Lauren Elizabeth Wroe
Biographic Data
| ID | 3561554 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lauren Elizabeth Wroe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lauren Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Wroe |
| SIGNATURE | WROE L E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4421-285X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Why ‘Common-Sense’ is Complicated: Unearthing the Cultural Facilitators of Contextual Safeguarding Structures
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…
Contextual safeguarding across borders’: Learning about the ‘contextual safeguarding’ framework and youth ‘extra-familial’ harm in Germany
Towards safety: The enablers and barriers that create safety in and around youth work organisations
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…
Harm, safety and belonging: Exploring ‘contextual safeguarding’ with refugee youth in Europe
Race, class and the weaponisation of child safety
As we sit down to write this editorial, the ‘debate’ about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ in the UK has once again hit global news stories and is circulating in the corridors of Parliament. This is a decades-spanning debacle whereby far-right groups, conservative politicians and apparently now billionaire Big Tech moguls (Sky News, 2025) highlight the exclusive (and falsified) role of Pakistani men in the organised group-based sexual exploitation of work…
Relocating Adolescents’: The Costs of Out-of-Area Placements as a Response to Extra-Familial Risk/Harm
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…
Relationship of trust and surveillance in the first national piloting of Contextual Safeguarding in England and Wales
This article analyses data collected as part of a three-year study supporting the implementation of Contextual Safeguarding across nine children’s social care teams in England and Wales as an approach to safeguarding adolescents at risk of harm in ‘extra-familial’ contexts. The article asks to what extent the first national testing of Contextual Safeguarding features relationships of trust or relationships of surveillance with young people, famil…
County lines: Racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain
Government policies relating to dealers in 'county lines' drugs trafficking cases have been welcomed as a departure from punitive approaches to drugs and 'gang' policing, in that those on the bottom rung of the drugs economy of heroin and crack cocaine are no longer treated as criminals but as potential victims and 'modern slaves' in need of protection. However, our research suggests not so much a radical break with previous modes of policing as …
Social Care Responses to Children who Experience Criminal Exploitation and Violence: The Conditions for a Welfare Response
This article explores social care responses to children experiencing criminal exploitation and violence. The article draws on data from two children’s social care departments in England applying a Contextual Safeguarding framework to extra-familial harm. Using evidence from interviews, focus groups, meeting observations and two peer assessments, the article explores factors that facilitate welfare approaches when children commit crimes and those …
Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home: What Do We Learn When We Ask about Safety
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…
When Helping Hurts: A Zemiological Analysis of a Child Protection Intervention in Adolescence—Implications for a Critical Child Protection Studies
This paper presents data from a three-year, mixed methods study into the rate and impact of ‘relocation’ as a response to extra-familial harm in adolescence by children’s social care teams. Participatory approaches to research design, data collection and analysis are used to gain insights from young people, parents/carers and professionals about the impact of relocations on safety. Professionals and young people report a range of harms implicated…
Already doing the work’: Social work, abolition and building the future from the present
Social work internationally is currently subject to debate. Some call for the abolition of social work, detailing legacies of harm, inadequate practices and theoretical limitations. Central to abolitionist thought is the tradition of community work to build alternative futures in the present, an area currently receiving less attention. This article adopts an auto-ethnographic method, drawing on the authors’ experiences of social work in the UK – …
Covid-19: Changing fields of social work practice with children and young people
Drawing on the theoretical work of Wacquant, Bourdieu and Foucault, we interrogate how the COVID-19 pandemic has weaponised child and family social work practices through reinvigorated mechanisms of discipline and surveillance. We explore how social workers are caught in the struggle between enforcement and relational welfare support. We consider how the illusio of social work obscures power dynamics impacting children, young people and families …
Young people and “county lines”: A contextual and social account
Purpose This paper aims to present an analysis of a “county lines” safeguarding partnership in a large city region of England. A critical analysis of current literature and practice responses to “county lines” is followed by the presentation of an analytical framework that draws on three contextual and social theories of (child) harm. This framework is applied to the partnership work to ask: are the interconnected conditions of criminal exploitat…
Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm
This paper critically reflects on the role of surveillance and trusted relationships in social work in England and Wales. It explores the characteristics of relationships of trust and relationships of surveillance and asks how these approaches apply to emerging policy and practices responses to extra-familial forms of harm (EFH). Five bodies of research that explore safeguarding responses across a range of public bodies are drawn on to present an…
Social working without borders: Challenging privatisation and complicity with the hostile environment
Social Workers Without Borders is a UK social work charity established in early 2016 to provide direct support to migrant children and families, and to scaffold this through the development of social work education and activism reflecting the principles of human rights and social justice. Reflecting on Social Workers Without Borders’ model of practice, Lauren Wroe, co-founder and trustee of Social Workers Without Borders, discusses the charity’s …
It really is about telling people who asylum seekers really are, because we are human like anybody else’: Negotiating victimhood in refugee advocacy work
