The emerging concept of extra-familial risks and harms

This chapter sets the context for the rest of the book by tracing the increased awareness over the past 15 years of safeguarding risks and harms experienced by young people beyond the home and family, and how they have been responded to at a policy and service level both within the UK and internationally. The extra-familial risks and harms that are included within this umbrella concept are clarified. The chapter starts with an exploration of the gradual conceptual shift from such notions as ‘child prostitution’ to ‘child sexual exploitation’ and introduces the protection–participation dichotomy that is a key locus of professional struggle. The chapter moves on to explore the ethical and conceptual complexities engendered by a dawning recognition of child criminal exploitation. Attention is given to how challenges of safeguarding young people during adolescence are shared across various countries in the Global North, despite current divergent definitions of the harms faced by this group and how social work responses to them have been configured. The chapter closes by detailing the structure of the book and the contribution it will make to policy and service development in the UK and beyond.