Through the Lens: Ecological

By Abi Billinghurst

Founder and CEO

Abianda’s four practice pillars are best understood not as separate approaches, but as an integrated framework for working with complexity. Our ecological pillar ensures we understand the full landscape of a young woman’s life. Our contextual pillar ensures safeguarding extends to the spaces where harm occurs. Our participatory pillar ensures power is shared and rights are upheld. Our solution-focused pillar ensures practice builds on strength, possibility and agency.

At Abianda, an ecological approach means that we do not understand girls’ and young women’s lives, safety, choices or harms in isolation. We look at the whole ecology around them: relationships, families, peer groups, schools, neighbourhoods, online spaces, services, systems, poverty, racism, misogyny, criminal markets, housing, mental health, statutory responses and the wider social conditions that shape what is possible.

This is not about locating the “problem” within a young woman. It is about asking what is happening around her, what she is navigating, who has power, where protection is present or absent, and what needs to change across the spaces, services and systems that touch her life. Since Abianda began, we have been interested in shifting the central question from “what is wrong with her?” to “what is happening around her?” Or, perhaps more accurately, “how has she managed to survive?”

The lives of girls and young women affected by criminal exploitation and violence rarely fit neatly into one service or policy category. A young woman may be navigating violence in her intimate relationships, coercion through criminal networks, pressure linked to debt or county lines, exclusion from education, housing instability, online harm, grief, racism, sexual violence, family stress, and contact with youth justice or children’s social care. These things do not sit in separate boxes in her life, even if they often sit in separate boxes in our systems.

In the twelve years since I founded Abianda, the language and frameworks around this work have changed significantly. When we began, there was far less recognition of girls’ and young women’s experiences of criminal exploitation, county lines and serious youth violence. There was also far less critical reflection on the language used to describe these experiences, particularly the term “gangs”. Over the past decade, important challenges have been raised about how gang narratives can racialise young people - especially Black boys and young men - and obscure the structural conditions in which violence and exploitation occur (Lammy, 2017; Amnesty International, 2018; Information Commissioner’s Office, 2018).

These debates matter deeply for girls and young women too. Gang-associated and knife crime frameworks have often been developed around male experiences and can render girls invisible, particularly where their exploitation is relational, hidden or interpreted through stereotypes about loyalty, consent or criminality. At the same time, girls connected to gang-labelled contexts may themselves become criminalised by association, while their experiences of coercion, abuse and exploitation are minimised. Researchers and practitioners have long questioned whether “gang” language can flatten complex social realities into racialised and criminalising narratives that hinder safeguarding, rather than support it (Hallsworth and Young, 2008; Williams and Clarke, 2016; HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2023).

Alongside this, there has been growing scrutiny of policing culture and institutional practice, particularly within the Metropolitan Police. Baroness Casey’s independent review concluded that the Met was institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic, and documented systemic failures in trust, accountability and safeguarding, including in relation to violence against women and girls (Casey, 2023). For girls and young women affected by exploitation and violence (many of whom already experience racism, misogyny and over-surveillance), relationships with statutory agencies are shaped not only by individual interactions, but by wider histories and cultures within institutions themselves. Indeed, when I set up Abianda, the overwhelming feedback from young women I was working with was the degree to which they mistrusted services because they felt let down in the past, or because their experiences of harm and abuse had not been recognised.

There has also been important progress in the legislative landscape. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduces, for the first time, a standalone offence of child criminal exploitation. This is significant. For many years, practitioners have had to describe child criminal exploitation by relying on a combination of safeguarding language, modern slavery frameworks, serious crime legislation and professional judgement. Those tools have mattered, but they have not always captured the specific nature of children being coerced, controlled, groomed, threatened, indebted or manipulated into criminal activity.

A specific child criminal exploitation offence has the potential to strengthen the way systems identify children as victims of abuse, rather than primarily viewing them through the lens of offending. The Act also introduces Child Criminal Exploitation Prevention Orders, new offences relating to cuckooing or home takeover, and offences relating to coerced internal concealment. There are also wider measures relevant to child sexual abuse and violence against women and girls, including a new duty to report child sexual abuse in key roles, making grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing for specified child sexual offences, and measures relating to spiking, stalking, honour-based abuse guidance and offender management.

These developments represent progress. But legislation alone will not make systems curious. It will not, on its own, ensure that girls and young women are seen earlier, understood more fully, or protected from being criminalised for activity they were coerced into. The question is how legislation translates into practice. Will professionals be supported to understand the gendered and relational dynamics of exploitation, particularly where harm is hidden, intimate, ambiguous or wrapped up in ideas of choice, loyalty or love? Will the data collected through new legal frameworks help us understand girls’ experiences more clearly, or will it reproduce the same blind spots?