This article explores how refugee advocates, and refugees themselves, manage social hostility towards refugees and migrants through their talk, specifically how this hostility is managed through orientation to the category ‘victim’. Case studies from the publicity materials of four advocacy organisations, as well as the ‘internal’ talk of their staff, volunteers and beneficiaries collected via Narrative Biographical Interviews, are analysed using…
County lines: Racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain
Government policies relating to dealers in 'county lines' drugs trafficking cases have been welcomed as a departure from punitive approaches to drugs and 'gang' policing, in that those on the bottom rung of the drugs economy of heroin and crack cocaine are no longer treated as criminals but as potential victims and 'modern slaves' in need of protection. However, our research suggests not so much a radical break with previous modes of policing as …
Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm
This paper critically reflects on the role of surveillance and trusted relationships in social work in England and Wales. It explores the characteristics of relationships of trust and relationships of surveillance and asks how these approaches apply to emerging policy and practices responses to extra-familial forms of harm (EFH). Five bodies of research that explore safeguarding responses across a range of public bodies are drawn on to present an…
It really is about telling people who asylum seekers really are, because we are human like anybody else’: Negotiating victimhood in refugee advocacy work
This article explores how refugee advocates, and refugees themselves, manage social hostility towards refugees and migrants through their talk, specifically how this hostility is managed through orientation to the category ‘victim’. Case studies from the publicity materials of four advocacy organisations, as well as the ‘internal’ talk of their staff, volunteers and beneficiaries collected via Narrative Biographical Interviews, are analysed using…
Young people and “county lines”: A contextual and social account
Purpose This paper aims to present an analysis of a “county lines” safeguarding partnership in a large city region of England. A critical analysis of current literature and practice responses to “county lines” is followed by the presentation of an analytical framework that draws on three contextual and social theories of (child) harm. This framework is applied to the partnership work to ask: are the interconnected conditions of criminal exploitat…
When Helping Hurts: A Zemiological Analysis of a Child Protection Intervention in Adolescence—Implications for a Critical Child Protection Studies
This paper presents data from a three-year, mixed methods study into the rate and impact of ‘relocation’ as a response to extra-familial harm in adolescence by children’s social care teams. Participatory approaches to research design, data collection and analysis are used to gain insights from young people, parents/carers and professionals about the impact of relocations on safety. Professionals and young people report a range of harms implicated…
Already doing the work’: Social work, abolition and building the future from the present
Social work internationally is currently subject to debate. Some call for the abolition of social work, detailing legacies of harm, inadequate practices and theoretical limitations. Central to abolitionist thought is the tradition of community work to build alternative futures in the present, an area currently receiving less attention. This article adopts an auto-ethnographic method, drawing on the authors’ experiences of social work in the UK – …
Social working without borders: Challenging privatisation and complicity with the hostile environment
Social Workers Without Borders is a UK social work charity established in early 2016 to provide direct support to migrant children and families, and to scaffold this through the development of social work education and activism reflecting the principles of human rights and social justice. Reflecting on Social Workers Without Borders’ model of practice, Lauren Wroe, co-founder and trustee of Social Workers Without Borders, discusses the charity’s …
Social Care Responses to Children who Experience Criminal Exploitation and Violence: The Conditions for a Welfare Response
This article explores social care responses to children experiencing criminal exploitation and violence. The article draws on data from two children’s social care departments in England applying a Contextual Safeguarding framework to extra-familial harm. Using evidence from interviews, focus groups, meeting observations and two peer assessments, the article explores factors that facilitate welfare approaches when children commit crimes and those …
Race, class and the weaponisation of child safety
As we sit down to write this editorial, the ‘debate’ about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ in the UK has once again hit global news stories and is circulating in the corridors of Parliament. This is a decades-spanning debacle whereby far-right groups, conservative politicians and apparently now billionaire Big Tech moguls (Sky News, 2025) highlight the exclusive (and falsified) role of Pakistani men in the organised group-based sexual exploitation of work…
Relationship of trust and surveillance in the first national piloting of Contextual Safeguarding in England and Wales
This article analyses data collected as part of a three-year study supporting the implementation of Contextual Safeguarding across nine children’s social care teams in England and Wales as an approach to safeguarding adolescents at risk of harm in ‘extra-familial’ contexts. The article asks to what extent the first national testing of Contextual Safeguarding features relationships of trust or relationships of surveillance with young people, famil…
Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home: What Do We Learn When We Ask about Safety
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…
Covid-19: Changing fields of social work practice with children and young people
Drawing on the theoretical work of Wacquant, Bourdieu and Foucault, we interrogate how the COVID-19 pandemic has weaponised child and family social work practices through reinvigorated mechanisms of discipline and surveillance. We explore how social workers are caught in the struggle between enforcement and relational welfare support. We consider how the illusio of social work obscures power dynamics impacting children, young people and families …
It really is about telling people who asylum seekers really are, because we are human like anybody else’: Negotiating victimhood in refugee advocacy work
