Our Spotlight On series celebrates our world-leading academics. Applied social researcher Professor Carlene Firmin MBE has pioneered a radical shift in how we protect young people from harm.
Carlene designed and introduced the concept of ‘Contextual Safeguarding’. The concept takes safeguarding actions beyond the family setting, and into all the spaces where young people spend their time: schools, neighbourhoods, peer groups and increasingly online.
The aim – to refocus safeguarding approaches so they target the context in which harm occurs, rather than solely the individuals impacted.
This fundamental shift in professional child protection approaches was first developed as part of Carlene’s doctoral thesis in 2015. Within seven years it had been embedded into safeguarding policy across England, Wales and Scotland.
In 2025, Carlene launched the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding at Durham – further cementing the importance of this approach. The Centre works with practice partners and universities worldwide to embed Contextual Safeguarding into international policy, research and practice frameworks.
Carlene has spent her career advocating for comprehensive approaches to keeping young people safe.
Initially based in the voluntary sector, she started out as an administrator with the charity Race on the Agenda. Whilst there she focused on an overlooked area – young women’s experiences of youth violence and peer abuse.
She went on to lead England’s first study on the impact of gang violence on young women before starting a column called ‘Girl on the Corner’ for UK newspaper The Guardian.
Her work won her multiple awards, most noticeably being honoured with an MBE in 2011 for services to women and girls.
Carlene went on to work with leading child safety charities including Barnardo’s and was an adviser to the an Inquiry by the Children’s Commissioner for England into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups.
Her dedication to redesigning the systems and services to better keep young people safe is guided by a life-long commitment to social justice.
To date she has written over 50 academic papers and reports and four books, with two more scheduled for publication shortly. Her book, Contextual Safeguarding and Child Protection: Rewriting the Rules won the Routledge prize for Sociology monograph in 2020.
Her expertise is in demand across the world and Carlene has spoken on her work as far afield as Australia and South America.
In 2021 Carlene become one of the UK’s youngest Black female professors when she joined our Department of Sociology as a Professor of Social Work.
Here she is part of a department as committed to improving social justice through expert social working teaching and research as she is.
Carlene is committed to continuing to transform how societies think about safeguarding.
Her current work is focused on amplifying an ethic of care in efforts to embed Contextual Safeguarding and implementing Contextual Safeguarding in new sectors such as church and hospitality settings.
She is also focusing on redesigning child protection processes so they can be used in response to harms outside of the family home.
Carlene is equally committed to rewriting the global rulebook, placing care at the heart of policy frameworks that have, until now, been dominated by justice-based approaches.
Her vision is clear: protecting children and young people isn’t just about responding to harm – it’s about creating contexts where harm cannot take root.
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