ORCID

Abstract

Effective Early Help services are key to halting rising rates of children in care in the UK. Yet despite family support and child welfare interventions being unequally distributed across the country, the role of ‘place’ has received limited attention in the children's social care arena. This paper examines the connections between coastal challenges, Early Help and child welfare interventions, drawing on embedded research undertaken within a Local Authority on England's coast with elevated levels of children in care. We focus on families’ experiences raising children in a seaside resort area as well as professionals’ perspectives on the place-based challenges faced delivering effective and accessible Early Help support. The study generated data from ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups with local parents/carers (n = 57), service managers and frontline professionals (n = 14), and the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector (n = 22). The findings highlight how the socio-economic challenges associated with many seaside resort areas, including housing pressures, a seasonal and low-wage economy, and the transience of the population, present difficulties for parents/carers in raising and supporting their children. For professionals delivering Early Help, high levels of housing instability, elevated inward migration, resource constraints and challenges around recruitment and retention presented challenges to delivering services. This paper recommends increased emphasis in regulation and resourcing around family support that considers the spatial and geographic dynamics that influence the incidence, structuring, and experiences of child and family welfare.

Publication Date

2024-01-01

Publication Title

Geoforum

Volume

148

ISSN

0016-7185

Acceptance Date

2024-01-04

Deposit Date

2026-07-21

Funding

The authors would like to thank all the research participants who contributed so generously to this project. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: this research was funded in whole by the Torbay Medical Support Fund and supported additionally by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health (grant no. 203109/Z/16/Z) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South West Peninsula (PenARC). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care

Keywords

Child welfare, Coastal socio-economic deprivation, Early Help, Embedded research, Seaside resorts, Social determinants

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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