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Practitioners, academics and policymakers are increasingly questioning the sufficiency of safeguarding practice in protecting young people from peer-on-peer abuse in England. Using the findings from an in-depth analysis of nine cases where young people either raped or murdered their peers, this article explores approaches to assessing and intervening with those affected by peer-on-peer abuse. Building upon international calls for a contextual account of abuse between young people, the article identifies a professional struggle to address the interplay between young people's homes and the public and social spaces in which peer-on-peer abuse often manifests. Findings from this study are used to illuminate wider research into peer-on-peer abuse which has indicated a professional inability to: assess young people's behaviours with reference to the contexts in which they occur; change the environmental factors that influence abusive behaviours; and recognise the vulnerability of those who abuse their peers. The article concludes that to effectively respond to peer-on-peer abuse, multiagency partnerships are required which can identify, assess and intervene with the harmful norms in peer groups, schools and public spaces that can facilitate peer-on-peer abuse and undermine parental capacity to keep young people safe -thereby adopting a more contextual approach to safeguarding adolescents. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY PRACTITIONER MESSAGES:• Social contexts such as peer groups, schools and neighbourhoods can make young people vulnerable to peer-on-peer abuse.• Assessing and intervening with young people and families affected by peer-on-peer abuse will not impact upon the social contexts associated with the phenomenon.• Multiagency partnerships need to intervene with social contexts that, albeit beyond the traditional remit of child protection, facilitate peer-on-peer abuse and undermine the capacity of parents to keep young people safe.

This article considers how young people's developing sexualities are influenced by extra-familial social and cultural contexts, particularly in relation to experiences of sexual violence. It draws upon young people's voices to illustrate the choices they make when they encounter, or engage with, exploitative contexts. Utilising the cumulative evidence base of our studies into sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence over the past ten years, we employ Bourdieu's theory of the interplay between structure and agency to elucidate the relationship between young people's choices and abusive social environments. When navigating or engaging with exploitative contexts, young people's sexualities can be distorted through abusive normalising processes; coercive practices; professional attitudes which condone abuse; and/or structural inequalities that call for survivalist behaviours amongst young people. In exploring this social model of consent, we highlight the need to move beyond one to one (1:1) social work practices to engage with situations, contexts and relationships that disrupt young people's developing sexualities. Such an adaptation of social work practice would adopt principles of 'contextual safeguarding' and we conclude by offering illustrations of interventions that have begun to explore this developmental pathway.

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When young people are harmed in extra-familial settings children’s services may place them into care at a distance from their home authority to remove them from contexts in which they are considered ‘at risk’. Guidance and regulation suggest such intervention be used as a last resort and only in a child’s best interests. Using survey and interview data, this article examines how relocations are used in response to extra-familial harm (EFH) in thirteen children’s services departments inEngland and Wales—exploring the extent to which they are intended to mitigate risk, or build safety, for young people. Findings demonstrate that rates at which relocations were used varied across participating services. Interview data suggest that variation may be informed by the strategic position a service takes on the use of relocation, the goal(s) of interventions used in cases of EFH, and the target of these interventions. In considering each of these factors, the authors recommend further study into the national (varying) rates of relocation and the role of those who review care plans for relocated young people; both intending to create conditions in which young people can safely return to their communities should they choose to do so.