This article explores how refugee advocates, and refugees themselves, manage social hostility towards refugees and migrants through their talk, specifically how this hostility is managed through orientation to the category ‘victim’. Case studies from the publicity materials of four advocacy organisations, as well as the ‘internal’ talk of their staff, volunteers and beneficiaries collected via Narrative Biographical Interviews, are analysed using…
Social working without borders: Challenging privatisation and complicity with the hostile environment
Social Workers Without Borders is a UK social work charity established in early 2016 to provide direct support to migrant children and families, and to scaffold this through the development of social work education and activism reflecting the principles of human rights and social justice. Reflecting on Social Workers Without Borders’ model of practice, Lauren Wroe, co-founder and trustee of Social Workers Without Borders, discusses the charity’s …
Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm
This paper critically reflects on the role of surveillance and trusted relationships in social work in England and Wales. It explores the characteristics of relationships of trust and relationships of surveillance and asks how these approaches apply to emerging policy and practices responses to extra-familial forms of harm (EFH). Five bodies of research that explore safeguarding responses across a range of public bodies are drawn on to present an…
Covid-19: Changing fields of social work practice with children and young people
Drawing on the theoretical work of Wacquant, Bourdieu and Foucault, we interrogate how the COVID-19 pandemic has weaponised child and family social work practices through reinvigorated mechanisms of discipline and surveillance. We explore how social workers are caught in the struggle between enforcement and relational welfare support. We consider how the illusio of social work obscures power dynamics impacting children, young people and families …
Young people and “county lines”: A contextual and social account
Purpose This paper aims to present an analysis of a “county lines” safeguarding partnership in a large city region of England. A critical analysis of current literature and practice responses to “county lines” is followed by the presentation of an analytical framework that draws on three contextual and social theories of (child) harm. This framework is applied to the partnership work to ask: are the interconnected conditions of criminal exploitat…
When Helping Hurts: A Zemiological Analysis of a Child Protection Intervention in Adolescence—Implications for a Critical Child Protection Studies
This paper presents data from a three-year, mixed methods study into the rate and impact of ‘relocation’ as a response to extra-familial harm in adolescence by children’s social care teams. Participatory approaches to research design, data collection and analysis are used to gain insights from young people, parents/carers and professionals about the impact of relocations on safety. Professionals and young people report a range of harms implicated…
Already doing the work’: Social work, abolition and building the future from the present
Social work internationally is currently subject to debate. Some call for the abolition of social work, detailing legacies of harm, inadequate practices and theoretical limitations. Central to abolitionist thought is the tradition of community work to build alternative futures in the present, an area currently receiving less attention. This article adopts an auto-ethnographic method, drawing on the authors’ experiences of social work in the UK – …
Social Care Responses to Children who Experience Criminal Exploitation and Violence: The Conditions for a Welfare Response
This article explores social care responses to children experiencing criminal exploitation and violence. The article draws on data from two children’s social care departments in England applying a Contextual Safeguarding framework to extra-familial harm. Using evidence from interviews, focus groups, meeting observations and two peer assessments, the article explores factors that facilitate welfare approaches when children commit crimes and those …
Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home: What Do We Learn When We Ask about Safety
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’: The Costs of Out-of-Area Placements as a Response to Extra-Familial Risk/Harm
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…
Relationship of trust and surveillance in the first national piloting of Contextual Safeguarding in England and Wales
This article analyses data collected as part of a three-year study supporting the implementation of Contextual Safeguarding across nine children’s social care teams in England and Wales as an approach to safeguarding adolescents at risk of harm in ‘extra-familial’ contexts. The article asks to what extent the first national testing of Contextual Safeguarding features relationships of trust or relationships of surveillance with young people, famil…
County lines: Racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain
Government policies relating to dealers in 'county lines' drugs trafficking cases have been welcomed as a departure from punitive approaches to drugs and 'gang' policing, in that those on the bottom rung of the drugs economy of heroin and crack cocaine are no longer treated as criminals but as potential victims and 'modern slaves' in need of protection. However, our research suggests not so much a radical break with previous modes of policing as …
Contextual safeguarding across borders’: Learning about the ‘contextual safeguarding’ framework and youth ‘extra-familial’ harm in Germany
Towards safety: The enablers and barriers that create safety in and around youth work organisations
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…
Harm, safety and belonging: Exploring ‘contextual safeguarding’ with refugee youth in Europe
Race, class and the weaponisation of child safety
As we sit down to write this editorial, the ‘debate’ about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ in the UK has once again hit global news stories and is circulating in the corridors of Parliament. This is a decades-spanning debacle whereby far-right groups, conservative politicians and apparently now billionaire Big Tech moguls (Sky News, 2025) highlight the exclusive (and falsified) role of Pakistani men in the organised group-based sexual exploitation of work…
Why ‘Common-Sense’ is Complicated: Unearthing the Cultural Facilitators of Contextual Safeguarding Structures
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…
Political science (15 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (12 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Harm (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Child Abuse and Trauma (10 works) · Public relations (10 works)