The socio-political power dynamics that shape the world govern the spaces where young people spend their time. Giovanni Rose (2021), a young person living in London, describes this in the poem ‘Welcome to Tottenham’, highlighted in this extract:

As the extract shows us, young people are aware of how their lives, and subsequently, the risks they face, are moulded by forces that span far beyond their families and communities. Structural inequalities, including poverty, racism and misogyny, are felt by many communities and young people every day (RECLAIM, 2020). Chapter 2 outlined the empirical evidence for the relationship between structural inequalities and experiences of, and responses to, harm in adolescence. If we take anything away from Rose's work, perhaps it should be that young people know more than we do about how inequalities shape the spaces they live in.

Extra-familial forms of harm (EFH), that is, abuse adolescents face outside the home, including criminal and sexual exploitation, peer-on-peer abuse and serious youth violence, and the spaces in which they occur, are shaped and reshaped continually by economic, social and political dynamics (Melrose and Pearce, 2013; Irwin-Rogers, 2019; Wroe and Pearce, 2022). These dynamics can be drivers of harm (that is, economic need as a driver for exploitation) and can shape how governments and professionals respond. When responding to EFH, consideration of how these dynamics play out and how they impact young people's experiences of harm and safety is twofold. First, how do we understand in practice the impact that economic, socio-and political (structural) inequalities have on the prevalence of EFH and young people's experiences of it. Second (and interconnected), what role do policy and professional responses have in reinforcing harm and the inequalities that govern the lives of young people and their communities (system harm). This chapter outlines some of the challenges practitioners face when responding to harm in contexts characterised by structural inequality and how, at times, this is exacerbated by professional responses.