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.

Many referrals come from existing contacts - school, GP, health visitor, other health professionals plus of course the family/social network.

I'm not suggesting no one should ring, people ring now. I'm saying the priority is helping the children who are referred by having properly funded services.

I think encouraging Sue at no16 to consider herself responsible for safeguarding the nation might result in a lot of inappropriate reporting.

That’s obviously very different from the normal “passing in the street” situation, as I’m sure you know. In that instance I’d call the police.

I don't want compulsory training .

People used to use something called their brains. Nobody needs safeguarding Training . Everybody knows how children are meant to be treated the same as they know how elderly people are meant to be treated. If they aren’t flagging it and helping those children and elderly out then it’s a decision. Training would not change that.

I disagree. If people using their brains in the past was enough, Jimmy Savile and other abusers wouldn't have got away with it.

A TV campaign about safeguarding might be beneficial op. Ignore all the sneerers.

As I clearly stated in my post, they knew exactly what was going on, and they made a decision not to report it. That won’t change with the TV campaign. It will change with a complete, shifting mindset. Do we want that shift in mindset? After what we saw with Covid where people were going around like the bloody SS reporting each other for having a walk. It’s an interesting debate. Some children would definitely be saved. At what cost to society. Especially if when we catch these perpetrators, we do little with them.

I don’t see that it is practical to force every adult in th country to undertake training and more importantly many of the children who have been murdered by family members were known to social service's. That is where the real failure lies , training has proven to be insufficient. What about consequences for failures of the professionals who are supposed to be protecting these kids? Sarah’s father was known to the authorities for domestic violence. Why on earth was he given custody of 5 kids!!!

Savile is an example of someone who had too much power and influence to be stopped. Institutional corruption isn't the same problem as lack of safeguarding awareness.

It’s virtually meaningless without a corresponding increase in resources to those that then have to act on the alerts. Many of the kids who are killed by their parents are known to SS already. It isn’t lack of awareness in some cases, but lack of capacity.

The other problem with the plan is it would inevitably fall to women. Many people in this country are over alert - a man can’t go anywhere near a child, let alone try and take them to safety, without risking becoming a safeguarding issue himself. I can’t see that suddenly changing because all the men have now watched a short video.

Trust me, I was abused by my naice middle class parents and none of those in safeguarding roles believed me when I raised concerns, because they’d met them and they seemed just lovely! I do feel strongly about this. But I don’t think this is the way to change it.

I think safeguarding measures in schools have been a good thing. There used to be a lot more abuse in schools, children's homes, churches etc and abuse in the home used to be ignored. There are always going to be people who think we shouldn't bother and should continue like the good old days, but the op starting a thread about how safeguarding can be improved is a good thing and not to be sneered at.

No, not all,adults come into contact with kids most days.

If you are a parent of children, yes
If you are a parent of adult children, no probably not
If you are a teacher or other professional that involves working with children, yes
If your job doesn't involve children, no
If you aren't a parent and not in a job that doesn't come into contact with children - no.

That's not all adults and your suggestion is ridiculous.

I'm actually sick of hearing about safeguarding to be honest.

What percentage of the population do get trained in safeguarding already?

school staff
nhs staff - I include staff in GP surgeries, dental practices opticians etc in that
registered childcare staff
anyone who volunteers with a club/activity for under 18’s (football, scouting, music teachers etc)

would that cover a majority of adults?

The NSPCC are a waste of space. I tried to report a concern online, they said they would call me back to discuss but they could only try twice. They called me twice during work hours, about 5 minutes apart when I was in a meeting and couldn’t answer.

The entire population doesn't need to do formal training - you would want more along the lines of short public information films. Like for road safety, smoke alarms, children not playing on farms near open slurry pits.

It wouldn't be difficult to come up with 30/60 second long short videos showing different adults having brief contact with a vulnerable child and dismissing obvious concerns, to a tragic end, and then a message of "keeping children safe is everyone's business - if in doubt, report it".

I'm shocked that that's the only training you had as a teacher. I don't see people face to face, my job is entirely paper based, and I regularly have several days of safeguarding training.

Every adult should, because they are human, be looking out for the most vulnerable and we need more normalisation of speaking up about things that make us uncomfortable and know the appropriate channels through which to speak up. I think this is about reinforcing social norms around protecting children and believing what they say.

I don't think safeguarding training, per se, is the way to do it. My MIL, who is an NHS social worker with safeguarding training who works with vulnerable adults, is married to a man convicted of child sexual abuse (went to prison, was under a sexual harm prevention order when they got married). My SIL is an NHS psychologist with safeguarding responsibilities in her clinical role. Both of them hid the fact that MIL's partner was a convicted sexual predator to facilitate his contact with my dc.

Safeguarding training does nothing until we change the norms around what's acceptable in society. At the moment, for too many, it's keeping family secrets and avoiding bringing shame on the family, very stiff upper lift, keep the status quo, over protecting children and speaking up about abuse.

The likes of Jimmy Saville got away with it because of clout power and position people did report them but the abused and reporters were silenced and not believed or not deemed important enough. I mean some of these despicable men were "knighted' and did charitable work nobody cared about the vulnerable they abused.

So it had nothing to do with safeguarding or awareness training.

Much as I agree that training or education should be promulgated, the only way I could imagine would be to put into a bite sized advert and relentlessly included in populist advertising on satellite channels. This is what "cremate dead grannie and have a piss up instead of a funeral" or "give money as you are personally responsible for Abdul/Aisha or Ashanti dying of starvation " or "You can save this dog from dying".
And people will press pause and fast forward past all the propaganda.
I hate to be a cynic, but ....

Thanks everyone for your responses, appreciate you taking the time to reply.

Please don’t get cross or be offended about the suggestion, I’m not about to lobby my MP or make you watch a video. I agree with awareness-raising as an alternative, perhaps a campaign.

Couple of clarifications:

1. My safeguarding training isn’t ideal and changes need to be made.
2. I’m not a safeguarding lead
3. It does sound like safeguarding training is inconsistent across institutions (again, nothing to do with me!)
4. If your reaction is ‘not my concern’, then we definitely need improved awareness of safeguarding.

Nope that would even cover probably 10%of adults.

The problem is that people are reporting things, but the services are so stretched that people fall through the net. I agree with whoever said that proper investment in social services, NHS, schools, sure start centres etc would be more effective

It would be harder for someone to go into a school, children's home, hospital, church, TV show and abuse girls than it was in the past because of safeguarding. It's no good people throwing up their hands and saying "Nothing to be done. No point discussing it. No point changing anything we did in the past."

It's not only famous people that were able to get away with abusing kids in schools, children's homes etc in the past

Very true, but Savile is not an example of a predator who could've been stopped if people had been smarter.

And actually, it's really important we spell out exactly what the root cause was there. Impunity. All the training in the world doesn't tackle the problem of some people having too much clout to be safeguarded against.