From Referral to Recovery: What Good Prevent Practice Looks Like in 2026 is no longer just a question of identifying ideology or processing referrals. As Abu Ullah, a Prevent Strategy Manager for Brent Council, explained at the Preventing and Countering Extremism in the UK Conference 2026, effective Prevent work now depends on understanding complexity, acting early, sharing responsibility, and building support around vulnerability as much as risk.
The session, which is now available to watch on demand as part of the Preventing and Countering Extremism in the UK Conference 2026, offered a practical view from Brent, Sutton, and the North London Cluster Hub, which supports seven North London boroughs. Drawing on operational experience, Abu outlined what “good” looks like when the Prevent landscape is shifting fast.
Why Good Prevent Practice in 2026 Starts with Complexity
One of the clearest messages from the session was that Prevent practice cannot stand still. Abu described a changing risk picture where online harm remains a major driver, and where cases increasingly involve mixed vulnerabilities rather than a single, clearly defined ideology.
This matters because a narrow focus on ideological labels can leave significant risk unaddressed. Some individuals may present with violent fixation, harmful online interests, grievance-based thinking, or exposure to extremist narratives without fitting neatly into established categories. For safeguarding teams, the priority is therefore to look at vulnerability, susceptibility, behaviour, and context together.
In practice, this means Prevent must sit within a wider safeguarding and public protection framework. It should not be treated as a specialist bolt-on team that operates separately from education, health, children’s services, community safety, or policing. The more complex the risk picture becomes, the more important shared systems become.
From Referral to Recovery: What Good Prevent Practice Looks Like in 2026 in Local Governance
Abu placed strong governance at the centre of good Prevent delivery. Effective practice begins with senior oversight, clear accountability, and multi-agency structures that do more than simply bring people into the same meeting.
Good governance should create space for challenge. Partners need to scrutinise local risk assessments, test whether delivery is addressing actual local risks, and ensure that activity is not reduced to counting training sessions or outputs. The focus should be on whether the system is reducing risk, improving safeguarding responses, and strengthening organisational resilience.
Prevent as Part of the Mainstream Safeguarding System
A key point from the session was that Prevent has been operating long enough to be embedded into mainstream safeguarding. Yet in some areas, it can still be seen as an externally funded function that “does its own thing.” Abu challenged this mindset, arguing that Prevent must be integrated into local systems, with clear links to existing safeguarding pathways, case management processes, and partnership boards.
For local authorities and partner agencies, this means asking practical questions: Who owns the risk? Who provides support? Who follows up when a case is closed? And how does learning from Prevent feed into wider safeguarding improvement?
Getting Referral Thresholds Right
Another major theme was the need for clarity around thresholds. Abu highlighted an important distinction: the threshold for making a referral is not the same as the threshold for a Section 36 decision on whether there is reasonable cause to believe someone is at risk of radicalisation.
Referrals often happen earlier, when a professional, community member, or agency has a concern but does not have access to the full multi-agency picture. This can lead to both over-referral in some sectors and under-referral in others. Schools and statutory safeguarding partners may refer more frequently, while community referrals can remain harder to generate.
Risk-Led, Not Label-Led, Decision-Making
Abu argued for a risk-driven approach rather than a label-driven one. If a case does not fit neatly into an ideological category, that should not automatically prevent deeper consideration. Professional curiosity is essential: practitioners need to look beyond the surface, explore cumulative concerns, and ask whether fragmented pieces of information point to a bigger picture.
This is especially important when dealing with complex or ambiguous cases. Healthy challenge between police, local authorities, education, health, and other partners should be part of the process, not seen as a problem.
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The Role of Channel Panels in Effective Prevent Practice
Channel panels remain a central mechanism for case management and support planning. According to Abu, good Channel practice is proportionate, purposeful, and individualised. It involves all relevant partners, not one agency driving the conversation alone.
Strong Channel coordination should record actions, monitor progress, track risk and protective factors, and evidence changes through ongoing assessment. It should also recognise that support does not only come from police or Home Office intervention providers. Many needs are wider safeguarding needs, requiring input from health, education, social care, youth services, and local voluntary or community partners.
Avoiding the Cliff Edge After Case Closure
Abu also raised the challenge of disengagement. Moving away from extremist narratives, harmful material, or violent fixation is not always linear. There can be disguised compliance, setbacks, or longer-term vulnerabilities that remain even when counter-terrorism risk appears to have reduced.
Good practice therefore includes planning for what happens after Channel involvement ends. Ongoing support, monitoring responsibilities, and possible review points, such as six-month or 12-month check-ins, can help avoid a cliff edge where an individual loses support too abruptly.
Online Harm and the New Frontline of Prevent
Online harm featured heavily in Abu’s assessment of current and future Prevent work. Schools, parents, and community organisations are increasingly concerned about young people accessing harmful online spaces that are difficult to monitor. Passive blocking systems may stop some content, but they do not always help adults understand what a young person is trying to access or why.
Abu referenced concerns around harmful online narratives, violent fixation, school shooting ideation, and echo chambers that repeatedly push damaging material back towards individuals. Brent has piloted work with counter-terrorism policing colleagues around parental control tools deployed through Channel, alongside wider projects aimed at professionals, young people, and parents.
The practical lesson is clear: Prevent teams need to build digital awareness into safeguarding practice. Parents, schools, and professionals all need support to understand online risk, respond proportionately, and avoid dismissing concerning behaviour as simply “online talk.”
Learning, Regional Working, and Measuring Impact
For Abu , good Prevent practice is also learning practice. Assurance inspections, benchmarking, case reviews, and local experience should all feed into improvement. However, learning should not be inspection-led only. Systems change, staff move roles, organisations restructure, and risks evolve. Prevent delivery must adapt with them.
The North London regional model was presented as one way to strengthen consistency. Risks do not stop at borough boundaries. Online networks, local radicalising voices, harmful organisations, and community concerns can affect neighbouring areas at the same time. Regional collaboration allows boroughs to share learning, develop projects, and support areas with fewer dedicated Prevent resources.
Beyond Counting Activity
Measuring impact remains difficult. It is not always possible to prove what might have happened without intervention. However, Abu suggested that impact can be considered at system, practice, and individual levels. Stronger governance, clearer thresholds, shared ownership, better information sharing, and improved confidence across partners are all meaningful signs of progress.
Building Prevent Systems That Can Act Early and Work Together
From Referral to Recovery: What Good Prevent Practice Looks Like in 2026 is ultimately about building systems that can act early, think clearly, work together, and respond to complexity. Abu Ullah’s session shows that effective Prevent delivery is not defined by one intervention or one agency. It depends on governance, professional curiosity, shared safeguarding responsibility, and support that continues beyond the initial referral.
For practitioners, the takeaway is practical: review your thresholds, strengthen your information-sharing culture, challenge label-led assumptions, and make sure Prevent is embedded in the wider safeguarding system. To explore the full session and wider conference discussions, watch the Preventing and Countering Extremism in the UK Conference 2026 On Demand.
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