Safer Connections, Contextual Safeguarding and Extrafamilial Harm

Safer Connections – Bristol’s Specialist Harm Outside the Home Team

Safer Connections is Bristol’s citywide specialist team working to safeguard young people from harm outside the home. We respond to risks that emerge in peer groups, schools, public spaces, and online environments, places where traditional safeguarding frameworks may struggle to intervene effectively. Our work is rooted in the belief that safety is shaped by context, and that protecting children means understanding and influencing the environments around them.

Created in response to the Thematic Child Safeguarding Practice Review into Serious Youth Violence, Safer Connections was designed to address the fragmentation identified across services. We offer a coherent, joined-up response to Harm Outside the Home (HOtH), bridging statutory and non-statutory systems, supporting both individual children and wider contexts, and driving strategic change across Bristol. Our team combines direct work with young people, partnership coordination, and system leadership, ensuring that every concern is met with informed, proportionate, and collaborative action.

At the heart of our approach is a commitment to relational practice, trauma-informed support, and children’s rights. We work alongside families, professionals, and communities to build protective networks, disrupt harm, and create safer spaces for young people to thrive.

Understanding Harm Outside the Home

Harm Outside the Home — also known as extra-familial harm — refers to the risks and abuse children may face beyond their families. These harms are often complex, overlapping, and rooted in social conditions. They include:

• Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE): coercion into sexual activity in exchange for something of value.
• Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE): manipulation into criminal activity, including County Lines.
• Peer-on-peer abuse: bullying, sexual violence, or physical harm between children.
• Online exploitation: abuse facilitated through digital platforms.
• Modern slavery and trafficking
• Radicalisation and extremism
• Forced labour

These harms often occur in contexts (such as schools, parks, streets, online spaces) where traditional safeguarding systems struggle to intervene. Children may be groomed into harmful relationships that feel like belonging. The harm may be normalised, hidden, or misunderstood.

The Bristol Harm Outside the Home Strategy 2025–2030 recognises that safeguarding must evolve to meet these challenges. It calls for a whole-system, anti-racist, trauma-informed approach that centres young people’s lived experiences and builds safety in the places they inhabit. 

Why ‘Safer Connections’?

The Thematic Child Safeguarding Practice Review into Serious Youth Violence revealed a system that was skilled but fragmented. Young people were known to multiple services, yet responses lacked coherence, contextual understanding, and shared accountability. The review called for a whole-system shift—one that moves beyond siloed interventions and toward a joined-up, relational approach to safeguarding harm outside the home.

It identified four key areas for improvement:

• A Joined-Up Strategy for Harm Outside the Home (HOtH):
  The review highlighted the need for a strategic vision that connects responses to serious youth violence with wider forms of harm, including exploitation, peer group risk, and environmental vulnerability. This strategy must be rooted in shared purpose, coordinated disruption, and contextual safeguarding.
• Shared Plans Across Agencies:
  Children were often supported by multiple professionals working from different plans. The review called for unified, multi-agency planning that reflects the child’s lived experience and the contexts they navigate—ensuring that interventions are coherent, consistent, and child-centred.
• Stronger Education Inclusion:
  Schools were identified as both protective and vulnerable spaces. The review emphasised the need for stronger collaboration with education settings to address exclusion, persistent absence, and unmet needs—ensuring schools are supported to hold risk and contribute meaningfully to prevention.
• Better Use of Community Intelligence:
  The system lacked joined-up insight into the places, peer groups, and patterns of harm. The review called for improved triangulation of intelligence—bringing together professional knowledge, lived experience, and data to inform disruption and safeguarding.

Safer Connections was created to meet this need, not just as a team, but as a principle. The name reflects our core purpose: to build stronger, safer connections around young people. Whether through trusted relationships, joined-up planning, or community-based disruption, we work to connect the dots across systems, services, and spaces. We believe that safety is not just about protection, it’s about belonging, trust, and the strength of the networks that surround a child.

By bridging statutory and non-statutory services, supporting both individual children and wider contexts, and driving strategic change, Safer Connections offers a coherent, citywide response to harm outside the home.

Our Structure

Safer Connections sits within the First Assessment Service and consists of two core teams:

Children’s Practice Team

• Deputy Service Manager
• 4 Children’s Practice Leads (East Central, North, South, ThroughCare)
• 4 HOtH Specialist Keyworkers (direct work with children at medium-high risk)

Partnership Team

• 2 Partnership Leads (strategic oversight)
• 4 Partnership Advisors (operational partnership work)

Together, we deliver a whole-system response to HOtH, supporting both statutory and non-statutory services.

What We Do

Safer Connections delivers a citywide, multi-agency response to Harm Outside the Home (HOtH), supporting both individual children and the wider contexts in which harm occurs. Our work spans direct intervention, strategic coordination, and system development, with a focus on relationship-based practice, contextual safeguarding, and collaborative disruption.

