Staff profile

I joined the Department of Sociology at Durham in 2021, having previously worked at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre at the University of Bedfordshire. At Durham, I am in the management group for the Contextual Safeguarding research programme and a member of the Communities and Social Justice, and Criminal Justice, Social Harm and Inequality research groups. I am Co-PI on two projects. The first, 'Contextual Safeguarding Across Borders', explores the applicability of Contextual Safeguarding in international settings with refugee children. For the second, 'Building Safety', I am working with a Local Authority in England to support a community-informed approach to 'Contextual Safeguarding' with a specific focus on inequalities. I am the editor of the Contextual Safeguarding Network blog. 

I have a critical social psychology background. I am interested in how structural inequalities shape young people's experiences of violence and abuse in their communities, and their experience of harm reduction services. Adopting a contextual, critical, and zemiological approach, I am interested in understanding, demonstrating, and mitigating the ways in which policy and practice can contribute to young people's experiences of harm; particularly through the use of surveillance, or the utilisation of children's rights issues to justify oppressive policing, sentencing and immigration reform.

My recent publications have included an abolitionist analysis of children's social care using an autoethnographic method; two papers exploring the rate and use, and social harms implicated in, ‘out of area’ placements of adolescents exposed to ‘extra-familial’ risks; a contextual analysis of the efficacy and ethics of multi-agency safeguarding responses to ‘county lines’; and two papers analysising surveillance in innovation in children’s social care in response to extra-familial harm, and during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

I am a Social Work England registered social worker and a co-founder and trustee at the charity Social Workers Without Borders where I write and oversee probono Independent Social Work expert reports in relation to immigration appeals.

Follow me on Twitter @Laurie_Eli

• Anti-racism and migrant rights
• Contextual and structural accounts of safety and harm
• Social justice perspectives in social work

Chapter in book

• Manister, M., Wroe, L., & Adams Elias, C. (2023). Identifying and responding to structural and system drivers of extra-familial harm using a Contextual Safeguarding approach. In C. Firmin, & J. Lloyd (Eds.), Contextual Safeguarding: The Next Chapter (30-43). Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.56687/9781447366454-008
• Wroe, L., Lloyd, J., & Manister, M. (2023). From peers and parks to patriarchy and poverty: inequalities in young people’s experiences of extra-familial harm and the child protection system. In C. Firmin, & J. Lloyd (Eds.), Contextual Safeguarding: The Next Chapter (17-29). Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.56687/9781447366454-007
• Wroe, L. E., & Pearce, J. (2022). Young People Negotiating Intra and Extra - Familial Harm and Safety: Social and Holistic Approaches. In D. Holmes (Ed.), Safeguarding Young People: Risk, Rights, Resilience and Relationships. Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• King, L., Ng'andu, B., & Wroe, L. E. (2020). Surmounting the Hostile Environment: Reflections on Social Work Activism Without Borders. In S. McGuirk, & A. Pine (Eds.), Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry. PM Press
• Wroe, L., Ng'andu, B., Doyle, M., & King, L. (2018). Positioning social workers without borders within green social work: Ethical considerations for social work as social justice work. In L. Dominelli (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Green Social Work (321-332). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315183213

Edited book

• Wroe, L. E., Larkin, R., & Maglajlic, R. A. (Eds.). (2019). Social work with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants: Theory and skills for practice. Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Journal Article

• Holmes, L., Pinto, V. S., Wroe, L. E., Peace, D., & Firmin, C. (online). ‘Relocating Adolescents’: The Costs of Out-of-Area Placements as a Response to Extra-Familial Risk/Harm. The British Journal of Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcae109
• Hunter, D., & Wroe, L. E. (2024). ‘Already doing the work’: social work, abolition and building the future from the present. Critical and Radical Social Work, 12(3), 312–329. https://doi.org/10.1332/204986021x16626426254068
• Wroe, L. E., & Manister, M. (2024). Relationship of trust and surveillance in the first national piloting of Contextual Safeguarding in England and Wales. Critical and Radical Social Work, 12(2), 205-229. https://doi.org/10.1332/20498608y2023d000000014
• Koch, I., Williams, P., & Wroe, L. (2024). ‘County lines’: racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain. Race & Class, 65(3), 3-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231201325
• Wroe, L. E., Peace, D., & Firmin, C. (2023). ‘Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home: What Do We Learn When We Ask about Safety?. The British Journal of Social Work, 53(5), 2958–2978. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcad077
• Firmin, C., Wroe, L., & Bernard, D. (2022). Last Resort or Best Interest? Exploring the Risk and Safety Factors That Inform the Rates of Relocation for Young People Abused in Extra-Familial Settings. The British Journal of Social Work, 52(1), 573–592. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcab106
• Wroe, L. E. (2022). When Helping Hurts: A Zemiological Analysis of a Child Protection Intervention in Adolescence—Implications for a Critical Child Protection Studies. Social Sciences, 11(6), Article 263. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11060263
• Wroe, L. (2021). Young people and “county lines”: a contextual and social account. Journal of Children's Services, 16(1), 39-55. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcs-10-2020-0063
• Dillon, J., Evans, F., & Wroe, L. E. (2021). COVID-19: changing fields of social work practice with children and young people. Critical and Radical Social Work, 9(2), https://doi.org/10.1332/204986021x16109919842882
• Wroe, L., & Lloyd, J. (2020). Watching over or working with? Understanding social work innovation in response to extra-familial harm. Social Sciences, 9(4), https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9040037
• Wroe, L. (2019). Social working without borders: Challenging privatisation and complicity with the hostile environment. Critical and Radical Social Work, 7(2), 251-255. https://doi.org/10.1332/204986019x15623302985278
• Wroe, L. (2018). ‘It really is about telling people who asylum seekers really are, because we are human like anybody else’: Negotiating victimhood in refugee advocacy work. Discourse and Society, 29(3), 324-343. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926517734664