 Welcome to Pookie Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. I'm Pookie Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question is, does the COVID context mean children are less safe right now? And I'm in conversation with Elizabeth Rose. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Rose. I'm an independent safeguarding advisor and trainer. I started life working in school and I mainly work in schools now, and my safeguarding supports fans from early years through schools, colleges and to universities as well. And I also can support businesses and organisations. As well as this, I also work for a local authority. So I'm a safeguarding education advisor for a local authority in the West Midlands, and I work there part-time and then obviously help my consultancy work separate from that. And as I said, I started life as a teacher and I was a designated safeguarding lead. So I'm very much driven by wanting to improve conditions and outcomes for children and kind of affecting and supporting people who work in schools and the other organisation I've mentioned to kind of improve the lives of children and intervening if they are suffering any kind of abuse or neglect and supporting people to do that. And how did you end up taking on that kind of safeguarding role originally and why did it kind of capture your imagination if you won't? I think I always wanted to work in safeguarding and I did have some curriculum responsibilities actually when I was first a teacher. But prior to being teacher, I worked as a teaching assistant and I worked with children on a special project that improved their attendance and a lot of that was around supporting children who had very significant safeguarding issues. And my interest began there really. And so then I went into teaching, trained to be a teacher and over the course of my career kind of developed my knowledge and understanding of safeguarding. But I think the turning point came when I worked in Hackney and I was involved in setting up a... I don't want to call it a pupil referral unit because that's not what it was but it was a sort of support unit that we had that was offsite for children who were struggling with their behaviour. And again, there is often a very strong correlation between safeguarding and behaviour. And I was part of the team that helped to kind of set that up and worked in that area and worked down there with the students and that kind of ramped up almost my wish and desire to work in safeguarding specifically. Next while I was head of the year in safeguarding lead at a different school and they were both in London. And then just through my personal circumstances I wanted to move back to these midlands. I live in Leicestershire now. And so I applied for a job at the local authority in the West Midlands and wanted to support schools across the board really rather than working just within one school. And I think that came about really because I wanted to... Having had experience of being a designated safeguarding lead myself it can be a very isolating position and it can be very difficult. Well, it is very difficult. And the things that you're dealing with are very challenging and I wanted to put in support in the local authority that I was working in to kind of mitigate against some of the things that make it difficult. I mean the core that makes it challenging but also makes it rewarding is the really challenging and shocking stories that you hear sometimes about children and the challenges that they face when they go home or before they get home. And I wanted to implement things that could mitigate as much as possible against that for DSLs across the board really and headteachers and schools. And how has the role of the designated safeguarding lead changed in the current context? So we're thinking today about the COVID context and how that's impacting on children and how safe they are. As someone who looks out for overseas supports designated safeguarding leads what is their role looking like whilst kids have not been in school a lot of them? I think it's been really difficult because I think that weight of responsibility that people working within safeguarding and I'm not just speaking for designated leads it's the whole team of learning mentors, the pastoral team that work with children have had, still have that weight of responsibility still know what's happening in children's lives but don't have that direct daily impact to make things better. So the kind of almost worrying aspects are still there but the feeling that you're actually able to make a difference has been removed in many cases. I mean that most schools in the country across the country have had vulnerable children in and working with them and obviously key worker children as well or they've formed hubs together and they are sharing children across schools I guess but the vast majority of children haven't been in school and a lot of vulnerable children haven't been in school. I think as well it's the unknown and as a safeguarding practitioner your role is to know when or to identify when children are suffering abuse or harm or neglect and you can't do that really if they're not in front of you it's very difficult to do that if they're not in front of you so that kind of thing, the sort of drive to make things better that people who work in the pastoral area have has been kind of removed but the risks are heightened for the children. That's quite a toxic mix isn't it? Definitely and it's kind of playing out in various different ways because children aren't having that face-to-face contact with schools but as I say the risk is not reducing and in fact it's increasing in many ways so we've seen kind of the symptoms of this one of the symptoms is that the NSPCC have had a huge rising cause for help for both domestic violence and for issues across the board I think their cause have risen by a third during this crisis and it's because, well I think it's because that sort of face-to-face daily support that children have at school has been removed for the vast majority of children and so they're turning, which is a good thing they're turning to the NSPCC, they're turning to sources of support but there's that huge tranche of children that may be suffering and may be vulnerable to suffering who aren't turning to the NSPCC and they don't have those people who are looking out for them and I think a lot of the time and it's certainly my experience that is that you notice that there's something happening for a child rather than them telling you the vast majority of the time and if a child's calling the NSPCC or if they're contacting you at school they've reached a point where they're able to disclose what's happening to them but there are lots of children who won't have reached that point where things are happening and you are unable to notice that that's happening because they're not there in front of you So is it important at the moment that we are thinking about how to enable children to ask for help or is our role different to that? I think it's very much how we can enable children to ask for help and