Skip to search boxSkip to navigationSkip to main content

The 'virtuous' cycle of parental empowerment: partnering with parents to safeguard young people from exploitation

  • Kristine Hickle
    ,
  • Lucie Shuker
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

When young people are sexually exploited, parents and professionals alike can feel uncertain about how to balance the need to protect the child's rights to agency and autonomy while also reducing the risk of harm. Despite the shared interest in keeping young people safe, there remains a substantial gap in the research literature about how practitioners engage parents to increase capacity to safeguard their children, particularly within the context of a child protection system ill-equipped to address forms of extrafamilial harm such as child sexual exploitation. This paper aims to contribute to understanding how professionals effectively engage parents by drawing upon evidence from research evaluations of two programmes in rural/urban North and urban South locations in England, both providing specialist support to parents/carers of sexually exploited children and young people. Through interrogating elements of effective support work evidenced across both programmes, a set of emerging key themes are presented, proposing that parent support and engagement can create a ‘virtuous’ cycle, whereby families are strengthened and are better able to protect their children from sexual exploitation and other forms of extrafamilial harm.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 527-536 (10 pages)

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Child and Family Social Work (Volume 28, Issue 2)

Publication milestones

  • Accepted/In press - 23/10/2022
  • Published - 18/11/2022

Publication status

Published - 18/11/2022

ISSN

1356-7500

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/625606
  • Scopus: 85143429510

Access to documents

Publication metrics

Metrics

Download statistics
Download count
1