Background

Ecological systems theory highlights the importance of understanding all individuals in the context of their lives. A social-ecological framework has thus been promoted, which sees children in terms of their relationships with their immediate environment of family, friends, school and neighbourhood and the wider sociocultural, political-economic context. Creating a whole-child formulation from information gathered from multiple sources can functionally support the child, potentially providing an equal opportunity for each child to gain support earlier and to reduce any biases.

Summary of the evidence

Multi-layered experiences and impacts

Pathways into offending tend to be multi-layered, and children within the justice system have a variety of lived experiences across the individual, family, social and environmental domains. The social-ecological framework recognises the importance of the context that a child finds themselves in, and how responses need to be holistic and child-centred, paying attention to the individual, interpersonal (family and peers), community, and societal levels.

While these four levels exist independently of each other, it is important to recognise that they also combine in terms of impacts upon a child. The impact is personal, which is why there is a need for different desistance pathways and harm reduction strategies. A whole systems approach recognises the need for a range of different activities at the various levels of the socio-ecological model, especially when rooted in a strengths-based, trauma-informed way that works with individual need. The key factors associated with offending, such as poverty, neglect and abuse, family and neighbourhood environments characterised by violence, to educational disconnect, substance misuse and relationship fragility, all highlight the importance of a holistic approach.

Accessing resources and opportunities

The social-ecological framework is seen as a helpful way of understanding a child’s unique circumstances, and then designing, matching and delivering services and interventions to the child and creating a more responsive system. It is important that children can access community resources in a wide range of areas. It has also been suggested that enabling children to participate in their communities can create places where they feel they belong, helping to build their social capital, while also helping to reduce anti-social behaviour.

There are strong links with the relationship-based practice framework (next section), with practitioners building trusting relationships and discovering what is important to the child. When there is trust and the child is engaged, they can then be supported through accessing the most appropriate resources, opportunities and pro-social activities.

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