providing them with as much information about how they can do that as possible in different ways of doing that as possible that are all obviously suitable because I think it would take a lot for a child to pick up the phone potentially not their own phone depending on the age of the child ring their school obviously we're in the summer holidays now so it's different again but ring their school has to speak to somebody know that that person's going to be there and is going to answer the call get to the point where they can say something they might be in the home that's the majority of children that are abused or neglected are abused and neglected by somebody that they know or a family member get to a place where they can be on the phone and disclose that to somebody in school there are just so many compounding factors and barriers to that happening and I think it takes a lot of creative thinking to remove some of those barriers really and to create opportunities for children to seek help So what can help with that? Well I've seen a number of things working well so obviously at all times that schools are open and then there needs to be a safeguarding lead either the designated lead or a deputy available and so sharing that information regularly with children so having the standard things like having things on your website making sure that any newsletters that go home to parents contain safeguarding information but actually having kind of clinics, DSL clinics so you can phone this member of staff during this time and they will be available to speak to you so setting some exact times for a child and for children to call just removes all of those kind of shall I ring at this time, shall I not who will I get to speak to it removes all of that for a child and so they just know I'm going to ring, I'm going to speak to that person but there needs to be somebody there at all times because you know a child might not choose to that they might choose to ring at a different time having an email address can work really well so children can send an email to safeguarding app whatever the school is and then get an automated response with if this is an emergency use these contact numbers and then the safeguarding lead can ring them back and that's really helpful I think a huge issue is online safety and this has been just kind of exacerbated massively during this crisis so having information shared with children and families regularly about online safety as well is a preventative measure so I think the preventative measures are incredibly important and it's important that we continue to push that kind of agenda of safeguarding professionals and just trying to keep lines of communication open so we can't just rely on children contacting us when there's something wrong we need to be regularly contacting children vulnerable or not because there are so many things that are happening with families that are making children vulnerable that weren't necessarily identified as that before so making sure that there is regular contact with all children so that we're going to them and we're providing them with an opportunity rather than them having to carve out time and kind of come to terms with the fact that they got to contact us I think that's really important So you said that the things that might make children vulnerable have changed, it looks a bit different now can you talk to me a bit about that, what's changed? I think the number one thing is, as we've talked about the fact that children are not in front of professionals and don't have time away from environments that are potentially harmful in order to seek help so that's kind of the number one thing and that's just too... I think everybody uses the word unprecedented but it is too an unprecedented level at the moment and now we've got this additional period of time where children would obviously be off-school anyway during the summer I think the fact that children are spending so much more time online means that they are much more accessible to people who are perpetrators of harm, potential perpetrators of harm and the fact that in many cases which is absolutely not anyone's fault parents will be working and being expected to work full-time with their children doing online work or they need to look after their child or their children and do their work at the same time so children are having potentially more time unsupervised online just because of the nature of what's happening to everybody so I think that's a really significant risk I think that there's a danger that we think risk is reduced because children are at home and they're not facing those contextual issues maybe to do child exploitation, gangs, county lines, etc but that's a danger in itself that we think that risk is reduced when actually the children suffer harm within their family homes and within their families and at the hands of people that they know far more than people that they don't know and I think just this idea of the impact of the lockdown itself and we know that there's a kind of this idea of a trio of vulnerability so children are more vulnerable if their parents have mental health issues if they have drug or alcohol issues or if there is domestic violence within the home and those three things work together to increase vulnerabilities of children to all types of abuse and all of those things are being impacted by the lockdown situation that we've been in and this kind of ongoing crisis and if any of those things are challenging for a child it can mean that they are at greater risk of harm and then we've got kind of the wider issues we've seen a rise in hate crime for example because of the fact that people are looking for somebody to blame there's been a rise in hate crime for some time but there's been a significant rise in hate crime recently against people from south and east Asian backgrounds around this idea of who's to blame for what's happening and it might not necessarily occur to people who don't work within safeguarding but actually that's a real risk to children because it kind of opens the door to dangerous conversations that might happen online, dangerous thoughts and radicalisation as well so it's sort of all aspects really all aspects of safeguarding are being impacted by this crisis domestic violence is massively increasing so I went on a really interesting webinar that was provided to the Children's Services and the local authority that I worked with this week and they were talking about the fact that it's quite a well-known awful statistic that two women a week in England and Wales are killed by their partner and this has increased during lockdown to five women per week being killed by their partner so that domestic violence having a massive impact on young people and it's just so prevalent so prevalent in homes and the fact that increased pressure this being forced to be together people are not able to work money is tight it's all kind of swirling together to create really difficult environments for young people to work to live in and it's all building up a picture of real risk and is the kind of racial unrest does