Addressing the specific dynamics of risk and harm

The evidence review underpinning this book highlighted the need for service design and interventions to engage with the specific dynamics of extra-familial risks and harms. The studies identified in this review reported a ‘poor fit’ between system responses and the nature of extra-familial risks and harms in various ways. The review analysis identified three key recommendations related to these shortcomings, which are outlined in this chapter. First, social care systems and services currently centring around familial (largely parenting) assessment and intervention need to broaden their scope to include peer, school and community contexts where EFRH occurs. Second, responses to extra-familial risks and harms need to be welfare, rather than criminal justice, oriented, including for young people who straddle both victim and perpetrator identities (or have committed offences in the context of being victimised through extra-familial risks and harms). Finally, services need to recognise and respond to the gains (material and otherwise) that young people may experience when caught up in extra-familial risks and harms. This chapter explores what each of these recommendations suggests about the dynamics of extra-familial risks and harms and the implications for the design of future social care responses.