Safeguarding

[littleredcaravan]

Just trying to profess and reflect on something that recently happened at work and whether I did the right thing.

I'm not going to detail the incident itself or my reaction because it may be recognised.

What would you do if you saw a person bringing a young child to school (it was a relative but not their parent) being unnecessarily forceful and physical with them?

Shoving, pushing, pull by the arm, and very impatient and unkind way of speaking to them.

The incident itself happened in school grounds and infront of staff, parents and children.

I think you'd have to be there but if in doubt you report.

I'd bring it up with their parent the next time I saw them.

If you work in a school you'll have a safeguarding procedure and if you followed that you did the right thing.

For the sake of anyone out there ever reading these sorts of posts - no one ever needs to agonise about this. Either you have a high level of safeguarding training, in which case you know how to proceed, or you don't, in which case you pass the information on to someone who does.

In this case you would pass the information on to the DSL at the school. Just so you know, they won't ever update you on the case - you pass forward what you saw, they say "thank you for letting us know", and then they proceed as necessary.

If in doubt, report. Even if it doesn't meet the threshold for social services or anything like that, it might be part of a bigger picture. We are always told to report anything at all - even something teeny. So you did the right thing.

Yes, this is spot on^^

You don't have to make the decision about what to do with the information at all, so just report it and leave it with DSL

You tell the school. @PickledMumion is spot on with everything they said.

If the staff did see it then it has probably already been recorded by the school but there is no harm at all in getting in touch with the school and reporting what you saw/heard to the safeguarding team.

Apologies if I wasn't clear. I am staff and obviously followed safeguarding procedures.

I was looking for responses regarding what you would do in the moment in terms of protecting that child.

Probably intercept, all smiles and breeziness, and whisk the kid into school and straight to the DSL/Head/DDSL/somebody else to sit with them whilst I went and found one of the former - if I were physically in a position to get there and not seeing it from across the playground/from upstairs where my account of what I had witnessed would probably be of more use when combined with calling another person nearer to go out and engage.

Obviously, also filling in CPOMs with a full description of what had happened, either way.

A few weeks ago DH was picking DD up from school and saw a mum shouting right in a toddlers face, grabbing them by the arm, pushing them away then pulling them back to shout again. He came home really worried about this little kid because if that's what happens in public, in front of loads of people they know, then what happens in private?

When he told me about it, I called the school, asked to speak to the safeguarding lead, and asked them to review the playground CCTV and determine if it met the threshold for a safeguarding referral.

I'd report it following safeguarding procedures.

At the time, if I deemed it safe to do so, I would gently intervene and try to get the child in school to do a 'special job' for me. If I didn't feel it safe for me to intervene I would seek a member of SLT who would deal with it immediately.

Yes, this^^. If possible, intercept and bring the child into school yourself but all light and smiley. You wouldn't confront the adult as I'm sure you know from safeguarding training. That could make things worse for the child.

In the moment if you're staff, intercept, say hi so and so are you in a rush do you want me to walk them on in for you and let you get away? Then just chit chat and keep the parent distracted with you without making it a big deal. Also gives you a chance to assess whether it's a mum who has had A MORNING and is going to be late with a child refusing to play ball or if it's something more sinister.

It depends for me how rough etc they're being if there's a backstory etc but ultimately it's not your job to decide that it's just your job to log/report it.