that have any relevance in safeguarding or not so much? Definitely and I think it's all as part and parcel of the risks around radicalisation and extremism really and the sort of there's various different aspects to this really so I'm just kind of thinking that through I think the fact that we have this fake news situation I think at the moment so there's a lot of misinformation around COVID-19 itself lots of kind of misconceptions that young people have around COVID-19 itself there's also this rhetoric of blame being used on social media a lot I read a study recently just going back to this idea of misinformation about COVID-19 that the people who were most likely during the strict lockdown conditions most likely to break lockdown conditions were people who got their news from YouTube and Facebook and people most likely to kind of adhere to the rules were people who consumed their news through mainstream media channels so I thought it was really interesting that the power of that misinformation that people were getting and I guess you might think why is this relevant to child safeguarding but actually it's sort of around trust and information and who's to blame and are our government protecting us and if children are having conversations with people online or within their family home around the government don't care about us and this is somebody else's fault it can quite easily spiral into conspiracy theories like the 5G is spreading COVID-19 for example it can kind of spiral in that way and then somebody looks for someone to blame so if there's somebody online a perpetrator online who sees this happening playing out on mainstream social media they say well actually it's this person's fault it's that group it's their fault because they're going out and doing this and it kind of works together to start that potential radicalisation process and I think this has happened obviously in Tan well it's not connected necessarily but it's happened in parallel with the Black Lives Matter discussions that we've had and then there were the kind of riots protests slash riots the following weekend from the far right and the extreme far right in London and it's put it on the agenda in lots of different ways and it's talked about online very regularly by lots of different people and young people are maybe consuming this and believing fake news or being drawn into conversations about whose fault it is because they're feeling isolated because they're feeling worried and they're feeling scared and they want to find answers and then they're not going to the place that is the supportive mechanism for educating them and allowing them to share views which they should be allowed to do when they're at school and ask questions and the misconceptions are not necessarily being addressed so although it seems like this kind of really big picture of all these different things happening around the world and how does this boil down to children being abused it's about that process of radicalisation and it's about the dangers in opening the door to kind of having conversations where it's about blame and about whose fault it is essentially. Wow it's a very complicated picture right now isn't it? Yeah it is I hope I've explained that as clearly as I have I have to say that the thing I just feel quite a lot of despair hearing all that and I wonder what can we do you know people who are listening who have either a specific safeguarding role or just generally an interest in the wellbeing of children what do we do, what is our role as adults right now to protect children? It's about sharing the correct information I think and using every method possible to deploy the correct information to children and support them in that and working with other agencies that might be involved with children to make sure that they're doing the same and the message is being sent out consistent so as I say you know children would normally come in and they might have a PSHE session or they might have an assembly about Black Lives Matter or they might have a session in tutor time or form time but that's not happening how can we share that information with children and families maybe it's around some of the curriculum work that they're being asked to do some research, some you know some resources that they're being provided with that can impart information that actually ultimately safeguards them is really helpful and maintaining as I say number one thing is maintaining that communication within people as well and children people can self radicalise but children are very vulnerable children are inherently vulnerable anyway because they're children but when they're online and they're unsupervised and they're speaking to people that they don't know that risk factor has obviously increased so if we can put as many kind of barriers into them speaking to people that they don't know online and educating them around the risks and continuing to do that throughout this and building that into everything that we do in September when children come back in whatever form that might be then I think they're the two factors really communication and education and continuing that even when they're not in front of us and you've talked quite a bit about the kind of the risks of online and you were speaking specifically about kind of radicalisation but there's there's kind of wider issues there aren't they you were talking earlier in the month about criminal child exploitation for example and some of the risks there can you talk a little bit more about the risks online and again what we might be able to do to mitigate those risks if that's any different than what you suggested yeah definitely I mean so as I say radicalisation is one aspect of it another incredibly worrying aspect of online safety at all times is child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse and that has been a major issue during Covid-19 again around the fact that children are more accessible online but also perpetrators of abuse have more time to dedicate to grooming young people connecting with the grooming young people and that obviously is incredibly dangerous I think one study found that there's been 8.8 million hits or there was 8.8 million hits on child sexual abuse or URLs including sorry excuse me URLs that contain child sexual abuse images in the first month or one of the first months of lockdown so there's just massive scope for children to suffer this type of abuse online and for perpetrators to access children so that's a huge risk and children are accessing are speaking to people that they don't know things like live streaming are becoming more common I mean we're obviously this is being recorded but we're live streaming now I don't know whether this would have happened necessarily or the training that I deliver would have happened in a live streaming way prior to lockdown it's becoming the norm and I have four or five meetings a day where I live stream I would never have had before so that kind of idea that may have been built into curriculum around don't live stream it's dangerous it's not relevant anymore in the context that