Purpose Care-experienced children are markedly over-represented in youth justice systems internationally. Existing explanations tend to fall into two camps. The first holds that care-experienced children share the same background risk factors as justice-experienced children generally. The second holds that practices within the care environment, such as staff calling the police for behaviour that would be handled informally in a family home, propel children towards criminalisation. This paper offers an original, complementary explanation. Design/methodology/approach It draws on semi-structured interviews with 19 care-experienced children in North-West England who were also being supervised by 4 different youth offending teams in the same region. The analysis is informed by attachment theory and by Goffman’s work on stigma and total institutions. It also extends our earlier account of how residential care disrupts children’s identities (Day et al., 2023). Findings Drawing on children’s retrospective accounts, we argue that their responses to identity disruption and the ways in which staff and police react to those responses, form an under-recognised part of pathways into the youth justice system, alongside pre-care adversity and staff practice. We conceptualise children’s agency as situated and constrained by pre-care adversity, placement instability, racialisation and adultification, staff practices and policing, rather than as an independent cause of criminalisation. This has implications for how residential care providers, social workers and youth justice practitioners understand and respond to behaviour that is perceived as challenging. Practical implications The findings have implications for how residential care providers, social workers and youth justice practitioners understand and respond to behaviour that is perceived as challenging. Originality/value The paper’s principal contribution is the identity-disruption response typology, a five-part typology of how children actively respond to stigmatising and depersonalising experiences in residential care. The five responses are reacting to the unfairness of care, reinforcing stigmatised identities, defending pre-care identities, reinforcing pre-care identities and constructing new identities organised around status and protection. The typology connects children’s pre-care experiences, residential-care practices and criminalisation.
Purpose This study aims to examine whether responses to Community Relations, Equality and Diversity (CRED) activities and exposure to bullying-related forms are associated with mental well-being among Primary 7 pupils in Northern Ireland. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectional data were drawn from 4,360 pupils in 169 schools participating in the 2024 Kids’ Life and Times survey. The primary robust maximum likelihood/full-information maximum likelihood structural equation model used 4,355 records and specified CRED equality-response, bullying-form exposure and KIDSCREEN-10 well-being factors. Ordered-categorical weighted least squares mean and variance adjusted (WLSMV) and the heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator (Type 3) (HC3) regressions assessed robustness. Findings The CRED profile had a small positive association with well-being (β = 0.055, p = 0.004), whereas bullying-form exposure had a substantially stronger negative association (β = −0.448, p < 0.001). The predictors explained 20.5 per cent of latent well-being variance. The observed interaction was non-significant (β = −0.006, p = 0.680). Model fit was mixed, and WLSMV reproduced the structural pattern. Research limitations/implications The CRED items capture reported attitudinal change or non-change across equality topics, not the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child knowledge, perceived rights respect or rights consciousness. The CRED coefficient varied under alternative coding, and the voluntary, cross-sectional dataset lacked school identifiers and survey weights. Originality/value By distinguishing CRED-related equality responses from children’s rights awareness and comparing latent and observed models, the study offers a calibrated account of two distinct correlates of children’s well-being.
Purpose This paper aims to address the gap in understanding of how to provide better support for parents/carers of disabled children in efforts to prevent sexual abuse. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 30 parents/carers of disabled children in England took part in this qualitative study choosing to either participate via individual interview or discussion group. Their children had a range of learning, physical, communication, health and neurodivergent needs and attended both mainstream and specialist education provision. Findings Parents/carers recognised the increased risks for their child and expressed concerns about how to protect their children especially where their child had communication or learning needs or required personal care. There was an identified lack of resources to support them. Parents/carers called for partnerships with professionals to address this gap. Originality/value The study addresses a significant gap in evidence concerning the needs of parents/carers of disabled children in helping their children to understand personal safety, sexual relationships and what constitutes abuse as a preventative mechanism.
Purpose This paper aims to examine the Enable Inclusion Team (EIT), a community psychology service providing preventative, evidence-based support to children, families and schools where young people are at risk of permanent exclusion from mainstream education. This study explores the impact of EIT’s work for families with active social care involvement. Design/methodology/approach The authors present pilot data from 12 young people who received intensive EIT support while engaged with social care services, supplemented by a detailed case study. EIT is grounded in contextual behavioural science – primarily using acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and the DNA-V model, both of which are person-centred and values-driven approaches aimed at increasing psychological flexibility. Findings Pilot findings from a small sample suggest that the EIT’s collaborative, multi-systemic approach is associated with reduced risk of permanent exclusion and lowered social care involvement. Such reductions typically reflect a lowered risk to the child’s health, well-being or development. Research limitations/implications The sample size is currently small, and findings are based on a combination of case study and service-level data, which limits generalisability. The absence of a control group means that causal inferences must be drawn cautiously. Furthermore, while reductions in social care involvement are encouraging, longer-term follow-up is needed to establish whether these gains are sustained over time. Future research should therefore conduct formal research with a larger number of young people and include inferential analysis. Practical implications Subject to replication at scale, the EIT model may support long-term prospects for young people and reduce reliance on costly social care and specialist education provision; pilot data are exploratory and require larger, controlled evaluation. Social implications The work of EIT suggests that embedding evidence-based psychological interventions within schools and families may reduce exclusion risks and ease pressures on statutory services. By supporting both immediate educational inclusion and longer-term well-being, such models hold promise for addressing the systemic challenges facing children’s social care. Originality/value This paper is the first to describe a psychological service grounded in contextual behavioural science that supports the well-being, educational inclusion and family functioning of young people with social care involvement.