1. Direct Work with Children and Young People

Our HOtH Specialist Keyworkers provide intensive, trauma-informed support to children at medium to high risk of harm outside the home. This includes:

• One-to-one relationship building with a trusted adult via a Specialist Keyworker who complement’s statutory safeguarding responses
• Supporting safety planning that is rooted in the child’s lived experience
• Peer group interventions where appropriate
• Joint working with social workers and lead professionals
• Contribution to statutory plans (CIN, CP, CLA) and contextual assessments

2. Partnership Support and System Coordination

Our Partnership Team works across agencies to strengthen Bristol’s whole-system response to HOtH. This includes:

• Consultations on individual cases, peer groups, or locations
• Peer and location mapping to understand patterns of harm
• Training and workshops for professionals and communities
• Support for complex strategy discussions
• Coordination of missing and pre-missing meetings
• Weapons and Drugs in Schools pathways
• Community engagement and project development
• Funding bids and targeted interventions aligned with the Violence Reduction Partnership Plan

We act as a key point of contact for professionals seeking guidance, resources, or access to the HOtH service.

3. Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) Framework

The MACE Framework is Bristol’s multi-agency mechanism for identifying, assessing, and responding to child exploitation and harm outside the home. It supports the work of Safer Connections by providing structured oversight, coordination, and strategic leadership across the city.

Pre-MACE (Neighbourhood-Focused)

• Monthly meetings for South, North, East Central, and Through Care
• Chaired jointly by locality DSMs and the DSM for Contextual Safeguarding
• Reviews individual plans and escalates children with persistent or escalating concerns
• Uses the VOLT framework: Victim(s), Offender(s), Location(s), Theme(s)

Operational MACE

• Monthly citywide panel chaired by senior leaders from FAS, HOtH, YJS, and Police
• Provides deep multi-agency analysis and oversight of risk reduction planning
• Tracks progress via a joint action log and supports disruption activity

Strategic MACE

• Quarterly meetings reporting to the Preventing Serious Violence Board
• Oversees strategic responses, complex group-based concerns, and system-wide data
• Coordinates cross-border safeguarding and system learning

MACE is not a substitute for statutory safeguarding processes. Referrals to First Response and strategy discussions remain the primary route for safeguarding children. MACE enhances these processes by enabling joined-up planning, contextual analysis, and disruption activity across agencies.

4. Referral Review and Non-Statutory Support

Safer Connections reviews all HOtH-related referrals into First Response, ensuring that children receive the right support at the right time. Where concerns do not meet statutory thresholds, we:

• Coordinate multi-agency responses
• Facilitate early intervention and prevention
• Support professionals to build contextual safety plans
• Offer reflective consultations and follow-up support

This ensures that no child falls through the gaps, and that every concern is met with proportionate, informed action.

Our Practice Principles

Safer Connections is guided by both local and national frameworks, including the TCE Multi-Agency Practice Principles These principles shape our culture, behaviours, and decision-making:

1. Put Children and Young People First

We centre their voices, needs, and rights. We listen, believe, and act in ways that build trust.

2. Challenge Inequality and Discrimination

We recognise how racism, poverty, and exclusion amplify vulnerability. We embed anti-racist practice and challenge bias at every level.

3. Respect Lived Experience

We value the expertise of children, families, and communities. Their insights shape our interventions and system design.

4. Be Strengths-Based and Relationship-Based

We build safety through connection. Trusted relationships are the foundation of recovery and resilience.

5. Respond to Trauma

We understand how trauma affects behaviour, relationships, and engagement. We meet children where they are, not where we expect them to be.

6. Be Curious and Evidence-Informed

We ask questions, seek patterns, and use data to inform action. We reflect, adapt, and learn continuously.

7. Partner with Parents and Carers

We work alongside families, not around them. We support them to understand harm and build safety together.

8. Create Safe Spaces and Places

We intervene in contexts — not just individuals. We work with schools, communities, and peer groups to make environments safer.

These principles are not just values — they are practice commitments. They guide our work with children, our collaboration with partners, and our strategic leadership across the city.

How Will We Know We're Making a Difference?

Safer Connections is committed to continuous learning, accountability, and impact. Our outcomes framework is grounded in both qualitative insight and systemic analysis, helping us understand what’s working, what needs to change, and where we can go further.

We measure our impact through:

• Monthly Internal Audits
  We conduct regular audits of Safer Connections’ work to identify both individual and systemic strengths, as well as barriers to earlier, more effective intervention. These reviews inform practice development, supervision, and citywide learning.
• Relational Feedback Loops
  We actively listen to our partners across social care, education, health, policing, and the community, to shape a service that is responsive, timely, and grounded in real-world need. Our model is built on trust, flexibility, and co-design.
• Upskilling the System
  We support the ongoing development of professionals across Bristol City Council and partner agencies, bringing the latest evidence-based learning into everyday practice. This includes training, reflective spaces, and access to tools that support contextual safeguarding.
• Developing a Risk Outside the Home (ROTH) Pathway
  We are leading the development of a robust ROTH pathway to ensure that contextual safeguarding responses are timely, proportionate, and effective. This pathway will provide clear guidance for professionals navigating complex extra-familial risk and ensure that children receive the right support at the right time.

How to Access Safer Connections

For Training, Consultation or Mapping Support:

📧 Email: saferconnections@bristol.gov.uk

For Referrals:

📞 Call First Response on 0117 903 6444
If there is evidence that a child is experiencing harm, this is the statutory route.

Requesting Safer Connections support does not replace your statutory duty to report safeguarding concerns.