Value-informed approaches to peer mapping and assessment: learning from test sites

Peer relationships are relevant to safeguarding young people affected by extra-familial harm (EFH) and, in recent years, local authorities have become increasingly interested in using peer mapping and peer assessment to support their safeguarding responses. This chapter explores some of the themes which have surfaced while reflecting on the developing practice with peers being piloted by the Contextual Safeguarding (CS) test sites. We foreground the views of young people to emphasise the importance of engaging and working alongside them in developing this practice. We use this to outline some potential benefits and risks identified in the data of safeguarding work with peer groups and reflect on what could happen when these practices are employed without the application of the values. The chapter explores three connected themes which have emerged from the data to help consider priorities for developing peer mapping and assessments. They include leading with a child welfare rather than crime detection lens, building relationships of trust over relationships of surveillance and moving beyond mapping to understand and respond to the social conditions of abuse. We contemplate the notion that how we undertake work with peers is as important as what we do.