we're in so children are and do speak to people that they don't know online regularly and live streaming is obviously a particularly dangerous aspect of this and I think I think the kind of exploitation side of things as well well children are child sex exploitation is a type of sexual abuse and there are just lots of different ways that children are at risk of this I think through online platforms so the coercion element to send indecent images of themselves is very common for children to do that and in fact I think it was a third of child sexual abuse images identified by the internet watch foundation I think in 2019 were self generated indecent images of children so they're being coerced and groomed into sharing images and then being blackmailed using those images so well we'll send them to your family or we'll put it online if you don't send more and that sort of spiral of risk and things becoming more and more extreme it's happening more because children are more accessible and spending more time online so how do we protect them because as you say we might have said in the past well don't live stream it's dangerous but you know my children today one of them has had a science lesson and a trumpet lesson that's been live streamed the other one's done a creative writing session that was live streamed with a tutor and both of them have spoken to various friends online and I wouldn't want them not to talk to their friends but they're ten and you know at what point does it go from their live streaming with a friend to you know something that we wouldn't want to happen is happening. Yeah well I think I would never have been a fan of don't live stream it's dangerous that is not sufficient education for a young person to have even prior to using live streaming but that is the reality of for lots of children that is what they've had obviously not all children you know there are and I know there are hundreds of schools across country that have amazing curriculum around online safety but it's just raising that point really to consider it and consider how you handled that before how schools handled that before but it comes back to the education for parents so the supervision and the appropriate controls and filters and that kind of thing and actually understanding the risk I think that I don't know whether everybody and I wouldn't know this if I didn't work in safeguarding and I didn't hear this kind of thing all the time I wouldn't necessarily know how quickly children can be drawn into things online there was a BBC investigation a few years ago now where they they asked that she was an adult woman but she looked quite young and they put her in a school uniform and she went on to the three kind of top live streaming websites and within 60 seconds she was receiving explicit messages, requests for indecent selfies offers to send her indecent images and I don't know whether parents necessarily know that it can happen in 60 seconds so I think what we can do is around the education for children and it's around the education for parents as well so even if you are sitting in a room with your child you know and you're kind of doing your work you need to be listening out for what's happening and you need to make sure that you know who they're speaking to and they know who they're speaking to as well and it's not just live streaming it seems online gaming chat kind of functions things like Snapchat young people can quite easily add people that they don't know onto their Snapchat contact list and connecting with people on various social media platforms it's important that people are taught in a sensitive way that appreciates that they need to speak to their friends and they are young people and they want to find out they want to use their phone and they want to go online equipping them with the skills to do so safely is really really crucial and I think it is particularly hard because I'm a parent who has in the past been quite strict about a lot of this stuff with my children but they are 10 and they really miss their friends and whereas there's online games that they play that in the past I've only allowed them to play privately and not to connect with their friends now that they can't see their friends it seems really cruel and wrong not to allow them to connect with their friends in those games but then it's difficult to know well you know how do you then stop other people talking to them and how do they know that the person who says he's their friend is their friend and it's very difficult isn't it? It is difficult and I think that's one of the factors that's increasing risk to children at this time actually people are families and parents are trying to support their children to continue to have a social life in incredibly difficult conditions and it is very challenging to do that and that is where the education and the conversations between the parent and child come in and also this idea of something that I find really challenging is when the point is really driven home to children that it's illegal to do things so it's illegal to send an explicit image of yourself for example which it is but it doesn't foster that sort of feeling of being able to disclose or to seek help or to tell somebody if something has gone wrong and actually a big part of keeping children safe is encouraging children to be able to disclose and to speak freely to their parents about what's happened online or what they've seen and parents having that conversation with their children around you won't be in trouble you must come and tell me this is the kind of thing to look out for this is why you need to look out for that and this isn't secondary age children this starts very young from as soon as children are using these platforms really these conversations need to start happening in an age appropriate way around being approachable and being able to take kind of disclosures for one of a better word but discuss with your child if they've seen something that's upset them or has been difficult for them so a really important thing is just to make sure that they know that they can come and ask for help if something goes wrong or they see something upsetting or they're not sure about something yeah definitely and also pointing them as well to if they don't want to speak to you as a parent where else can they go for help where you know it's safe and reliable so Seops for example the child exploitation on non-protection command that's a really useful website for young people to report something if they've experienced something upsetting or worrying or any kind of abuse online it is important I should also mention and I should have said this before that sometimes children won't know that this is happening to them so grooming obviously is an insidious way of getting children coercing children to do things without them necessarily realising that they're being abused so having that conversation with children about well what is grooming what does that look like for people who are trying to be their friends that they don't know people who are asking them not to tell anybody things that they've