Purpose A significant global increase has been observed in the availability of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on both the surface and dark web. In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC, 2024) recorded 36.2 million global reports documenting suspected instances of CSAM online. CSAM often takes place in the home, and it is estimated that between 35% (Armitage et al., 2024) and 47% (Brown and Bricknell, 2018) of those arrested for CSAM live with at least one child. Acknowledging the progress made in extending the definition of victim status to children who witness (see/hear) or experience the impacts of domestic abuse, this paper aims to present a case for the children of those convicted of CSAM offences to be recognised as direct victims – allowing access to support services, protection from media reporting, as well as being entitled to communication relating to the offence, the criminal justice processes and outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Interviews were conducted with 23 adult family members of those being investigated for, or convicted of, CSAM offences in England and Wales. For all participants, children were involved in the investigation – either as children, stepchildren or grandchildren. For all offences, these children were not direct victims. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using Deductive Thematic Analysis. Codes were pre-determined from legal frameworks that constitute harm to a child. Findings Transcripts were coded against the following eight themes: Abuse, harm and loss caused directly by criminal conduct; neglect; trauma; impairment of health; impairment of development; witnessing the ill-treatment (physical, sexual, emotional abuse) of another family member; witnessing – seeing, hearing or otherwise directly experiencing the effects of criminal conduct at the time that it occurred; seeing, hearing or experiencing the effects of criminal conduct involving domestic abuse as a child under the age of 18, in circumstances where the person being abused or perpetrating the abuse is related to the child or has parental responsibility for that child. The results confirm the findings from the, albeit limited, existing studies on the secondary harms of CSAM offending, and extend the evidence for the harms experienced across all eight themes. The paper concludes that substantial evidence exists to reconsider amending the definition of a victim to include cases where the person is the child of the person posing sexual risk to children. Research limitations/implications The voices of children are paramount in telling their own story. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989) sets out that children’s views should be respected; children have the right to express their views, feelings and wishes in all matters that affect them, and these views should be taken seriously. In this paper, only one participant was a daughter (adult at the time of the interview); therefore, the findings are largely based on caregivers’ views of the harms experienced by their children. Future research should focus on collating data directly from the children affected. Practical implications The data presented in this paper highlights the need to, at the very least, recommence discussions regarding amending victim status to include “where the person is a child of the person posing sexual risk to children”. This was unsuccessfully tabled as an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill in 2023; however, the evidence presented herein provides a sufficient basis for its reconsideration. Beyond the legal requirements, victim status initiates policy and practice responses that indicate recognition of need. Within the context of domestic abuse, recognition of victim status for children who have seen, heard or experienced the effects of domestic abuse triggers consideration of many responses, not limited to safe accommodation (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2024), trauma-informed educational provision (Operation Encompass, 2025) and therapeutic support. Social implications Recognition that “children can be victims of offences and can also be affected by crime even if they are not themselves victims or witnesses” (CPS, 2024) is a critical step in progression for children impacted by the criminal conduct and agency responses to serious sexual offences. Beyond access to victim support or financial recompense, it directs agency responses that require dignity, sensitivity, compassion and courtesy and minimises further harms associated with criminal justice responses that often view these individuals as “collateral consequences” and as a “means to a greater good” (Armitage et al., 2024, p. 921). Of the 4 principles and 12 rights within the Code of Practice for victims of crime (Ministry of Justice, 2025), there are critical elements that would minimise the harms experienced by children of those under investigation for/convicted of CSAM, and these align clearly with the data presented within this paper. These include the provision of information relating to the criminal justice process and the right to have their privacy protected. Originality/value This paper presents an original analysis of interviews with 23 individuals affected by the investigation or conviction of a family member for CSAM offences and proposes a change in legislation to recognise children with a parent who poses a sexual risk as direct victims. While previous research has explored the harms experienced by the families of those suspected/convicted of CSAM offences, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to code data according to the legal definition of what constitutes a victim.
