuse Between Young People
Awareness of peer-on-peer abuse is on the rise and is a matter of increasing international concern. Abuse Between Young People: A Contextual Account is the first book to offer a contextualised narrative of peer-on-peer abuse that moves beyond recognising an association between environments and individual choice, and illustrates the ways in which such interplay occurs. Using both sociological and feminist perspectives, Firmin reshapes the way that…
From genograms to peer group mapping
Despite evidence that young people’s peer relationships are associated with their experiences of abuse, child protection guidance directs social work practice to be primarily focused on the assessment of, and intervention with, families. Presenting data from two studies into the nature of, and safeguarding response to, peer abuse in England, this article questions the familial parameters of child protection frameworks, and evidences the need to i…
Contextualizing case reviews
This paper introduces a systemic methodology for reviewing professional responses to abuse between young people. The approach, “contextual case reviewing,” draws upon constructivist structuralism to assess the extent to which safeguarding practices engage with the social and public contexts of abuse. The paper conceptually compares the methodologies of contextual case review and other serious case review methods before drawing upon findings from …
Sexual Exploitation and Its Impact on Developing Sexualities and Sexual Relationships
This article considers how young people’s developing sexualities are influenced by extra-familial social and cultural contexts, particularly in relation to experiences of sexual violence. It draws upon young people’s voices to illustrate the choices they make when they encounter, or engage with, exploitative contexts. Utilising the cumulative evidence base of our studies into sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence over the past ten years, …
Green Lights and Red Flags
Young people experience significant harm in a range of social contexts and from adults and peers unconnected to their caregivers. The recognition of this by policymakers in England, Scotland, and Wales has resulted in child protection policy frameworks increasingly requiring social work responses to the extra-familial contexts where such harm occurs, as well as to the young people affected. This paper presents results from an embedded research pr…
Beyond referrals
From sexist comments and harassment through to contact offences, schools are locations where young people experience sexual abuse from peers. This paper reports findings of a multi-site study into levers for preventing peer-sexual abuse in educational settings in England. Data gathered through practice observations, case and policy reviews and focus groups with professionals and students were analysed through the lens of both a whole school appro…
Sexual Exploitation and Its Impact on Developing Sexualities and Sexual Relationships
This article considers how young people’s developing sexualities are influenced by extra-familial social and cultural contexts, particularly in relation to experiences of sexual violence. It draws upon young people’s voices to illustrate the choices they make when they encounter, or engage with, exploitative contexts. Utilising the cumulative evidence base of our studies into sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence over the past ten years, …
Relocation, relocation, relocation
From sexual exploitation and serious youth violence, to recruitment into drugs trafficking lines, young people encounter a range of risks in their neighbourhoods. Safeguarding partnerships in England face a practical challenge in addressing these ‘public’ types of significant harm, when using a child protection framework designed to respond to risks within the ‘private’ space of families. In the absence of a safeguarding system equipped to reshap…
Contextualizing case reviews
This paper introduces a systemic methodology for reviewing professional responses to abuse between young people. The approach, “contextual case reviewing,” draws upon constructivist structuralism to assess the extent to which safeguarding practices engage with the social and public contexts of abuse. The paper conceptually compares the methodologies of contextual case review and other serious case review methods before drawing upon findings from …
Keeping children safe? Advancing social care assessments to address harmful sexual behaviour in schools
International evidence suggests that schools are locations where systems, practices, and cultures can enable harmful sexual behaviours. However, in England, welfare assessments primarily used by statutory social services largely target young people and their families, with limited capacity to assess environments beyond the home. Where young people display harmful sexual behaviours within educational settings, social care systems are yet to assess…
From genograms to peer group mapping
Despite evidence that young people’s peer relationships are associated with their experiences of abuse, child protection guidance directs social work practice to be primarily focused on the assessment of, and intervention with, families. Presenting data from two studies into the nature of, and safeguarding response to, peer abuse in England, this article questions the familial parameters of child protection frameworks, and evidences the need to i…
A line in the sand
For over a decade, UK policymakers have responded to global ambitions to protect children from exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms by recommending that social workers coordinate local responses. This has required a significant shift in the design and delivery of social care services. In this article, we report findings from a three-year Institutional Ethnography of six social care sites that used three innovation framew…
Binaries and Blurred Lines
Social care responses to extra-familial harm require social workers to work across the binaries of welfare and justice, victim and perpetrator, parent and professional, risk and protection. This paper examines the ethical consequences of working in this manner, through qualitative data (focus groups, interviews, observations, case file analysis and documentary review) from three children's social care organisations in England who trialled new chi…
Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home
There is an absence of evidence supporting the use of ‘out-of-area placements’ to address risks adolescents face beyond the home. Approximately one in ten adolescents in England and Wales are ‘relocated’ from their hometowns by children’s social care teams due to these risks. Initial findings from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England situate these relocations as a ‘failure’ to safeguard teenagers. Using participatory approa…
From ‘no further action’ to taking action
In 2018, England’s safeguarding guidelines were amended to explicitly recognise a need for child protection responses to extra-familial harms. This article explores the feasibility of these amendments, using quantitative and qualitative analysis of case-file data, as well as reflective workshops, from five children’s social care services in England and Wales, in the context of wider policy and practice frameworks that guide the delivery of child …
Considerations in the use of local and national data for evaluating innovation in children’s social care
Purpose This paper aims to explore the possibilities in using such national, statutory data sets for evaluating change and the challenges of understanding service patterns and outcomes in complex cases when only a limited view can be gained using existing data. The discussion also explores how methodologies can adapt to an evaluation in these circumstances. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the use of data routinely collected by loc…
Sexual Exploitation and Its Impact on Developing Sexualities and Sexual Relationships
This article considers how young people’s developing sexualities are influenced by extra-familial social and cultural contexts, particularly in relation to experiences of sexual violence. It draws upon young people’s voices to illustrate the choices they make when they encounter, or engage with, exploitative contexts. Utilising the cumulative evidence base of our studies into sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence over the past ten years, …
Abuse Between Young People
Awareness of peer-on-peer abuse is on the rise and is a matter of increasing international concern. Abuse Between Young People: A Contextual Account is the first book to offer a contextualised narrative of peer-on-peer abuse that moves beyond recognising an association between environments and individual choice, and illustrates the ways in which such interplay occurs. Using both sociological and feminist perspectives, Firmin reshapes the way that…
From genograms to peer group mapping
Despite evidence that young people’s peer relationships are associated with their experiences of abuse, child protection guidance directs social work practice to be primarily focused on the assessment of, and intervention with, families. Presenting data from two studies into the nature of, and safeguarding response to, peer abuse in England, this article questions the familial parameters of child protection frameworks, and evidences the need to i…
Contextualizing case reviews
This paper introduces a systemic methodology for reviewing professional responses to abuse between young people. The approach, “contextual case reviewing,” draws upon constructivist structuralism to assess the extent to which safeguarding practices engage with the social and public contexts of abuse. The paper conceptually compares the methodologies of contextual case review and other serious case review methods before drawing upon findings from …
A Route to Safety
During adolescence, risk to young people's safety shifts from familial to community contexts. Contextual safeguarding has emerged in response to this dynamic; by providing a conceptual framework through which to incorporate extra‐familial contexts (and those who manage them) into traditionally family focused child protection systems. This paper uses Geographic Information System mapping techniques to explore the extent to which bus boarding data …
Relocation, relocation, relocation
From sexual exploitation and serious youth violence, to recruitment into drugs trafficking lines, young people encounter a range of risks in their neighbourhoods. Safeguarding partnerships in England face a practical challenge in addressing these ‘public’ types of significant harm, when using a child protection framework designed to respond to risks within the ‘private’ space of families. In the absence of a safeguarding system equipped to reshap…
Beyond referrals
From sexist comments and harassment through to contact offences, schools are locations where young people experience sexual abuse from peers. This paper reports findings of a multi-site study into levers for preventing peer-sexual abuse in educational settings in England. Data gathered through practice observations, case and policy reviews and focus groups with professionals and students were analysed through the lens of both a whole school appro…
Contextual Safeguarding and Child Protection
This book offers a complete account of Contextual Safeguarding theory, policy, and practice frameworks for the first time. It highlights the particular challenge of extra-familial routes through which young people experience significant harm, such as child sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, serious youth violence, domestic abuse in teenage relationships, bullying, gang-association, and radicalisation. Through analysing case reviews, obse…
Keeping children safe? Advancing social care assessments to address harmful sexual behaviour in schools
International evidence suggests that schools are locations where systems, practices, and cultures can enable harmful sexual behaviours. However, in England, welfare assessments primarily used by statutory social services largely target young people and their families, with limited capacity to assess environments beyond the home. Where young people display harmful sexual behaviours within educational settings, social care systems are yet to assess…
From ‘no further action’ to taking action
In 2018, England’s safeguarding guidelines were amended to explicitly recognise a need for child protection responses to extra-familial harms. This article explores the feasibility of these amendments, using quantitative and qualitative analysis of case-file data, as well as reflective workshops, from five children’s social care services in England and Wales, in the context of wider policy and practice frameworks that guide the delivery of child …