asked them or spoke to them or it's our kind of secret or secret or secret or secret or secret or secret or secret or secret or secret or secret or secret promising them things or saying well when we meet up I'll give you this you might be familiar or the people listening to this might be familiar with the story of Breck Bednar whose mum is really really really vocal in promoting safety and online safety now in response to what happened to him and he was groomed online through an online gaming platform and it was all about careers so this so the person who's grooming him said that he worked for an IT company and was a programmer and it was you know this kind of great future was offered and it wasn't it didn't have the kind of stereotypical aspects of grooming that maybe you might think of and so it's around thinking well how is somebody going to try and befriend you and how might they do that and why is that a problem and what should families do if they kind of you know perhaps they created this good environment at home and a child does say I think this you know that there's this relationship I'm a bit uncomfortable about someone's wanting to make friends with me or offering me things or you know some of those things that you said what should you do next you need to report it so I think a kind of knee-jerk reaction and a completely understandable one from a parents perspective and I'm a parent as well I've got a daughter that she's only 17 months at the minute so we're not quite onto that in this stage just yet but a sort of immediate reaction is well I'm going to take the phone I'm going to take the laptop I'm going to block this person and that will be the end of it but that's not the end of it because your child might not be the only victim and it's likely not to be the only victim and there are other ways that people who want to contact children can get in contact with them and just because they're blocked on one platform it doesn't mean to say that they can't access your child in another way and actually firstly the safeguarding leads within school are outstanding sources of support for families for this kind of thing so they will all have had training to safeguard children they will all have training to safeguard them in terms of online safety so going to the school if your child is at school and speaking to them about that is a really good thing to do always ring well 999 if it's an emergency or 101 if it's not an emergency but to speak to the police and report crime and you can go through the COPS which is an online portal for reporting online exploitation of young people as well so I would urge people to report it wider than just taking action for your child it's really important to report it and have that go through the public channels as well and how do you support a child who's kind of had that experience again would you suggest that people talk to the safeguarding leader at school or is there particular things that we would do to follow up and protect them from future harm yeah I mean any child can be vulnerable to this so some children obviously have additional vulnerabilities that make them more susceptible to this kind of abuse so if a child has SCMD for example special educational needs and disabilities if they are residential care where they are looked after child they might have more vulnerabilities there are lots of different things that make children more vulnerable but any child can be a victim of grooming and online abuse so I think it's about making sure that that child is obviously reassured that they haven't done anything wrong that this is something that's happened to them by somebody who's done the wrong thing and then listening to them and supporting them and lots of schools will implement or have access to councillors for example and kind of that support around coming to terms with the trauma of what's actually happened if it's got to that stage and then really really robust education so it's not just about responding to this has happened and we'll put in support for this incident it's about thinking through how are we going to stop this happening again how are we going to involve the parents are we going to involve any other agencies in protecting this child how are we going to get the child on board with protective behaviours and staying safe from this point forward and having that package of support around the child is really important who's in the kind of wider family network that can support with this as well and so we've talked quite a lot about the gloom and doom about Covid and how there are kind of increased risk for children right now and it's maybe harder to access and support but is there anything about the current context which is kind of cause for hope have you seen any good new practice or ways in which children have been kept more safe or things are better I think different children and different families have reacted in completely different ways so some children who are who struggle with kind of school avoidance or have real issues with their attendance actually there's been loads of really good things that have happened for those children that mean that they're more included within the school community so the online learning is working really well for them and they're actually having much more contact with people in school than they ever did before because of the fact that their attendance was low prior to this lockdown and there's been a lot of talk about blended learning and how we're going to incorporate the kind of teaching that's been happening during the period of lockdown when children come back in September or some children might come back we're not sure exactly what that will look like I guess but how we can continue to use that for children who are either in hospital or they are struggling with their mental health and well-being and they're unable to come to school or any of those reasons why they're not attending and making sure that we kind of include that and think of that going forward it's opened up doors to different ways of working I think in order to reach children that we weren't necessarily meeting before which I think has been a really positive thing And how about how we reach those who work with them as well because obviously we've been working together looking at providing safeguarding training online in new ways than certainly we've done as an organisation before and we had that first session that you ran for us where we had three and a half thousand people who wanted to come and whilst we did limit that session the idea that you could reach that kind of number of people that quickly with a really topical issue was I thought quite exciting Well definitely and I think before the advent of the kind of live streaming training it was very much contained in much smaller groups and throughout the year so therefore potentially less responsive to what was happening in the context that we've got and yeah definitely as you say reach fewer people and I think what people need to work in safeguarding is they need up to the minute information about what the risk to children are