ABSTRACT
Firmin opens Part 3 of this book by detailing the key participant groups involved in testing Contextual Safeguarding, the tools used to do so and the approach the research team took to capturing learning. This chapter provides an in-depth account of the different ethnographic and broader qualitative techniques used to both document and co-produce the system change, points to where work remains in trial and what limitations we have encountered thus far. The chapter closes by introducing the reader to one of the first findings to emerge during test phase: the need to see contextual change at two levels of system design. At level 1, there was increased reference to context in direct work with children and families, and at level 2 practitioners were designing techniques to assess and change peer group, school, and neighbourhood locations where young people had experienced abuse. The two chapters that follow are respectively dedicated to each of those levels of practice.