Considerations in the use of local and national data for evaluating innovation in children’s social care
Purpose This paper aims to explore the possibilities in using such national, statutory data sets for evaluating change and the challenges of understanding service patterns and outcomes in complex cases when only a limited view can be gained using existing data. The discussion also explores how methodologies can adapt to an evaluation in these circumstances. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the use of data routinely collected by loc…
Serious Case Reviews and Extra-Familial Harm
The interpersonal harms that young people experience beyond their families have been documented internationally as have the challenges of protecting those effected using existing child welfare systems. Concern about this in the UK has led to development of ‘contextual’ child protection systems—capable of targeting the peer group, school and community contexts where extra-familial harm (EFH) occurs. This study examined whether reviews of serious i…
Green Lights and Red Flags
Young people experience significant harm in a range of social contexts and from adults and peers unconnected to their caregivers. The recognition of this by policymakers in England, Scotland, and Wales has resulted in child protection policy frameworks increasingly requiring social work responses to the extra-familial contexts where such harm occurs, as well as to the young people affected. This paper presents results from an embedded research pr…
Contextual Safeguarding
Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home
There is an absence of evidence supporting the use of ‘out-of-area placements’ to address risks adolescents face beyond the home. Approximately one in ten adolescents in England and Wales are ‘relocated’ from their hometowns by children’s social care teams due to these risks. Initial findings from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England situate these relocations as a ‘failure’ to safeguard teenagers. Using participatory approa…
Relocating Adolescents’
In the UK, there has been increased awareness of the harm adolescents face beyond their families. There is no national strategy for safeguarding adolescents. One intervention that comes with particularly high costs is relocation placements by children’s social care that move adolescents some distance from their communities. This research aims to contribute to the evidence about the relocation of adolescents exposed to, or at risk of extra-familia…
Binaries and Blurred Lines
Social care responses to extra-familial harm require social workers to work across the binaries of welfare and justice, victim and perpetrator, parent and professional, risk and protection. This paper examines the ethical consequences of working in this manner, through qualitative data (focus groups, interviews, observations, case file analysis and documentary review) from three children's social care organisations in England who trialled new chi…
Known to services’ or ‘Known by professionals’
Efforts to shift from criminal justice to welfare-based responses to exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms, have centred relational approaches. In particular, the role that relationships between professionals and young people can play in providing a sense of safety as well as a route to wider support services when young people come to harm beyond their families is under consideration. In parallel, trauma-informed practice…
The Impossibility of ‘Good Mothering’ in Child Welfare Systems When Referred for Non-Traditional Harms
Due to harmful narratives within child welfare and child protection services and systems, mothers in contact with these services who aim to meet the symbolic representation of the ‘ideal mother’ frequently find themselves being portrayed as the ‘bad mother’, even when their referral is ‘non-traditional’ (i.e., not specifically due to their perceived harmful actions or inactions). Through ‘ideal mother’ symbolism and narratives, there is disenfran…
From ‘risky choices’ to ‘risky contexts’? The state of play of UK child welfare responses to adolescent ‘extra-familial harm’. National and international implications
In the UK, professional responses to abuse adolescents experience beyond their families have undergone transformation in the past 30 years. We present data from 40 local authorities in England, Wales, and Scotland to assess the ‘state of play’ of child protection responses to significant harm adolescents experience beyond their families, commonly referred to in UK child protection guidance as ‘extra-familial harm’. Data were collected via a two-y…
Future dialogues
Social work plays an important role in addressing a myriad of global and local challenges. In the face of humanitarian crises, climate change, widespread social and health disparities, and rollbacks in the protection of human rights, equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), social work communities are actively seeking and developing new knowledge to confront these issues and mitigate their impacts while holding firm to their value base. Amidst t…
A line in the sand
For over a decade, UK policymakers have responded to global ambitions to protect children from exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms by recommending that social workers coordinate local responses. This has required a significant shift in the design and delivery of social care services. In this article, we report findings from a three-year Institutional Ethnography of six social care sites that used three innovation framew…
Why ‘Common-Sense’ is Complicated
From being sexually/criminally exploited by adults in public spaces, to being sexually or physically harmed by peers in their schools, young people are significantly harmed beyond their families. Historically, many of these children have been criminalised rather than protected, and despite mounting concern from governments, and efforts at structural reform, many countries still struggle to offer welfare-orientated responses that effectively targe…
Psychology (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Child Abuse and Trauma (14 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Nursing (12 works) · Safeguarding (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Harm (10 works)