To believe that every adult in the country should undergo safeguarding training?

[TheOutlaws]

I’m a teacher in a secondary school.

Every year, my colleagues and I undergo (harrowing) safeguarding training. Every week, I report children to our safeguarding lead. Mumsnet threads are full of people recommending that adults keep secrets, which is antithetical to safeguarding.

If you see something untoward, or are party to a disclosure, you MUST report it. Victoria Climbié only reached hospital because a taxi driver disobeyed her ‘aunt’s’ instructions to drive her elsewhere. He took her to A&E instead, where she died of her injuries.

We all have a responsibility to report incidents, because they might be part of a bigger picture.

The Climbie case actually undermines the point you're trying to make.

The appropriate agencies had contact but then responded inadequately.

It wasn't a lack of initial reporting that failed but a lack of investigation/action - the changes that resulted were important as it placed additional duties on agencies.

The priority is not driving up reports but improving responses from agencies to the info they already have. Which costs money. I'd happily pay more tax to fund this but it is not a government priority.

But the idea we just need more reporting is a comforting fairy tale. Sadly.

If not training, I think an awareness is incredibly important
I reported a safeguarding concern about a child recently, after something I witnessed while out and about. I didn’t know the family, but I managed to get the car reg and report via the NSPCC

I would have done this without my safeguarding training, but the training gave me confidence and an awareness of what to report and to whom

I agree it would be great if safeguarding training was offered to anyone who wanted to do it. I don’t think there is a way you could MAKE anyone do it.

I do think wider organisations should think about their role and if safeguarding is needed. Places like Sky where their engineers visit homes should have it (maybe they already do). Maybe bus companies, taxi drivers etc. wasn’t it a taxi driver that raised concerns about Harold shipman too?

It’s interesting you mention Victoria climbe op because so many people who DID have safeguarding training saw her. They just didn’t recognise what should have been blatant and didn’t follow simple steps to check on her (speaking to her in her own language) and didn’t share information effectively to recognise a concerning pattern.

I think an awareness campaign by people like NSPCC about what adult can do when they are concerned is best. Pushing that and making more people aware where they can call to discuss their concerns big or small.

I'm also a teacher in a secondary school and DSL.

The training we give isn't adequate. The training we get isn't adequate

I've never seen any "keep quiet about it" posts on MN, but every day we see a handful of people being told "it's safeguarding" when it's nothing of the sort.

I've also been teaching since 1994 and DSL/its alternative name since 2015 and we've reported fewer than 10 children in that time.

Most adults "safeguard" without needing to watch a 10 minute video (or whatever this national training would involve)

But a lot more money would need to be pumped into the people dealing with the reports as they'd increase a millionfold. Just from Mumsnetters alone reporting the neighbours having the temerity to say hello to their child, or sitting in their garden when next door neighbour's children are playing.

There is always a space for more discussion in the public domain about good safeguarding practise with people understanding the importance of speaking out, knowing how to etc.

but to try to make training compulsory for everyone would be impossible on many levels.

I would add people also need to be confident about calling 999 for a child when needed. When worked duty as a social worker I had several calls along the lines of “I’ve just seen someone head butt their child in Morrisons”, where they didn’t call the police.

Exactly this.

But the legal system doesn’t value women and children.
Police are over stretched.
I may get zapped for this, but there is so much ( what I believe) abuse toward girls I see which we have to basically ignore because it’s ‘cultural’.

Fucking depressing

YANBU. I would welcome such training, in the same way I take first aid training.

Listening and taking everyone’s views on board. Thanks for your input.

I believe my training IS inadequate, but I don’t lead on safeguarding so my duty is just to report concerns.

I’m not a safeguarding expert, far from it. I have been teaching for 20 years. But I believe a significant number of the general population believe that it is not their responsibility to report concerns. Coming at it from a different angle, I am also concerned that politicians might be influenced into making laws undermining safeguarding.

I agree that it would be useful to have more clarity on which call to make. The terminology is not easy for everyone to interpret e.g. 'in immediate danger' is hard to assess once something has happened.

I don't agree with OP at all. Most of us don't need training because we have enough common sense already to know what should be reported.

I do training at my work, Dh does a lot for his company which is much bigger. Funnily enough ds2 heard one of Dh's 3 x trainings that day, safety, inclusion, well-being etc, and said to Dh :"Do they think you're stupid"?

I think OP is incredibly naive. The reasons why previous children eg climbie were missed is incredibly complex, and a 5 minute or even 5 hour training won't help.

