Critical Approaches to Safeguarding

Join us for a morning exploring critical approaches to safeguarding, we will discuss concepts and community resources together.
About this Event

How do we keep young people and vulnerable adults safe when state systems can often cause more violence or harm to oppressed people?

This event will bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss concepts and experiences related to safeguarding in research and/or practice through presentations and structured discussions.

We will explore social science concepts related to abolition, grievable lives, and epistemic violence, as well as community-based approaches and resources for safeguarding children and young people.

We want to use this opportunity of being together to read a section of the Radical Safeguarding Workbook. The authors of this workbook note that they “created this resource because we know that ‘safeguarding’ often actively causes harm to the most marginalised young people, particularly young people of colour, and that ‘safeguarding’ training and structures often leave practitioners feeling fearful, lacking in agency and resigned to responding in ways that they know will cause young people and their families further harm”.

This event will take place in the Old Pathology Museum (room 1.36), Garrod Building, QMUL Whitechapel Campus.

This event is organised by:

• Richard Roach- Grime artist- youth worker- Researcher is an east londoner that is interested in the progress, development and safety of all people but especially young people. Previous work involves working with those entrenched in gang violence, community engagement, cohesion, and violence reduction.
• Dr Anish Chhibber is an untenured abolition geographer engaged in grassroots organising, facilitation and research against and beyond racialised state violence. They see policing, prisons and borders as failed carceral solutions to entrenched social problems (such as interpersonal violence, poverty, state neglect and systemic inequalities) that disappear people not problems. Anish is a Research Assistant at QMUL cofacilitating youth-led research on violence and mental health.

• Heather McMullen is a Senior Lecturer in Global Public Health. Her background is in sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice and feminist organisations. Much of her work is now focussed on young people’s health and rights, community-based models of care, and topics related to violence affecting young people.

• Elinor Whittle is a NTU funded Postgraduate researcher at Nottingham Trent University, within the Social Work, Care and Community Department. Elinor's research is situated in the field of Critical Youth Studies. Her PhD thesis, Creative Arts Youth Work: Investigating a distinct educational practice, explores the intersection of arts and youth work pedagogies. She is the Research Assistant (Health and Community) at Queen Mary University London. She is an experienced Creative Youth Worker, Facilitator and Creative Producer, who specialises in Theatre, Visual Arts and SEND provision.
• Mariana W. Steffen is completing her PhD at the Youth Resilience Unit, Queen Mary University of London, where her research focuses on social prescribing for children and young people’s mental health. She is also a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Integrated Care at the Global Public Health Unit (QMUL) and Co-Director Designate of People’s Palace Projects at the School of the Arts (QMUL).