There have also been important developments in the evidence and practice landscape. The Tackling Child Exploitation Practice Principles, refreshed by Research in Practice in 2026, are particularly relevant here. The principles are ecological in their orientation: they ask local areas and multi-agency partnerships to put children and young people first; respect their voice, experience and expertise; work in strengths-based and relationship-based ways; recognise and respond to trauma; remain curious, evidence-informed and knowledgeable; challenge inequalities, exclusion and discrimination; and create safer spaces and places for children and young people (Research in Practice, 2026a). Their refresh is welcome because it brings the principles into line with the latest research evidence and policy developments, while continuing to emphasise that child exploitation and extra-familial harm require responses that are relational, contextual, multi-agency and attentive to the wider conditions around a child’s life.

We are also seeing a growing body of evidence about what gender-responsive support for girls and young women affected by violence and exploitation needs to look like. The recently published evaluation of London’s Violence Reduction Unit’s Girls and Young Women Community-based Mentoring Programme (delivered by Advance, Chance UK, Working Chance and Woman’s Trust), found that the programme engaged 387 girls and young women over two years, with common presenting needs including mental health, domestic abuse, employability, and risk of exploitation or offending (Ecorys and Renaisi-TSIP, 2026). The evaluation found positive changes in mental health and wellbeing, emotional regulation, feelings of safety, healthy relationships, confidence, self-esteem, agency, education, employment and peer support. Crucially, it also identified the importance of specialist gender-based provision, consistent relationship-based support, flexible and participant-led delivery, trauma-informed practice, trust-building time, and support that clearly differentiates itself from statutory services.

For me, one of the striking things about this evaluation is how strongly it echoes learning that has been present in the sector for many years. Jessica Southgate’s Griffins Society research, Seeing differently: working with girls affected by gangs, published in 2011 and updated in 2012, argued that girls affected by gangs were too often overlooked, simplified or distorted: cast either as violent, out-of-control perpetrators or as passive victims, rather than understood in the complexity of their lives (Southgate, 2011/2012). Southgate highlighted the importance of gender-specific support, trusted relationships with female workers and peers, work on rights, consent and healthy relationships, self-esteem, aspirations, critical consciousness and early intervention. More than a decade later, contemporary evaluations are reinforcing many of these same messages. That is encouraging. It also raises an important question: if we have known this for so long, how do we ensure it now becomes mainstreamed, funded and sustained?

Agenda Alliance’s work on girls’ school exclusions and its Young Women’s Justice Project adds further weight to this. Their work has highlighted the gendered and racialised drivers of exclusion, including poverty, gendered abuse, unmet mental health and SEND needs, homelessness and care experience, and has shown how exclusion can increase girls’ exposure to further harm, including sexual exploitation and criminalisation (Agenda Alliance, 2021; Agenda Alliance, 2026a). Their Young Women’s Justice Project has also shown how girls and young women in contact with the criminal justice system are often navigating multiple unmet needs, while remaining overlooked in both policy and practice because of their age and gender (Agenda Alliance, 2026b).

In London, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime’s work to improve support for girls and young women affected by gangs, violence and exploitation is therefore an important and welcome development. Abianda is pleased to be a partner in both strands of this work: the Girls and Young Women Local Groups Fund, overseen by Social Finance in partnership with Abianda and Agenda Alliance; and the development of a framework with Research in Practice and the University of Lancashire to improve how risk and need are understood for girls and young women affected by violence and exploitation. It is early days, but this represents a meaningful policy and commissioning commitment: one that recognises the need for direct support, stronger evidence, better language and definitions, co-production with girls and young women, and a more contemporary understanding of their lives beyond the “gang member” narrative.

Taken together, these developments represent real progress. We have stronger practice principles, better research, more explicit legal tools, clearer evidence about what works, and an emerging policy and commissioning focus on girls and young women affected by violence and exploitation. But there is still work to do. Too often, the links between violence against women and girls, criminal exploitation, county lines, serious youth violence, knife crime, school exclusion and youth justice remain underdeveloped. Girls and young women still risk being missed when systems are designed around more visible patterns of harm, more familiar presentations of risk, or assumptions that criminal exploitation and serious violence are primarily male experiences.

This feels particularly important in the current policy moment. The Government’s National Youth Strategy commits to rebuilding youth provision, including investment in youth centres, Young Futures Hubs and access to trusted adults outside the home (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2025). The first wave of Young Futures Hubs has now opened, with the programme positioned as part of the wider Safer Streets mission and linked to mental health, employment, youth services and crime prevention (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2026). This is a significant opportunity. If done well, these hubs could become part of the social infrastructure that young people need: welcoming, relational, non-stigmatising places where they can access support early, before harm escalates.

But the question we will keep asking at Abianda is: how will girls and young women be seen within this roll-out?

If Young Futures Hubs are designed primarily through a generic youth lens, or through a serious violence lens that defaults to boys and young men, there is a real risk that girls’ experiences will remain peripheral. A gender-responsive approach cannot be added at the end. It needs to be built into the design, commissioning, workforce development, outreach, safeguarding practice, data collection and evaluation from the beginning. We need to ask who is accessing these hubs, who is not, who feels safe enough to walk through the door, whose harm is legible to professionals, and whether young women’s own expertise is shaping the offer.