right now and what to do about it and I think, oh I hope that's why the session that we ran before was so popular because people wanted to know what's happening for the children that we work with when they're not in front of us what are the risks to them and kind of that up to the minute content I think is really important we do have, safeguarding needs have to have refresher training every two years but they also have to keep on top of developments as they come up as well and I think that live streaming training and opening it up to a bigger audience in the way that we did in the way that you do with your training I think will have a massive impact on the numbers we can beat and therefore the number of children that we can protect and when I plan training I always keep the children in mind so what, if this was my child and they were suffering this type of abuse what do I want their teachers and what do I want their safeguarding needs to know to make a difference to them and I always think about that when I'm planning training and when I'm standing in front of people delivering training or sitting at my computer now and delivering training and I think that the amount of reach and the kind of wide net that we can cast with doing training online will mean that those children are better protected and that's my aim. We've had quite a lot of discussions about wanting to try but wanting to kind of revolutionise really I guess how safeguarding training happens and I've been excited to work with you on this because I think we both kind of want similar things here but I have this view that safeguarding training and child protection training for many years it is a box that has to be ticked isn't it and that sometimes it can become a bit procedural and what we really want is to genuinely empower people to act and to keep children safe and so we've been thinking together about how do we take training from just being what has to be done to something that people kind of engage with in a meaningful way and how can you know what can you talk a little bit about how you think you make that happen because that's why we're working together isn't it because that's your belief too that it needs to impact. Yeah I think a range of ways of delivery I think is a good start because you need to appeal to the fact that people who work in schools at any level are incredibly busy all the time and I am talking mainly about schools because that is the bulk of my of the work that I do and actually going out on a whole day's training every two years is exactly what people need to do to come out of their context speak to what the professionals learn and that's really important and that's a really key cornerstone I think of safeguarding practice and training but also sometimes you just need a 15 minute video that you can watch when you want to so a kind of on-demand type video because you want to just refresh your memory about something or you just need to find out a little bit more about a topic that wasn't covered in your refresher training or you've had an issue raised about something that maybe you feel a little bit less confident about and you just need to access that training there and then and it to be ready and that's the kind of thinking that I've had when I've been recording some of the on-demand training that we've been working on together what is it that people need in that moment the key information about safeguarding issues and then sometimes we'll have an issue like you know we'll have a situation like we've had with Covid I mean it's an extreme example but all there will be something happening in the country nationally or even globally where there needs to be something very responsive so the kind of live shorter sessions packed full of information are really important in kind of responding immediately to what's happening and I think also obviously a safeguarding needs listening will know there is a huge weight of responsibility on them for training the rest of their staff and you can't safeguard in isolation you need all of your staff to be the eyes and ears and be looking at what's happening for children from the minute they arrive to the minute they go home and also talking to them about everything that happens after they go home as well and so training staff throughout the year and making sure that they've got everything that they need constantly drip fed to make sure that it's always on the agenda is the other section really of safeguarding or one of the other sections of safeguarding training is kind of keen to develop through the on-demand courses or in various ways we're kind of in discussion I guess about lots of different ways of safeguarding people and I am always open to the suggestions of what people need I think there's nothing worse than thinking well I know what people need and I'm going to do this it's much better to ask them what they need and then tailor something to them and I think that's what we do really in working together in my training practice more widely and it kind of comes back to what I said at the beginning really about the reason why I want to work in why I am a safeguarding advisor both for the local authority and independently and it's about doing everything I can to make it easier for those frontline practitioners to safeguard children to ultimately improve outcomes for children and actually training is a big part of that for them and supporting them in the workload I think around thinking through and implementing training for everybody else and you said before which I think is really important to acknowledge that when you are a safeguarding lead there is a huge weight of responsibility on you feel that really keenly and that can be quite a burden to carry actually can't it the stakes are really high so what's your advice to people who are in that role about how they kind of look after themselves as well because I worry about that quite a lot I do as well and I worry about it because people often tell me how difficult it is and as part of my local authority role I run DSL briefings and often I will have people stay behind at the end just to have a little chat about something that they've been managing or a question that they've got and sometimes it's just reassurance of did I do the right thing here and actually safeguarding leads need somebody to talk to and that is approachable, neutral and experienced and has that level of expertise in order to be able to support them and I think safeguarding supervision has been a huge conversation recently for education because it's not something that has been has ever been statutory and it's still not statutory for anybody other than early years and it was in the draft I thought it wasn't it was in the consultation document for keeping children safe 2020 that it was in the role of DSL and then it was taken out of the the one that's coming forward is the draft I didn't realise I'd read in the draft them just assumed because it doesn't usually change significantly does it this one did change and I think it's because of the Covid context but it has been taken out so it's a support rather