Introduction
Safer Future's main aim is to help children and young people stop their sexually harmful behaviours. Its director is Christine McCarlie who brings extensive knowledge and experience to this field. Christine has been a social worker for over 26 years, specialising in working with children and young people with sexually harmful behaviours for over 18yrs. In 1994 until 2005 she managed and developed the Halt Project which is a well established and highly regarded community resource working with children and young people with a range of sexually harmful behaviours based in Glasgow.
Christine has also co-authored chapters: “The Extra Dimension: Developing a Risk Management Framework" in Children and Young People Who Sexually Abuse: New Theory, Research and Practice Developments” Edited by Martin C. Calder (2005), and“ Embracing Diversity in Risk Management and Risk Reduction: A Practice Model for Children and Young People and the Systems Around Them” in Contemporary Practice with Young People who Sexually Abuse: Evidence- based Developments, Edited by Martin.C.Calder (2011).
Safer Futures Ltd provides consultancy, training and direct work with children/young people and their families. It works with various organisations within public, private and voluntary sectors, and can tailor the services it provides to suit the needs of individual referrers. For example, apart from the extensive training Christine provides, she has worked with several local authorities developing risk management frameworks and protocols. Some authorities and organisations commission Christine on a monthly basis to provide support and consultation to staff. She has written guidance for a residential unit and is commissioned to undertake assessments of children and young people. An exciting new development is a manual that Christine is writing in collaboration with Glasgow City Council. This will substantially help practitioners and managers in areas of risk management, assessment and intervention.
All the services provided by Safer Futures aim to increase understanding and insight into sexually harmful behaviours and improve methods for managing and reducing risk. By adopting a child development perspective Christine is able to understand sexually harmful behaviours from the child/young person’s perspective and from this understand different pathways into behaviours, needs being met, risk management and treatment issues for children and young people of all ages displaying a range of sexually harmful behaviours.
Christine has regular supervision and consultancy from Martin Calder as an essential safeguard to ensure that Safer Futures provides a high quality service. Martin is a leading expert in Child Protection in the UK and well known and published in this field.