The same questions apply to youth justice reform. Recent government proposals rightly emphasise earlier intervention, targeted support and tackling the root causes of offending (Ministry of Justice, 2026a; Ministry of Justice, 2026b). This direction is welcome. We know that for many children, contact with the youth justice system comes after multiple missed opportunities for support. But girls and young women occupy a complicated place in this landscape. They are numerically underrepresented in youth justice, and in one sense that is positive: fewer girls are formally criminalised. But underrepresentation can also mean invisibility. It can mean that girls come to notice very late, when harm has escalated, when their behaviour is read through a justice lens rather than a safeguarding lens, or when the preventative work that might have made a difference has not happened.

I would suggest that, often, these are not girls who were unknown. They may have been known to schools, children’s social care, police, health services, domestic abuse services, youth services or community organisations. So the question becomes: if they were known somewhere, why were they not understood fully enough? What was missed? What assumptions shaped the response? What did the system fail to connect?

This is also relevant to the Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls and halve knife crime within a decade. These are often spoken about as distinct policy ambitions. But in practice, they are deeply connected. Young women affected by criminal exploitation and violence may be navigating sexual violence, domestic abuse, coercive control, criminal exploitation, peer violence, weapons, threats, debt, surveillance and punishment within overlapping relational and community contexts. For some young people, knife crime is not only about public-space violence; it is also entangled with fear, protection, retaliation, domestic abuse, exploitation, masculinity, poverty, exclusion and trauma.

Recent research led by Dr Jade Levell and colleagues on child knife-related deaths in England strengthens this point. Their analysis highlights the overlapping and concurrent contexts of violence in children’s lives, including polyvictimisation, polyperpetration and missed opportunities for intervention (Levell et al., 2026). Serious youth violence cannot be understood through a narrow public-space or criminal justice frame alone. It has to be understood ecologically.

What I am left wondering is: what does the Venn diagram look like for girls and young women?

Where does violence against women and girls, knife crime, criminal exploitation, intimate partner violence, peer harm, youth justice, school exclusion, mental health, poverty, racism and care experience overlap in their lives? What data do we have? What data are we missing? What would young women themselves tell us if they were meaningfully involved in shaping the questions? And how might policy look different if it started from those overlapping realities rather than from separate departmental categories?

For Abianda, this is where an ecological approach remains essential. Law can create important new routes for accountability and protection, but it cannot, on its own, ensure that a young woman’s experience is understood in the round. If the implementation of new offences, duties, youth hubs, youth justice reforms and violence reduction strategies is not gender-responsive, participatory and contextual, then girls and young women may still be missed, or worse, misread.

This is where Abianda’s practice continues to feel both urgent and distinctive. Our work is relational, participatory, contextual, ecological and solution-focused. We work directly with girls and young women, but we also work with the systems around them. We support young women to build independence, agency and critical thinking, and we support professionals and organisations to understand the gendered and contextual nature of exploitation and violence. We do not see participation as a “nice to have”. We understand participation as protection: when young women’s voices, analysis and expertise shape decisions, services and systems, safeguarding becomes more accurate, more relational and more effective.

Our ecological approach has been built through twelve years of practice. It has grown from what young women have taught us, what our team has learned in the complexity of direct work, and what we have seen repeatedly in systems that are often trying hard but are not always designed to see girls clearly. It is also why we are interested not only in whether new policy and legislative developments are ambitious, but in how they will be implemented. Who will design them? Who will be heard? What will be measured? What kinds of expertise will count? And how will we know whether girls and young women affected by exploitation and violence are safer as a result?

Because if we are serious about safety, we have to be serious about context. And if we are serious about girls and young women, we have to build systems that are capable of seeing the whole ecology of their lives.

References

Agenda Alliance (2021) New data shows Black and minoritised girls more than twice as likely to be excluded. London: Agenda Alliance.

Agenda Alliance (2026a) Girls’ School Exclusions. London: Agenda Alliance.

Agenda Alliance (2026b) Young Women’s Justice Project. London: Agenda Alliance.

Amnesty International (2018) Trapped in the Matrix: Secrecy, stigma, and bias in the Met’s Gangs Database. London: Amnesty International UK.

Casey, L. (2023) Final Report: An independent review into the standards of behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service. London: Metropolitan Police Service.

Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (2016) Dangerous associations: Joint enterprise, gangs and racism. London: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2025) National Youth Strategy. London: GOV.UK.

Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2026) First wave of national Young Futures Hubs open to turn the tide on youth services decline. London: GOV.UK.

Ecorys and Renaisi-TSIP (2026) Evaluation of the Girls and Young Women Community-based Mentoring Programme: Maia & Lift. Final evaluation report. London: London’s Violence Reduction Unit.

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Hallsworth, S. and Young, T. (2008) ‘Gang talk and gang talkers: A critique’, Crime, Media, Culture, 4(2), pp. 175–195.

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Levell, J., Roberts, T., Staines, J., Sleap, V., Stoianova, S., Carlton, E. and Luyt, K. (2026) ‘Childhood violence across distinct, overlapping, and concurrent contexts: polyvictimization, polyperpetration, and missed interventions points among child knife crime fatalities in England’, Frontiers in Sociology, 11:1771547.

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Social Finance (2026) Supporting girls and young women affected by violence and exploitation. London: Social Finance.

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