than supervision but it is in the inspection framework so it's in the inspection framework for early years education settings so it's mentioned there and it says that effective safeguarding arrangements include supervision but I think supervision because supervision is so new for schools the kind of supervision that schools need is still developing and the kind of support that practitioners in schools need and the number of people in schools that need that support is just huge and I think it's a very kind of big conversation about how we can do that and how we can implement that to make sure that designated safeguarding needs are supported and that they have that opportunity to speak to and have somebody as a kind of sounding board but also have that reflective kind of integrated supervision session which is just theirs and their specific time that they can talk about what's happening but also it needs to involve that case oversight so it's got to be the support it's also got to be around keeping at the heart of it the safeguarding of the child the mental wellbeing of the member of staff and the kind of health and sort of support for the member of staff but also what impact is this having on the child how can we take your concerns or take the work that you've been doing and how can we support the young person that you're telling me about as well, it's kind of part and parcel of the same thing really and do you provide that kind of input in your local authority role is that something that happens likely to you? Yeah so that's something that is that we're working on actually and we're going to, I'm going to provide train the trainer supervision across the local authority for people to learn how to do that essentially in their setting and support their staff but it is difficult because lots of the time a safeguarding lead will be a headteacher and they will then come on the train the trainer to support the rest of their staff but they need to be supported themselves and that's where I think the role of external supervision comes in and there's lots of really amazing work going on with external supervision across the country and supervision and education across the country and I'm excited to see where that goes really Yeah I think we can think about how we can support and help with that as well. Do you think supervision has to happen face to face or do you think it is possible for that to happen safely online? I think it needs to happen face to face to start with I think if I was supervising someone I would find it very difficult to form that meaningful relationship with them having just met them online and I think it's also really important to understand their context as well and go to them and I'm talking specifically for supervision for education here you know go to where they're working and when they're speaking to you understand the context that they're in I think for me as a supervisor that would be very important and then I think once you've done that work and you have that existing relationship then yeah online is an option but I think the groundwork needs to be done in person That's a big ask then actually isn't it that's a big one How do you look after yourself so you end up supervising those who are leading and then who looks after you? Well it's a good question really I think I have a support network within the organisation that I work with in my local authority and I'm very well supported in that and then I guess through conversations that I have with kind of peers and with safeguarding with all of the people that I work with I think safeguarding is a very difficult arena to work in but I think practitioners who work in it are very supportive of each other as well within education and I think that's really helpful and I think that sets a good ground level really for this implementation of supervision because of the fact that people want to support each other I hope that they do and I guess it comes through my local authority role and the support that I get from my colleagues there but you are right I think it's something that highlights that highlights that there is a dearth in this area I guess at this point and I think it will and I hope over the next few years it will really ramp up and people who work in this area will have access to high quality supervision as well and have you found that becoming a mum and having your own daughter has that made your job harder? Has it made it more kind of real? It's quite a leading question that I have found that my work's much harder now it feels a lot more real I have my own girls Yeah I think I would agree with you and I'm hesitating there because I don't want to come across as saying that you don't understand unless you've got a child I definitely do not believe that but I do think that there is you can't help sometimes that have that well what if this, you always think as a safeguard of my dinner what if this was my child because you have the child's best interest at heart and you think what is the best for this child and what can I do what is the best for this child I think when you have your own child there's an actual concrete child that you're thinking about there and that's the difference and I have found that and I have found that some of the research that I've done and some of the, I mean as an advisor you do extensive research constantly really about what's happening in the world of safeguarding in serious case reviews, serious practice reviews and I do think that the way I approach them and the way I think about them is slightly different to the way that I did before not in terms of the output so the output and how I communicate it to people is the same but I think the kind of maybe the emotional impact on me is different so you have to perhaps look after yourself a little bit more yeah I think so I think so and that's why I think I enjoy the kind of tandem working of working independently and having a structured place of work which is within children's services because I have that support network and I think it's difficult if you're working completely on your own in terms of your own emotional needs you never thought that maybe a more cheerful line of work might I feel really passionate about safeguarding, I really do and I think it's just so crucial and it's so crucial to have people in the arena that are passionate about it because when you say you're passionate about safeguarding what you actually mean is you're passionate about keeping children safe and I don't think it's a bad thing that things emotionally affect you as long as you're able to manage that obviously and it's to the benefit of the children ultimately that your work is reaching and I think that that drives everything that I do so although it's challenging although it's difficult ultimately it's making a positive difference and I think it's a great thing and intervening when children need help and there's nothing for me there would be nothing more rewarding than that I've heard it said before that the point at which this kind of work stops emotionally impacting on you is the point when you should stop would you