Background
ASIL2 has been commissioned by the London Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP) and the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services (ALDCS). ASIL2 has been developed by a project team at London Innovation & Improvement Alliance (LIIA) and overseen by the London Adolescent Safeguarding Oversight Board (LASOB).
Who are young Londoners?
ASIL2 uses the term young Londoners to refer to children and young adults between the ages of about 10 and about 24.
We recognise adolescence as a distinct and significant stage of human development, rather than a fixed age range. Following the latest research in adolescent development (Orben, Tomova & Blakemore, 2020) we understand adolescence to begin at around age 10, and to continue to at least age 24
What is an Adolescent Safeguarding system?
ASIL2 defines an adolescent safeguarding system as follows:
An adolescent safeguarding system is a purposeful multi-agency, multi-disciplinary collaboration, carried out at the levels of direct practice, operational management, strategic leadership, and always in partnership with children (0-17), young Londoners (18-24), their families and communities.
The uniting ambitions of adolescent safeguarding systems in London are:
- to create safety and promote welfare with young Londoners, their families and communities, especially those who are affected by risks, harms, abuse, and structural inequalities, and
- to nurture the agency and wellbeing of young Londoners, and thereby promote their flourishing.
Risks, harms and abuse during childhood and adolescence arise both within and outside the family home and include the harms that arise from racism, poverty, and other types of structural inequality.
What is the purpose of ASIL2?
As with the first ASIL handbook, ASIL2 is a framework for collaboration.
We believe that for young Londoners to flourish, we must collaborate to create conducive conditions that sustain trusted relationships at the levels of people, practice, organisations, sectors, multi-agency and multi-disciplinary partnerships, and in regional and national policy systems.
The aim of this multi-level approach for collaboration is to create better understanding of how each system level affects the others.
For example, practice is influenced by organisational culture and policies. At the same time, learning from direct practice is helping us to evolve policies at the organisational, regional and national system levels.
In summary, ASIL 2:
- Provides a solid foundation of policy and practice that aims to create consistency and coherence in adolescent safeguarding systems in local places across the region.
- Does not offer an exhaustive or prescriptive set of procedures, but rather aims to guide leaders, managers and practitioners from across sectors, by offering examples of promising policy, strategy and practice, from around the London region.
- Will hopefully stimulate strategic thinking and collective action in local area systems in a way that creates conducive conditions for positive change to achieve the uniting ambitions [LINK], aligned with the national multi-agency practice principles for Tackling Child Exploitation.
- In turn, we hope that strategic thinking and collective action stimulated by ASIL2 can contribute to positive change across adolescent safeguarding systems at both regional and national levels.
ASIL2 is grounded in relational practice
ASIL2 poses relational practice as the keystone for effective adolescent safeguarding systems, and:
- Understands adolescence to begin at around age 10, and to continue to at least age 24.
- Describes an adolescent safeguarding systems as a purposeful multi-agency, multi-disciplinary collaboration, carried out at the levels of direct practice, operational management, strategic leadership, and always in partnership with children (0-17), young Londoners (18-24), their families and communities.
- Defines the two ambitions of an adolescent safeguarding system in London as:
- (1) to create safety and promote welfare with young Londoners, their families and communities, especially those who are affected by risks, harms, abuse, and structural inequalities, and
- (2) to nurture young Londoners’ wellbeing and agency, without placing responsibility on children and young Londoners for reducing risks and harms in their lives.
- Recognises the vital influence of non-professional relationships in the lives and flourishing of young Londoners and for adolescent safeguarding policy and practice.
- Extends the scope of adolescent safeguarding system beyond any one organisation or sector, emphasising quality of relationships and collaboration within multi-agency partnerships.
- Underlines the interrelatedness and interdependency of all different parts of the adolescent safeguarding system to one another.
- Calls attention to the conditions and causes of harm both within and beyond the family and home, including harm arising from structural inequalities, such as racism or poverty.
- Recognises the complex and changing nature of adolescent safeguarding, which requires curiosity and flexibility from leaders, managers, and practitioners.
- Requires leaders in adolescent safeguarding systems to keep reaching across boundaries of agency, discipline, sector and local area to forge and sustain collaboration, and to create conducive conditions for effective policy and practice – and for young Londoners – to flourish.
