Rebuilding Your Staff Team, Part 4 - Big picture

In my experience as an inspector, staff often miss seeing the bigger picture of safeguarding. Records are kept and written procedures are mainly adhered to. However, not all the information known about a child is always linked together. Safeguarding should be regarded like a jigsaw puzzle. Until all the pieces are linked, the full picture is not known.

The coronavirus pandemic has placed an unprecedented amount of strain on all sectors of the community and the range of services which support them. Families who may not have been classified as ‘at risk’ may now be much more vulnerable than before. The NSPCC saw calls from adults with concerns for the well-being of a child rise by 32 per cent during lockdown. Staff need to make sure that the needs of every child returning to settings is precisely assessed.

Leaders continue to face enormous challenges since reopening to ensure that ever-changing guidance is fully adhered to. In addition to this, they are also juggling demanding workloads to ensure that settings continue to meet safeguarding arrangements. But are these stringent enough, and how can they support staff to get this right?

Differing lockdown experiences

Children who were already meeting the thresholds for intervention by children’s services prior to lockdown should have continued to be supported. However, staff must also consider what happened to those children who did not meet intervention thresholds prior to lockdown. Are they at greater risk now, or has their situation improved? How do we know?

Parents have reported mixed views about the impact of lockdown. For those fortunate to be able to work from home and juggle childcare arrangements, the picture appears more positive. However, some families have been adversely affected, such as through redundancy, little or no income, illness, isolation, limited access to services (such as for parenting advice, mental health programmes and support for those affected by domestic abuse). Therefore, what has it been like for a child living in a home affected by these issues? Consider what young children may have witnessed or heard during the lockdown period. What impact did this have on their safety and well-being? How might any reactions to this be shown in their behaviour and demeanour now?

Safeguarding is such an extensive issue, and warning signs can be subtle. Training for practitioners needs to go beyond issues seen before, not just those presented typically by physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and neglect. During lockdown, young children may have been in the care of older siblings, or parents who lack confidence and the ability to fully understand how to keep their children safe. For example, children may have used technology without supervision and accessed inappropriate content. What impact has this had? Practitioners need to consider the risks to young children from older siblings, or parents, being exposed to the potential for radicalisation, online grooming, child trafficking and cyber bullying.

Each setting will have written safeguarding policies, and practitioners are often familiar with these. Although practitioners are trained to identify the ‘typical’ signs of abuse, sometimes less obvious, but crucial, symptoms and indicators get missed. This is where the role of the designated safeguarding lead (DSL) is so important. In the same way that we carry out regular checks and audits to make sure the premises meet health and safety regulations, such as daily risk assessments, we can adopt a similar way of checking what we know about children. The DSL must regularly check all information recorded about individual children in order to identify any emerging safeguarding concerns.

Leaders, and those responsible for the supervision and coaching of staff, must regularly check what staff know about a child and family. What does this information indicate? Safeguarding training, policy updates and team meetings need to be rigorous and check the level of confidence in staff ability and knowledge. This is particularly important in settings which rarely have concerns about children. During inspections and regulatory visits from Ofsted, inspectors will question staff about safeguarding arrangements. They may pose scenarios, such as ‘what would you do if…?’ and will assess how well staff understand how to identify and respond to safeguarding concerns. The more staff ‘practise’ these scenarios, the more confident they will be in recognising when action is needed.

Professional curiosity

Most settings will follow up any unexpected non-attendance. But how rigorously do leaders pursue and identify patterns of absence? For example, if a child is regularly absent on a Monday, what has happened to that child and family over the weekend? Are parents’ explanations of children’s absence always accepted by a setting? If practitioners consider they are not being told the correct information, how do they follow this up? This is where the need for ‘professional curiosity’ is key. If something does not feel ‘right’, it must be followed up. Regular non-attendance could be an indicator that a parent is unable to leave the home. This could be due to domestic abuse, mental health issues or because of the impact of drug and/or alcohol misuse.

Babies, children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and those who speak limited English, are especially vulnerable. They may not be able to easily articulate through speech if they feel scared, worried, or unsafe at home. How well do practitioners assess these children’s safeguarding needs? Are procedures as robust as they need to be? If staff are working alongside other agencies to support these children, what information, if any, about a child’s well-being is shared? This is crucial information as different agencies may hold valuable information. For example, a SEND child’s attendance at nursery may be poor. The parent says this is due to the need to attend appointments with other agencies. However, when practitioners liaise with these professionals, it becomes clear the child has not attended these either. Therefore, where is the child?

Tying it all together

The importance of record-keeping and pursuing concerns cannot be emphasised enough. Serious case reviews following tragic cases have taught us that communication and sharing information is essential. Record information clearly and in detail. Minor concerns may seem trivial, but record them; think about where you record different types of information and regularly link them together. For example, one child may have frequent entries in the accident book, or record of existing injuries. There may be other incidents, such as the same child’s unexplained behaviour, or dislike of having a nappy change one day. Where is this recorded?

The child’s key person may note the same child often arrives without a coat on a very cold day, or the parent regularly forgets to collect the child on time. All this information starts to build a picture about this child’s well-being which might start to indicate a bigger issue. Make sure records are clearly linked and leaders regularly check to identify any emerging issues while supporting practitioners to follow up any concerns, and remain as objective as you can and seek the advice of other professionals.

CASE STUDY: everyone’s responsibility

Matt is the DSL in a village pre-school, having been appointed to this role after Ofsted raised actions to improve the way in which the setting responded to safeguarding concerns at a recent inspection. Matt and the manager have thoroughly reviewed all the records staff maintain. Weekly audits on the attendance register, the accident book, record of existing injuries, incident book and behaviour log are completed. This enables Matt, who is also deputy manager, to quickly see multiple entries relating to one child, or siblings.

As part of staff supervision meetings, key people discuss their children’s progress, attendance, behaviour, demeanour and any other concerns they may have, and this information is recorded in supervision notes. Any information that may indicate concerns about a child are referred to Matt.

During monthly team meetings, Matt will ask staff questions about individual children. For example, ‘What do we know about Suki?’ Staff do not know in advance which child is going to be discussed, and this exercise is used as an indicator to see just how much staff know about individual children.

When Matt started at the group and took on the role of DSL, he was concerned that staff knew the families informally, often seeing them around the village. Many of the staff also pick up their own children from the village school. Matt emphasised that staff must respond to all information they know about a child and family, for example, if they notice concerns about a child’s well-being outside of the pre-school, such as a parent being aggressive with a child in the school playground. He has reminded staff about the importance of keeping a professional distance from parents and politely reminding them of their legal duty to report any concerns they may have.

Since Matt instigated these strategies, staff say they feel more confident about linking information together. They can now see how safeguarding concerns may start with very subtle issues, but if left unaddressed, can develop into something more significant. Staff confirm they now feel better prepared to act on any issues which cause them concern and can see how safeguarding children remains the responsibility of everyone.

Jo Caswell is a former senior manager with Ofsted and is director of JLC Early Years Consultancy