Belonging Must Be More Than a Buzzword: Why Personal Significance Matters in Children’s Lives — and How Criminalisation Undermines It
Across community practice, policy debates, and safeguarding systems, we often talk about “protecting children” and “reducing harm.” Yet too often, these phrases translate into punitive responses, exclusionary interventions, surveillance, and criminalisation — especially for children whose behaviour reflects experiences of trauma, exploitation and marginalisation.
At ECO we argue that belonging — not punishment — must be the core of how society responds to children at risk. Belonging is not niceness; it is a fundamental human need, without which children can feel insignificant, disconnected, and unheard.
Scholars Luke Billingham and Keir Irwin-Rogers explore this dynamic deeply in “The terrifying abyss of insignificance: Marginalisation, mattering and violence between young people”. Their research explains that feeling one matters — that one is connected, valued and capable of influence — is central to healthy psychosocial development and protective against both self-harm and violence. Conversely, when children feel that they do not matter, they may be drawn into harmful pathways, not because they “choose” them, but because their sense of significance has been eroded by social conditions and institutional marginalisation.
Billingham and Irwin-Rogers describe how structural and historical factors — poverty, racism, school exclusion, and degraded community infrastructure — can diminish a child’s sense of mattering. These forces contribute to a “terrifying abyss” of insignificance in which young people feel invisible, undervalued and disconnected from the social worlds that should nurture them.
Yet when professionals respond to behaviours shaped by these conditions with criminal justice measures, exclusion or punitive interventions, they replicate the very experiences that have already diminished children’s sense of belonging. Instead of supporting children to feel significant and connected, systems reinforce their marginalisation.
When children feel they matter — to their families, to their communities, to systems of support — they are more likely to:
build trusted relationships
access help before crisis
find agency in decision-making
move away from harmful contexts
Billingham and Irwin-Rogers’ analysis suggests that violence and other harmful actions can be understood, in part, as attempts at achieving significance in the absence of positive pathways to belonging.
Criminal justice responses to children — arrests, prosecution, punitive orders, school exclusions — communicate to a child:
“You are a problem.”
“You are separate from the community.”
“Your voice and experience don’t matter.”
These messages do not protect children. They undermine confidence, reinforce stigma, and sever the relational ties that are proven to be protective.
Instead of criminalising behaviour born from marginalisation and unmet need, we must:
listen to children’s voices and lived realities
centre trauma-informed and exploitation-aware practice
build systems that emphasise connection, recognition and support
resist punitive shortcuts that fracture belonging
Belonging is not an abstract ideal. It is a practical safeguard. When children experience mattering — when they feel seen, heard, valued and connected — they are safer, healthier, and more able to navigate challenges without harm.
At ECOCIC, we are committed to advancing responses rooted in belonging, relational understanding, and lived experience, not punishment. This means changing how systems define risk, how professionals interpret behaviour, and how communities respond to children who are being exploited.
We invite leaders, practitioners, and communities to join in rethinking responses to children in ways that uphold human dignity, social connection and genuine protection.
Written by: ECO