If you want to help us, you need to hear us

Contextual Safeguarding (CS) offers a framework where participation is crucial to keeping young people safe in their different contexts beyond their homes. Moving from this conceptual framework to the practical creation of a system that is meaningfully informed by young people, however, presents a number of research and ethical challenges. The creation and implementation of CS systems within local authorities in England and Wales provides an opportunity to explore methodological considerations of consulting with young people on initial system design. In this chapter, we will reflect on the current child protection system and the challenges it presents when embedding participatory practices and developing CS approaches that are informed by the views of young people. Reflecting on commenced efforts to adopt a CS approach within local authorities as part of the Scale-Up Project and drawing on research into the role of participation as protection, we will discuss a number of considerations for carrying out consultative research with young people and introduce some of the emerging themes from young people who participated in the Scale-Up research areas, which, we argue, are essential for developing CS, and advocate for meaningful participatory practice in child protection systems.