Today’s daily dose of LangCleg sense

[OnlyTheTitOfTheLangBerg]

Because it bears repeating.

would be all over a thread ARGUING about it, that should have said.

You can NEVER agree to keeping something confidential with regards to safeguarding. If someone does, it is a huge red flag.

There is a difference between an adult approaching a child and asking for a private chat and a child approaching say a teacher and requesting a confidential chat

Not in safeguarding terms there’s not. Children have a right to be safe regardless of who initiated the conversation.

How odd that someone who claims to have been a school governor thinks otherwise. Perhaps the clue is in your user name ?

One of the most basic tenets of safeguarding is not to promise confidentiality.

I do not work or volunteer with children in any capacity and even I know that, Hooves.

I quite literally said it in my post

They were never promised confidentiality but there were guidelines for when that conversation wouldn't be shared with parents

From my post above.

HearHoovesThinkZebras - those of us who have had safeguarding training know that promising confidentiality to children is not professional and not on. We are told to tell the children that we cannot keep secrets and that we will have to pass on information to safeguarding leads should we feel that there is a safeguarding issue. This is why it is so important that people who have access to children have training or at the very least are informed about safeguarding protocol. It is nothing like having an informal chat with a family member or personal friend. This is for the protection of children and it's worth keeping that in mind when thinking about the systems in place to protect them.

No, 'guidelines' aren't how it works at an individual teacher (or whatever) level.

You have a named safeguarding expert to whom everyone knows to refer these situations.

They have the advanced safeguarding training to evaluate what should be done.

'Refer it to X, the safeguarding lead' IS the guideline!

& governors should certainly know that, at least!

Hooves:

I have two roles where confidentiality is key. If a child asks to tell me something and says please don't say anything, I say straight away that I can't promise to keep information confidential if either themselves or somebody else is at risk. I say that their safety and welfare and that of others is the priority, and we then have a conversation on that basis.

In my other role, the role is only effective because the other person is assured of confidentiality, adult or child. BUT, there are important exceptions to this, involving self harm, harm to others and various legal statutes. I advise the person of this at the outset, so they know if they say anything that triggers a potential need to breech confidentiality that this will be done, to keep them and others safe.

Xpost Mayormaynot!

2018 'Working Together to Safeguard Children' introduction is useful to clarify key terms & principles. It also includes reference to the legal framework:
(extract)
Everyone who comes into contact with children and families has a role to play.
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purposes of this guidance as:
• protecting children from maltreatment
• preventing impairment of children's health or development
• ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
• taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

A child-centred approach to safeguarding
10. This child centred approach is fundamental to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of every child. A child centred approach means keeping the child in focus when making decisions about their lives and working in partnership with them and their families.
11. All practitioners should follow the principles of the Children Acts 1989 and 2004 -that state that the welfare of children is paramount and that they are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless compulsory
intervention in family life is necessary. (continues)

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/779401/Working_Together_to_Safeguard-Children.pdf

Essentially, if a young person 'requests confidentiality' you absolutely can't promise that. If they are asking you to keep something secret from their parents, then unless you are the safeguarding lead, & I seriously hope you aren't - then that is a decision waaaaaay above your responsibility & should be referred immediately to the person who IS responsible & trained to evaluate the situation.
But I literally said this in my post. Literally.

There were times when the decision was taken to not tell parents something - that was taken by the safeguarding lead and with input from other agencies, as I said there were clear guidelines about this.

How odd that someone who claims to have been a school governor thinks otherwise. Perhaps the clue is in your user name ?

No idea what my name has got to do with anything? It relates to a medical condition that I've got and is a phrase adopted by the charity involved with it

governors should certainly know that, at least!

And I said this in my post

Hearhooves, I can understand your conflicted feelings. After all, we do know cases in which the parents don't have the best interest of their own child at heart and it might seem that offering that child an opportunity to speak without fear of it getting back to the parents would seem tempting.

But. I get safeguarding training in my role as a volunteer with an organisation that serves vulnerable adults. It is made crystal clear to all volunteers that if any client asks us to keep something secret, we must tell them that we cannot promise that. It is deeply inappropriate both for the vulnerable individual (child or adult) and for the other party (volunteer, staff, friend, whatever) to be put in the position of keeping a potentially dangerous secret. This is for many reasons, including liability, establishing harmful patterns, and of course that it's a potential loophole for those with bad intent.

