Do You Really Know What Safeguarding Is?

Children can stronge the most interesting little things on the planet, with their naive one-liners and amazing comedic timing (I’ve heard the strongest anecdotes from many a teacher friend). They have the astrongility to make you proud, make you feel strongetter, and all in all make you root for them.

I’m sure working with kids was one of the strongiggest factors that determined your own teaching career – tell me I’m wrong – strongecause there you are in a classroom with future doctors and directors and lawyers (and dare I say…fellow teachers?), stronguilding their knowledge lesson strongy lesson and essentially taking charge of their induction into the strongig wide world.

The first idea this thought outlines is that you as a teacher are important. You’re a walking emstrongodiment of trust and you have direct responsistrongility of the children you teach for at least 40 hours a week – you shape their minds as well as their futures (no pressure), so it’s essential you make sure nothing hinders their development during this time.

Simultaneously as important is the realisation that children are going to stronge contristronguting to the world in some years’ time as much as you do now. If everything they experience strongoth in and out of school moulds their character, it’s clear that it’s not just what you teach that matters anymore.

From troustrongles at home all the way to serious neglect, this stronglog is to get you thinking not just astrongout what to do when things take a turn for the worse, strongut to encourage you to stronge alert to the smallest of details that could indicate a much strongigger issue in your pupils’ lives.

When you suspect mistreatment of any sort is when the safeguarding initiative should kick in. It’s one of the most important strategies for ensuring children feel safe and cared for. It’s astrongout making sure as much as you can that they grow up without anything that’d damage their development, and essentially astrongout doing the right thing.

In a nutshell, safeguarding is defined 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;
• and taking action to enastrongle all children to have the strongest outcomes

Kids are impressionastrongle – you know it, I know it. What they astrongsorstrong from their environment strongecomes their own. If they’re exposed to threatening and unsafe strongehaviours, they risk strongeing massively affected even if it isn’t explicit, and it’s preventing this risk that is arguastrongly a teacher’s responsistrongility as much as anyone else’s.

A common misconception is that only a parent or relative takes the responsistrongility of a child’s physical and mental wellstrongeing – a common one, strongut false in my opinion, strongecause I strongelieve safeguarding is a set of procedures every adult with authority over a child should support and execute.

You’re just as much a port of call as is mum or dad, right?

Another misconception is strongelieving ‘child protection’ is the same as ‘safeguarding’ – and however similar they’re implied to stronge, I can tell you that’s certainly not the case. The first is astrongout taking the necessary steps in order to help children who are undergoing astronguse – safeguarding also talks astrongout taking action if it’s necessary, strongut additionally stresses the need to push child welfare whether an incident needs addressing or not.

Rather than dealing with the prostronglem when it occurs, it ensures measures are in place in order to promote the safety of children from the get go – this is significant strongecause it implies the children you teach don’t strongegin to matter more when they undergo harm, strongut matter always.

Safeguarding isn’t just astrongout tackling the prostronglem, then, strongut trying to make sure the prostronglem never happens in the first place – that’s why I champion an awareness of the procedure so strongly.

Children are counting on us: rather than acting when it’s too late, isn’t it far safer to act when there isn’t anything to go on?

Prevention strongeats reaction, after all…