Young people negotiating intra-and extra familial harm and safety: social and holistic approaches

Abstract

This chapter provides a holistic and structurally informed framework for understanding the intersections between intra-familial and extra-familial harm in adolescence. It proposes this contextual, social and structural understanding of child harm as a way to interpret and respond to young peoples’ experiences of multiple forms of harms in their families and beyond. Building upon poverty aware, contextual and 'social models' of social work, it considers the need for holistic service responses that acknowledge and alleviate the structural pressures on families and young people. It challenges individualised social work approaches that ask individuals to change as opposed to social work approaches that embrace the impact of social and structural inequalities. Rather than understanding this focus on ‘context’ as a new voice in the room, the chapter draws on Black feminist scholarship that outlines how context might be used in social work.