Building on learning to create Adolescent Safeguarding in London Practice Framework 2.0
Each local area of London has its own offer for young people and its own set of safeguarding arrangements. Development of a strategic approach to adolescent safeguarding practice is owned and coordinated by each local area, and at the same time benefits from being coherent with pan-London policy, informed by evidence, and by the regional and national contexts. See LINK For more information on regional and national policy developments from 2022 to 2024.
In autumn 2022, LIIA shared the first edition of ASIL, which included nine principles for practice, drawn from safeguarding strategies developed by local safeguarding partnerships across the London region.
Since autumn 2023, LIIA has sought to learn about opportunities and challenges of implementing the principles in local adolescent safeguarding systems. We learned about the experiences of practitioners, leaders and managers, through conversations with those working in adolescent safeguarding systems across the region.
We held these conversations with the aim of developing an understanding of how the adolescent safeguarding principles can support effective practice. For us, effective practice means that multi-agency collaboration improves the offer for young Londoners, creates safety from harm with them, and nurtures their agency and wellbeing, so that young Londoners flourish.
We conducted a regional survey, two sub-regional workshops, several local focus sessions and interviews to hear about local adolescent safeguarding practice and strategy. We connected with practitioners, managers and leaders from across the region, and across all partners (see LINK for more about ASIL2 consultation during 2023 and 2024).
We also conducted focus sessions with young people from Young People Action Group and the Greater London Authority Peer Outreach workers. The views of young Londoners and of adolescent safeguarding practitioners, managers and leaders are included throughout the articles in the ASILs framework.
While ASIL2 is rightly focused on the experiences of young Londoners and their families, we invited practitioners in different roles and levels, and from different disciplines to consider how they can apply place-based, contextual, and transitional approaches to create safety, and to nurture agency and wellbeing.
Colin Michel, the LIIA project team and LASOB, are hugely grateful to everyone who gave their time and shared their learning to participate in the development of ASIL2. [I have kept a record. We can create a thank you list of all who participated for the link doc]
Multi-agency Practice Principles
ASIL2 is underpinned by the Multi-agency Practice Principles for responding to child exploitation and extra-familial harm. These principles were co-devised in 2022 by Research in Practice, the University of Bedfordshire and The Children’s Society.
Multi-agency Practice Principles for responding to child exploitation and extra-familial harm
National guidance designed by the Tackling Child Exploitation programme
The Practice Principles are evidence-informed, which means they draw on the expertise of children, young people, parents, carers and professionals and on what we know from research.
Taken together, they promote a holistic response to child exploitation and extra-familial harm that recognises the potential presence of different and multiple forms of harm in children and young people’s lives.
Those affected by child exploitation and / or extra-familial harm are due the same rights and protections as other children and young people, so the principles will be relevant to work with all children and young people.
We know, however, that for children and young people experiencing these forms of harm, the complexities and presentation of child exploitation and / or extra-familial harm can mean that responses sometimes undermine the realisation of these rights.
To support partnerships, agencies and professionals to shape how they respond to this context, the Practice Principles:
Offer a compass to help navigate a complex landscape, rather than a detailed map for every individual situation, as no one set of circumstances or local context is the same as another, and there is no single answer for how to respond to these types of harms.
Are high-level to support a coherent approach across local partnerships and to support multi-agency working.
Focus on behaviours and culture to help direct work with children, young people, and families, operational management and strategic leadership to align.
Complement existing and forthcoming guidance and are broad enough to sustain utility over time and to fit within diverse local working arrangements.
The eight Practice Principles are interrelated and interdependent. Taken together, they can guide useful partnership behaviours to help support a coherent, collaborative and creative local response to child exploitation and extra-familial harm.
ASIL2 and the Practice Principles
Each principle has links to further guidance on how it can be applied in adolescent safeguarding systems in London, and links to examples from local places to illustrate the principles in practice.
Each guidance note is held in a separate document. We have designed ASIL2 in this way in response to feedback from practitioners that bitesize guidance is easier to navigate and digest than one handbook.
[LINK: ASIL2 can also be downloaded as one PDF].
The principles are dynamic and flexible and have not been designed as a model. While each principle is accompanied by examples and tools to apply in practice, they do not prescribe specific solutions. The intention is to support a coordinated and coherent approach to adolescent safeguarding across the London region, while recognising that local places have different needs.
References for introduction and principles
Orben A, Tomova L, Blakemore SJ. The effects of social deprivation on adolescent development and mental health. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2020 Aug;4(8):634-640. doi: 10.1016/S2352-4642(20)30186-3. Epub 2020 Jun 12. PMID: 32540024; PMCID: PMC7292584.