The Child Safeguarding Review Practice Review Panel Report, Protecting All Vulnerable Babies Better, has rightly highlighted the risks that can arise when families move frequently, particularly during pregnancy or while subject to child protection processes.
In extreme cases, such as that of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, mobility coincided with escalating safeguarding concerns and deliberate evasion. The lessons from Victoria’s case are stark: relocation can become a flight risk, an attempt to disappear from professional oversight.
However, we must be cautious about generalising that conclusion. For nomadic British Gypsy and Traveller families, mobility is not inherently suspicious. It is often cultural or economic reasons. Many families move for work or to attend a family funeral. Others are forced to move because of eviction and a lack of authorised sites. Some even move to escape harassment and discrimination.
When safeguarding systems equate frequent movement with “a potential safeguarding concern,” they risk pathologising a way of life.
Nomadism, Ethnicity, and the Law
British Gypsies and Travellers are recognised ethnic groups in the UK, protected under the characteristic of race/ethnicity in the Equality Act 2010. While “mobility” itself is not a protected characteristic, cultural nomadism linked to ethnic identity is. This has particular relevance for safeguarding, ensuring that protection measures respect cultural identity while keeping children safe.
Pre‑birth work with British Gypsy and Traveller families demands a different kind of social work, one that understands culture, mobility, mistrust, and lived experience not as barriers, but as context. Too often, families only meet services at the point of crisis, shaped by long histories of discrimination and inconsistent responses.
An effective approach is deliberately relational. This means slowing the system down, building trust early, and recognising strengths, kinship networks, and cultural traditions that some of our assessments can overlook. Early connection allows honest conversations about risk while preserving dignity and voice.
The Growing Movement of British Gypsy and Traveller Children
The Fragility of Professional Competence Report explains that the number of British Gypsy and Traveller family’s moving and travelling around the UK is rising. Recorded unauthorised encampments have risen by 28 percent since 2006, to more than 27,000. To deal with this, government officials have introduced tougher measures, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and special magistrates’ courts that can issue Committal Orders and instruct evictions of children and families on weekends and during the night.
As the number of British Gypsy and Traveller children being evicted grows, child protection professionals must maintain an acute awareness of how easily information and safeguarding networks can be lost if a family moves between regions. Robust multi-agency planning is vital.
Local authorities, the police, education, housing, the health service, and all other agencies with a duty to cooperate in child protection should establish a single, national, coherent policy on working with mobile British Gypsy and Traveller children assessed as at risk of harm.
This policy should clearly set out surveillance systems and multi-agency information-sharing protocols, and regulatory bodies (including Ofsted) should ensure adherence. Child protection professionals must be equipped to conduct best interest and impact assessments on families living under the threat of eviction. Where eviction is likely to jeopardise the welfare of the child, professionals must be supported to challenge measures designed to stop unauthorised encampments, using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the relevant sections of the Children Act, while advocating for more permanent, authorised accommodation.
Holding Cases Across Mobility
Mobility is a normal and important part of life for many British Gypsy and Traveller families. In Child in Need and Child Protection work, cases do not neatly transfer every time a family moves; thresholds, timescales, and local protocols rarely match the pace of their lives. Instead, the allocated social worker often holds the case and builds a network around the family wherever they go.
This involves persistent liaison with local midwifery teams, Children’s Services, health visitors, and community organisations in each area they pass through. It is steady, relational work: keeping communication open, ensuring professionals understand the context, and preventing families from falling through the gaps of multiple local authorities as the following case study shows.
| Case Study: South Wiltshire Chris was allocated to a young Romani Gypsy family expecting their first baby on a small site in south Wiltshire. During the pregnancy, they travelled across Dorset, Bournemouth–Christchurch, Poole, and Hampshire, before later staying with extended family in South Wales, returning to Wiltshire at intervals. They also attended several fairs, including Wickham, Appleby, Bournemouth, Bridgwater, and the New Forest, following the rhythms of their community life. At no point did the case formally transfer, because they never stayed long enough in any one area for local processes to align. Instead, Chris maintained the case, rebuilding the professional network each time, new midwifery teams, duty lines, health visitor hubs, and community contacts. Chris’s work was guided by Wiltshire’s pre‑birth protocol, requiring visits every two weeks. This frequency was not bureaucracy; it reflected rhythm, reliability, and early visibility at a time when circumstances could shift quickly. Pregnancy is a period where housing, health, relationships, and support can change in days, not months. For this family, the two-week cycle provided continuity in a system that could otherwise feel fragmented. Even as geography changed, the relationship endured. Showing up consistently became a form of safeguarding in itself. Family Group Conferences (FGCs) were central to sustainability. With kin spread across counties, the FGC brought together Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and South Wales relatives into one shared plan. It created clarity, reduced duplication, and enabled the wider family network to take ownership of safety planning in a way that travelled with them. For communities where kinship is central, the FGC became the turning point: safeguarding shifted from something imposed to something collaborative. |
Key Reflections
The case study describing Chris’ practice shines a light on the heart of pre‑birth safeguarding with Romani and Traveller families. Good practice requires persistence, trust, and a system that adapts to the family and the baby, not the other way around. By staying present, explaining processes clearly, and maintaining continuity wherever possible, we create the stability the system itself sometimes struggles to offer, and that is how vulnerable babies are better protected.
When inter-authority coordination is weak, when information systems are fragmented, and when no single lead agency takes overall accountability, children can become “invisible.” But invisibility is a systems failure, not proof that a family is attempting to disappear from professional view.
Mobility alone is not a risk. The challenge for leaders across health, education, police, and children’s social care is to ensure that learning about “families who move” strengthens protection, without embedding antigypsyism or other forms of structural bias against nomadic communities.
Practice Guidance
In the case of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, Victoria’s life was threatened by deliberate evasion. While the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel Report offers valuable guidance for the future, we must be careful when transferring these lessons to Child Protection Practice with nomadic British Gypsy and Traveller families
The real question is this: ‘Do we need to build systems that can better track nomadic families, or do we need to better understand how to support them?
Mobility alone is not a risk. In our recent research, we show that the challenge for leaders across health, education, police, and children’s social care is to ensure that learning about “families who move” strengthens protection, without embedding racism and other forms of structural bias against nomadic communities.
Key practice guidance:
About the Authors
 | Associate Professor Dan Allen is a social work practitioner and academic at Liverpool Hope University. He has over 20 years of dedicated experience, consistently focused on advancing social work and child protection practices with Romani and Traveller communities. |
 | Jackie Bolton is a qualified Social Worker, a Traveller from a Showmen and Romany family, and one of the co-founders of the Romani and Traveller Social Work Association. She has over 20 years of experience in working with children and families, having set up an advocacy service for Travellers in 2003. More recently she specialised in working with young people affected by child sexual abuse/ exploitation and serious youth violence. Jackie is Chair of Trustees at Gypsy and Travellers Empowerment (GATE) Herts and Director of the Romani and Traveller Social Work CIC, working as a researcher and trainer. |
 | Chris Kidd is a child protection social worker, ASYE Development Manager and Practice Educator who believes safeguarding should be honest, accountable and grounded in lived experience and evidence — not wishful thinking or political spin. Chis’ career spans 20+ years on the frontline, working with children, families and communities who are too often failed by the systems meant to protect them. Much of that time has been spent alongside Traveller, Romani and Gypsy families, challenging discriminatory practice and pushing for culturally competent, rights‑based social work. |
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