You (the adult) can still be a safe sounding board for a troubled child. You just do it while making clear that you can't keep a secret for them, but you can still listen and support. And then reporting to the appropriate other persons--whether that's the parents or someone more appropriate in a particular situation.

OP - I absolutely love this. Focusing on the practicalities of the key issues involved and how to protect those who are vulnerable is exactly what we need to do.

Just a thought but would putting further detail in the title help to bring in those unfamiliar with Lang onto the thread. Otherwise it is easy for someone outside of FWR to skip past it if they see it in active who might otherwise have been drawn in.

Hooves you referenced a 'young person approaching an adult' & requesting confidentiality.

Everyone is telling you that that is a situation requiring that you IMMEDIATELY explain that you can't agree to this & will need to refer the matter to the safeguarding lead.

If this is what you meant, it certainly wasn't clear in your post.

Sorry I've just been painfully redundant as it took me a while to write that post ...

Hearhooves, is the confusion between promising to keep something secret and whether disclosure is automatically made specifically to parents?

By now I'm confused, but I think you're agreeing that promising children or vulnerable adults complete secrecy is not on?

You said it, but you don't seem to understand it at a fundamental level. Your earlier post suggested that you think it's fine and dandy to stay confidential if it's the child who makes the approach, and it's only a red flag if the adult approaches the child.

On the name-related point: sorry to hear you have EDS too, it sucks.

PurpleCrowbar - the more people who say it, the better. I think some people don't realise that there are legal ramifications to safeguarding and that professionals are very clear on what they have to do (or should be!). We don't have a choice about this.

I know I would not have understood this when I was under 18. I would have been sure that I knew better, that I was perfectly equipped to decide what should be kept secret and deal with it myself. I was very wrong.

I think we are right as a society to give young people respect and credibility, more than we received when I was a child in the 70s and 80s, but I think we need to remember that children, while they should be respected and believed, are not equipped to make all decisions.

The phrase is “ when you hear hooves , think horses not zebras “.

It’s commonly used to remind medical practitioners seeking a diagnosis to consider ( and if necessary rule out ) the obvious things first.

Because we can can over complicate things and look for obscure explanations when the most obvious reason is staring us in the face.

As I don’t know your medical history and you are posting very controversial and sometimes derailing statements on child safeguarding, I wondered of your name referred to this.

Ie ignoring the most obvious reason why someone might be anti safeguarding .

OP - I absolutely love this. Focusing on the practicalities of the key issues involved and how to protect those who are vulnerable is exactly what we need to do.

Me too.

Logical, evidence-based frameworks, that can be applied across-the-board, are invaluable.

I think we need to remember that children, while they should be respected and believed, are not equipped to make all decisions.

YES. Including decisions that will have far-reaching, potentially lifelong adverse effects on their body, their fertility and their health.

Hooves: I think the problem is that people are so frustrated and worried by the apparent, and in some cases obvious, blurring of boundaries in this area. Some areas of life really are black and white - the potential consequences are too dangerous. We can't allow Mr or Ms X to break safeguarding guidelines because "they'd never do anything" or "we should all be nice to each other" or "what about how x would feel?"

That approach just isn't mature enough, it doesn't address the reality of some people's motivations. So to suggest, even obliquely, that there is room for manoeuvre in safeguarding won't go down well here. Unfortunately it would go down really well with lots of people with bad intentions, which is exactly why it has to be non-negotiable. Anybody trying to change the parameters, or skew power in one direction or another, will quite rightly be questioned. I'm not accusing you of this, just explaining why I think posters are responding in a particular way to your posts.

There is a difference between an adult approaching a child and asking for a private chat and a child approaching say a teacher and requesting a confidential chat. There should be safeguarding rules within the organisation to cover these occasions

There are Safeguarding principles & legislation which inform organisatons' policies. They are the same principles & legislation for any organisation which has contact with children & vulnerable adults.

The same principles, legislation & policies apply in both situations.

Safeguarding is not a list of rules with exceptions open to different interpretations

SHAR0N while I do and have disagreed with Hooves on many aspects of FWR, as a fellow EDS-er (sufferer of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) I recognised the relevance of the username immediately. It's precisely because we're usually fobbed off with many diagnoses of more common ailments before our condition is finally recognised that the EDS Society adopted the zebra as its emblem.

I think that when a child gets to the point that they want to tell someone about what has happened or is happening to then then they know that they need help.

Promising to keep secrets doesn't help them. Maybe the promise should be that you will help them to approach the appropriate people who can help them