TY - JOUR
T1 - Child protection and family support
T2 - Experiences in a seaside resort
AU - El-Hoss, Thomas
AU - Thomas, Felicity
AU - Gradinger, Felix
AU - Hughes, Ms Susanne
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors
PY - 2024/1
Y1 - 2024/1
N2 - Effective Early Help services are key to halting rising rates of children in care in the UK. Yet despite family support and child welfare interventions being unequally distributed across the country, the role of ‘place’ has received limited attention in the children's social care arena. This paper examines the connections between coastal challenges, Early Help and child welfare interventions, drawing on embedded research undertaken within a Local Authority on England's coast with elevated levels of children in care. We focus on families’ experiences raising children in a seaside resort area as well as professionals’ perspectives on the place-based challenges faced delivering effective and accessible Early Help support. The study generated data from ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups with local parents/carers (n = 57), service managers and frontline professionals (n = 14), and the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector (n = 22). The findings highlight how the socio-economic challenges associated with many seaside resort areas, including housing pressures, a seasonal and low-wage economy, and the transience of the population, present difficulties for parents/carers in raising and supporting their children. For professionals delivering Early Help, high levels of housing instability, elevated inward migration, resource constraints and challenges around recruitment and retention presented challenges to delivering services. This paper recommends increased emphasis in regulation and resourcing around family support that considers the spatial and geographic dynamics that influence the incidence, structuring, and experiences of child and family welfare.
AB - Effective Early Help services are key to halting rising rates of children in care in the UK. Yet despite family support and child welfare interventions being unequally distributed across the country, the role of ‘place’ has received limited attention in the children's social care arena. This paper examines the connections between coastal challenges, Early Help and child welfare interventions, drawing on embedded research undertaken within a Local Authority on England's coast with elevated levels of children in care. We focus on families’ experiences raising children in a seaside resort area as well as professionals’ perspectives on the place-based challenges faced delivering effective and accessible Early Help support. The study generated data from ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups with local parents/carers (n = 57), service managers and frontline professionals (n = 14), and the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector (n = 22). The findings highlight how the socio-economic challenges associated with many seaside resort areas, including housing pressures, a seasonal and low-wage economy, and the transience of the population, present difficulties for parents/carers in raising and supporting their children. For professionals delivering Early Help, high levels of housing instability, elevated inward migration, resource constraints and challenges around recruitment and retention presented challenges to delivering services. This paper recommends increased emphasis in regulation and resourcing around family support that considers the spatial and geographic dynamics that influence the incidence, structuring, and experiences of child and family welfare.
KW - Child welfare
KW - Coastal socio-economic deprivation
KW - Early Help
KW - Embedded research
KW - Seaside resorts
KW - Social determinants
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85182569243&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.103943
DO - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.103943
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85182569243
SN - 0016-7185
VL - 148
JO - Geoforum
JF - Geoforum
M1 - 103943
ER -