ABSTRACT
To facilitate testing of the Contextual Safeguarding framework in children’s services departments, we needed a national policy framework that would permit it. In this chapter the author outlines elements of England’s policy landscape that were most at odds with the ambitions of Contextual Safeguarding and how these were adapted in 2017–2018 to create an environment more hospitable to the approach. Firmin details sentence changes that altered the tone of safeguarding guidance in England, and how prior to this the limited parameters of practice had largely been aligned to the legislative framework that governed them. This chapter will close by summarising the foundations that were in place to test-run Contextual Safeguarding approaches, before Part 2 of the book comes to a close.