agree with that? Yeah I definitely do agree with that because then and actually at that point I think that's where an individual would really need some supervision and if you're completely desensitized and if you've become completely desensitized then you're not responding necessarily or you're not able to respond potentially in the way that it's the most effective I always say in my training and I think sometimes people have to take a second to think about what I mean but when people start to say well I know everything about safeguarding means that they don't know anything about safeguarding you know it gets to that point and you can be as experienced as anybody you can have worked in safeguarding for so many years but there will always be something that happens that is unexpected and in fact we use that phrase all the time expectly unexpected and actually if you're getting to a situation where either you're emotionally desensitized or where you think well I've seen everything now you're not open to spotting new risks or new challenges and I think it's always important to challenge or kind of conceptions of yourself almost and to challenge well am I thinking of everything am I thinking of every angle here what could I have missed it's really really important so it's a slightly different thing it's a slightly different point I guess what I say in training to the question that you asked but I think it's the same sort of idea that you need to remain emotionally responsive and you need to always be thinking what else can I do and then are you remaining kind of with your finger on the pulse really and able to safeguard children in the issues that are coming up for them it's a challenge isn't it because it is such a big responsibility and although we think often about our safeguarding leads and those with a specific responsibility actually this is the responsibility of every single person working with or supporting children isn't it and then we look at it in this current context it's difficult isn't it it's hard to know how best to help and make a difference it is and I also think that raises a really good point about safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and it's also important to think about when you go back to school or obviously you've been there all along but when things return in September the kind of issues that your staff will have faced during lockdown so thinking about when you were in September how you're going to talk about children might have experienced domestic violence or mental health issues or drug and alcohol abuse when actually the people sitting in front of you in that training might also have experienced some of those things so thinking about their emotional needs as well and you need them to be prepared with all of the information to safeguard children when they come back and there is expected to be a huge influx in referrals for children to social care when children come back to school fully in September but also thinking about your staff and what might have happened to them and how you're going to phrase training for them is really important because you don't know what kind of experiences they've had as well I always tell people to imagine that front and centre is someone who has got direct living experience of whatever it is we're teaching about and that if you keep them safe you keep everyone safe but I don't know if you have any other ideas I think that summarises it really exactly just thinking and that is difficult when you're delivering an annual refresher that has a huge amount of content in it and you are trying to boil it down into a certain period of time but kind of on that that's where this idea of the drip feeding comes in you know it's more effective to cover what you need them to know to safeguard children that day what's the key information that you need them to take away from that session but then next week we'll do something with a bit more time on this issue and doing it throughout the year means that you have time to think through what you've just said about how we're going to present this and it's not just to kind of rushed here's a slide on domestic violence here's a slide on abuse and it's kind of thought through and spread out a bit more I think is more effective and hopefully that's where the hard training that you're kind of feeling for us at the moment will really help because people will be able to go and digest that at their own pace won't they and hopefully take it on board over a period of time rather than having to do it all in one hit Yeah definitely and I've designed those in order for them to be applicable to all members of staff but also with sufficient detail for a safeguarding specialist to refresh their knowledge and to learn something new so they would be really useful to have people watch maybe during the course of a week and then you do a shorter training session answering questions or doing a Q&A and I know we've talked about the potential for us doing a Q&A following some of those on demands as well but kind of using them to give yourself more time and space really to explore issues in more detail because they have that kind of flexible element of people watching them at different times and you don't have to again as the safeguarding lead stand in front of everybody and tell everybody run through kind of a list of slides about a particular issue you've got a toolbox really to appeal to to different members of staff and to be accessed at different times Watch this space I'm really excited about it I don't know if that's sad or not but I am really excited What thought would you like to leave people with what thought would you like to close with I think the most important thing that I've said I guess in the discussion or that we've talked about in the discussion today is about lines of communication and to having lines of communication with them open whether they're in front of you or whether they're at home and no matter what issue we've talked about or what issue has happened for children that we may or may not know about we need to be a constant as safeguarding professionals we need to be a constant in their lives they need to know that they can come and tell us and that they will have an appropriate response to them and we need to give them opportunity to do that so when they come back in September after the holidays don't assume that they can remember that they can talk to anybody about their concerns or this number of staff is helpful for this thing to induct them again so as part of your processes for getting children back into school make sure that safeguarding is on that induction and what you can do if you need to seek help that's the course of lockdown and then if children if we're in a situation where there are children not at school then it's about making sure that you're contacting them and having those you are taking responsibility for those lines of communication rather than putting that onto the child to seek help if they need to I think that's what I want people to take away as the most important point really for safeguarding during this time