We amplify the experiences of Black and Racialised Children in child protection and safeguarding

“Thank you Listen Up for your recently delivery of the Adultification training for the Barnardo’s ICTG team. The session was a great balance of theory and practice based input and was very well received by the team. Feedback after the session from staff was excellent, some examples of their comments are: “Really enjoyed it, refreshing and reflective” “Really good, totally relevant all the way through” “Such great, challenging training” “So good and definitely got my brain ticking about how I can use it in my work” “Lots of reflections and learning for us a service” Thank vou again for such an excellent session – we’re already looking at booking further input from Listen Up”

“Jahnine understands what makes research meaningful and relevant for practitioners, and how to offer challenge and new thinking to support professionals and services safeguard young people who are less heard or visible. Resources they have written for us on male and Black female victims of child sexual abuse help social workers use Community Care Inform to address potential gaps in knowledge and practice. One of our most popular pages this year has been Listen Up’s guide to applying intersectionality when working with adolescents – Jahnine practice experience and accessible approach to theory and research make this a valuable addition to our site.”

“Jahnine ran two great learning sessions for us on The Experiences of Black girls in Child Sexual Abuse Research. The session I attended was really eye-opening and enlightening about the many ways Black girls’ experiences get discounted and excluded from research. Jahnine provided the time and space for reflections on what her research findings mean for practice, and created a safe space for discussion. Her expertise, experience and passion was clear, and we look forward to continuing to work with Listen Up Research.”

“The report Listen Up Research did for us was much appreciated. It was received ahead of time, was balanced and well referenced. Listen Up Research evidently took the time to consider how to present their thoughts in a way that would be easy for the panel and chair/author to navigate against the report. I appreciated the challenge and enquiry evident in the report and think it will help us to ensure that the quality we seek is there in the final draft. I hope that the Listen Up report will help the review panel be more specific in their analysis, conclusions and recommendations. This will lead to greater learning in the long term.”

Prior to the training, I already knew about adultification from my lived experience, as well as professional journey. Still, I found it a useful reminder and somewhat empowering and liberating in calling out adultification for what it is, being racism. There were little subtleties that Jahnine demonstrated throughout the day which I will be implementing in my practice. One small but very relevant thing being the battery check-in which I will use at the start of supervision sessions with my team members.

I shall ensure that I am mindful adultification and intersectionality when developing policies and resources for the YJ sector. I will also look at how we can do more to raise awareness around the importance of language use.

This training needs to be incorporated into other agency training and induction packages especially those who hold any form of strategic leadership or board membership role within a Children’s services.

The faciliator Jahnine was dynamic, empathetic and open in her delivery. I gained a clear and thorough understanding of the concept ‘Adultification’ and its roots in racism. I learnt the importance of advocacy through language in assessments and one to one work with the aim to afford young people who are ‘adultified’ a space to experience childhood.

Great training. Very informative and thought provoking. I wish we had done this sooner.

The session was very relevant to the work we do supporting foster carers and children and the insights shared allowed staff to reflect on how we make maturity assumptions about our children as their trauma can cause then to respond in more adult ways sometimes. This will help us reflect on our practice and enrich our discussions.