Creative art-based technologies for interagency working together for
      safeguarding children and young people
Creators: name: Carlick, Sarah
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2018
Subjects: children and young people
Technologies
safeguarding children
Applications
Multi-agency safeguarding hubs
child protection
Socio-Technical Change
technology
design
digital platform

description: Children themselves rarely engage directly with the child protection
      system unless they are already referred into the system by a third party
      adult. New technologies have enabled children to communicate in different
      ways than previously. A guiding question for this thesis is whether one
      type of technology access, that of an application or ‘app’, could also
      facilitate children’s direct access for advice, help and response from the
      child protection system in the UK. The current UK policy emphasis on
      child-focused systems and outcomes (Munro, 2011) forms a background to
      this thesis, which aims to identify the work required to co-produce new
      ways of working at the front door of child protection to extend the
      current socio-technical framework to improve outcomes for children. Past
      and present social and political developments in UK child protection and
      early help, a data review of smart phone apps relating to managing risk
      and safeguarding, and a comparison of the use of technology in related
      settings provide an overview of the context within which socio-technical
      change can occur. 
      
      The underpinning methodology recognises a crucial factor in the successful
      design and implementation of socio-technical change: that any proposed
      alteration to existing ways of working must also be adopted by a range of
      gatekeepers to the system, including practitioners in social work, the
      police, health and education, who may identify barriers and present
      challenges to implementation. Two separate weeks of ethnographic
      observation were focused on the use of technology in information
      management in a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH). Data on the child’s
      perspective on technology and app design for safeguarding was collected
      through school-based workshops. A co-produced design of an application is
      proposed as a way of sharing information and communication pathways for
      multi-agency professionals and children/young people. 
      
      The project offers new ideas for promoting a child-centred approach to
      safeguarding. In doing so, it proposes the design principles of a digital
      platform consisting of a smart phone application. The proposed application
      is an extension of the traditional early intervention child protection
      discourse that will capture children’s social media conversations and
      stories connected to keeping themselves safe. It will also include
      educational ‘stay safe’ age-appropriate games and twenty-four/seven access
      to multi-agency advice and guidance. Challenges for app adoption are
      changes to the police communication departments and the creation of a
      localised children’s MASH to provide digital responses for self-referrals.