Teachers legally have t9 do safeguarding training by their dsl and read the updated KCSIE every year so I find it very unlikely you don't do this.

I don't.

I work in early years and have renewed my safeguarding for all yesterday by attending a 3 hour face to face training session. I'm also DSL for my setting and have to do that training every 2 years. Inbetween these training courses, I attend safeguarding refreshers, plus I have to do an FA safeguarding course as I'm admin on DD's team.

I don't think people should have the amount of training as I do, but I do think there should be something out there to remind people it is everyone's responsibility to safeguard children. We did watch an NSPCC advert yesterday, but this was from YouTube, and I don't ever recall seeing anything on TV for a long time.

Saying all of this, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes' grandparents spent a lot of time reporting their concerns to social services, and nothing was done so I can see people thinking 'why bother'. What I didn't realise was the timescale after a report - it's 45 days before anything can happen, which for a child can feel like a lifetime.

@TheLongGloriesOfTheWinterMoon ,

Great post!

Generally, parents should be left to parent. Some are better at it, some worse. Your average MN keyboard warrior would be reporting anything that didn’t conform to their educated middle class norms: white processed bread fed to a child, always at home with no soft play opportunities, child being shouted at, no reading at home, the occasional smack etc etc

I often get the impression that many have no clue how ‘bad’ average parenting is and how people with little money or time struggle. Of course it would be nice if these families got support or in bad cases, the children went to adoring foster homes.

The reality is that ‘cared for’ children have far worse outcomes than those brought up in even mildly neglectful/abusive homes and the number of social workers available can only support the families most in need.

I think any skills to add to your bow is always a yes for me. Especially when it benefits your children.

The only issue is the trigger happy adults...
You would have every parent reported, social would be totally overwhelmed and miss the needed cases.

Any different parenting style would end up flagged 😅

I'm not sure that training would help though surely?
I don't really know or see any children much now my own is an adult, but if I did suspect anything at all about a child I did know about (like a neighbour or something), I would report it anyway. I've never so far felt any need to report anyone for this though.
But then I'd also report it if I saw someone breaking into a house in my street. Maybe I'm just a busybody and unusual but as far as I'm concerned it's just doing the right thing.
I'm not sure how training or watching a short video would change my actions.

I don’t disagree with you OP but I’m also a teacher and have to do half a day training every year. Not sure how 10 min video would cover it

Plus problems go deep, bad stuff - it's inherent in many of our institutions, a 5 minute video isn't the answer.

As an aside, Did you see the news last night? The 2 women badly/wrongly arrested at the Sarah Everard funeral, whilst receiving payouts, and a supposed apology,

the investigation (done by which organisation the news didn't state) found that the policeman had not acted unreasonably.

I mean how? Which governing body did that investigation?

I don’t understand why safeguarding training would be “harrowing”, and to be honest that description isn’t likely to encourage anyone’s attendance.

If not training, then a greater awareness and understanding that children do need help, and that everyone can and should report concerns to the proper authorities.

I also work in a school, and have mandatory safeguarding training every year. I also know how prevalent abuse and neglect actually is, it’s heartbreaking. After every serious case it’s always ‘why didn’t the schools notice and report it?’ But we only have them 6 hours a day, five days a week. We do our best, and report concerns all the time. Kids come into contact with so many other people - yet so often the advice given on mumsnet is ‘don’t be a grass’ or ‘you have only seen a snapshot’. Yet each of these occasions is a chance for authorities to build a picture of what’s happening in a family, or situation.

I think there’s a culture in Britain of ‘keep your head down and don’t interfere’ and it lets kids down. I also think people don’t realise how widespread abuse and neglect is - there’s the odd headline grabbing case, but there’s so much more! People should have a greater understanding of the issues.

(edited for typos!)

This is a very real concern.

You'd get parents unable to speak to each other about any parenting problems, for fear of being reported.

It would increase secrecy and put parents under even more pressure.

I think that the threshold is so high that even if you do report nothing gets done due to the lack of resources. They just aren't going to check on someone who is being battered or screamed at every night over someone who is having much worse happening to them.

Look at the amount of children in the news who did die and yet the neighbours kept reporting to the relevant authorities what was happening and yet still nothing was done. It doesn't really install any confidence in the system.

I agree with you although I'm not sure how it would be implemented. I once knew a family where I felt something wasn't right but I couldn't quite articulate it. I later found out that the school did refer them to social services. Now that I have had several years of safeguarding training due to my job as a TA I know that I was seeing signs of emotional abuse and would have no doubt about raising concerns if I was in that situation again.