In this blog Carlene Firmin, Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding, Durham University, shares key findings of research into the role youth workers play in safeguarding young people impacted by serious violence and exploitation. The research conducted in partnership with the NYA, informed the ‘Youth Work and Violence Prevention Guidance’ by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF).
When we partnered with the NYA to explore it quickly became clear just how crucial youth workers are, and how often their contribution goes unseen. Our research highlighted youth workers operating across formal and informal settings, working alongside social workers and other professionals, and making a tangible difference to children and young people’s lives in ways that are not always visible to formal systems or captured in data.
Youth workers are often the adults young people choose to turn to. They create safe, youth-led relationships where needs can be understood, and support can be provided. Through these voluntary relationships youth workers support young people in ways that other professionals often cannot. They advocate for children within safeguarding processes, help unlock access to education and vital services, and provide spaces where young people can be heard and respected.
What stood out to me during the research was how often youth work remains invisible within safeguarding systems. Much of this work does not appear in case files or statutory assessments, precisely because it is informal, responsive and relationship based. But this does not make it incidental. In fact, the flexibility of youth work, its presence in extra-familial spaces and voluntary basis of its connection to young people, makes it so effective in safeguarding and promoting their welfare.
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) Youth Work and Violence Prevention Guidance, published in Ionawr 2026, draws directly on this evidence. It identifies youth worker’s relationships with young people as a central feature of effective safeguarding activity, ensuring young people can understand and where possible, participate in systems that may otherwise feel intimidating or exclusionary. Crucially, such work does not happen in isolation or at a single moment of crisis, but through sustained, relational work rooted in places and communities where young people already are.
I also observed how much the impact of youth work depends on the structures within which it operates. In some areas, youth workers are co-located within their Local Authorities, contributing to safeguarding pathways from referral onwards. In others, they are rarely invited into child protection discussions at all. The YEF Guidance is clear that where youth workers are embedded within multi-agency systems – with clear referral routes, supervision and information-sharing – their ability to protect young people is significantly strengthened.
By defining the conditions in which youth work can offer crucial contributions to safeguarding, the new YEF Guidance strengthens the case for professional recognition and sustained investment in youth workers. Recognising and resourcing youth work is about ensuring young people have access to the protective, supportive relationships they need to thrive, and ensuring youth workers have a strategic place at the table to make this happen.
”I also observed how much the impact of youth work depends on the structures within which it operates. In some areas, youth workers are co-located within their Local Authorities, contributing to safeguarding pathways from referral onwards. In others, they are rarely invited into child protection discussions at all. The YEF Guidance is clear that where youth workers are embedded within multi-agency systems - with clear referral routes, supervision and information-sharing - their ability to protect young people is significantly strengthened.
Professor Carlene Firmin,Director of the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding Durham University
By defining the conditions in which youth work can offer crucial contributions to safeguarding, the new YEF Guidance strengthens the case for professional recognition and sustained investment in youth workers. Recognising and resourcing youth work is about ensuring young people have access to the protective, supportive relationships they need to thrive, and ensuring youth workers have a strategic place at the table to make this happen.
Join us for a webinar on Dydd Mercher 25 Chwefror at 1:00pm, with Professor Carlene Firmin, and the NYA Safeguarding and Risk Management team to explore this new research on the critical role of youth workers in safeguarding young people affected by violence.
