A significant solidus: Punctuating sexual exploitation with discretionary practices

Abstract

In this article, I report on a study that examined how young people are framed within formalized child welfare reviews. The study examined reports of serious case reviews (SCRs) in England over a 6-year period, 2008-2016. I report on a data set on sexual exploitation. I focus on both the professionals and the reviewers, who are considered experts in child protection. The study focused on two aspects: one, how did professionals produce a "young person," and two, how is the cultural identity of a young person represented within, and (re)produced by, these documents. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. I report on both the semantic and latent levels, discussing the words and phrases used, and the meaning they carry as situated across multiple SCRs. The analysis revealed that young people are literally seen through a visual lens, figuratively through a series of labels and produced as an autonomous, free subject. I conclude by arguing that age is applied in a visual and highly problematic way.

Disentangling practitioners’ understandings of child sexual exploitation: The risks of assuming otherwise?

“…The extent to which such framing may influence or reinforce the ideational standpoint of practitioners – and the ways in which standpoints adopted are materially translated into practices that impact on young people – is as critical as it is debatable. As Philips (2019: 7) discovered in an analysis of SCRs, a flawed view of young people as somehow responsible for lax decisions they had made was not uncommon among practitioners. Consistent within the language used by practitioners were references to how the young people presented themselves and the extent to which they exhibited either ‘mature’ or ‘precocious’ behaviours.…”