ABSTRACT
The author uses this chapter to explain how child protection systems became increasingly capable of seeing Malik and Sara as in need of support – but were no more capable of taking action. Referencing national policy guidelines, media coverage, and key inquiries of the 21st Century, Firmin evidences the assumptions that were made about what a child protection system could do in response to extra-familial harm – and the difficulties that emerged when this proved erroneous. She maps out three dominant pathways that young people travelled when identified by professionals as experiencing extra-familial abuse, and use these to argue that a fourth route was needed to respond to the harm in question. Despite popular belief, seeing extra-familial harm as abuse and saying it was such did not result in sufficient protections for the young people affected.
