With it being the first few weeks of the new academic year, it has predominately been all about Safeguarding for me over the last week or so. I know staff who work in schools are ready each year for their annual update and depending on the quality of the training they have received previously they approach this with I am sure a mix of déjà vu, anticipation and maybe a little dread if they have been used to an impersonal online course or dread to think, a not very inspiring trainer! 

For the majority of us who deliver this training, we likewise battle with how to ensure our sessions are novel, engaging and re-motivating, because we are so passionate about what we do, and we want to leave people passionate too. My worst-case scenario is thinking that people have sat through a session with me and their only thought being as they leave the room – ‘thank goodness that’s over for another year’. My job is to inspire, to ignite and to help people reflect on what they will do differently this year. My aim is that I indirectly help as many children as possible to be that little bit safer (or ideally completely safe) as a result of something I have said in that INSET day or during that Twilight session. 

So, how do I motivate myself to do this year after year, and how do you ensure that Safeguarding remains a priority, and that you and the people you work with never lose that momentum? For me its all about having that child in mind. It’s remembering those individual stories that potentially haunt us because we could have done better or remind us that we do make a difference, and sometimes both of those things in equal measure. 

I have many ‘stories’ that I tell in my training, but they are not stories they are children, those children who I carry with me because they ensure people remember that we are not just talking about data, research, reviews and statistics. Each safeguarding issue exists within guidance because it has happened to real children and has had a devastating impact. It is so important that we never forget that. I change their names and slightly alter their circumstances to ensure these children remain anonymous, however what is important, is that in my head they are real, and I can see their faces, and remind myself that this is for them and all those that come after.

My most important story is about a little girl that we will call Nora. She is not my most important story because I did something amazing, and I am sure she doesn’t even remember me. She is also not my most important story because our response to her was either perfect or dreadful. She is my most important story because she taught me so much. She led me to where I am now and made me realise what a difference I could make. 

I met Nora when I was a young and naïve Primary School Teacher. I was full of enthusiasm and determination, what I was not full of was quality training or experience of anything to do with safeguarding or child protection. I had received limited input (maybe half a day) within my PGCE, and that was about it. I had been told that Nora was a bit of a handful, although not really in the challenging behaviour sense, more because she was a little needy and demanding. There are some interesting indicators right there. If only I knew then that the first question I should have been asking myself was ‘I wonder what is going on for her that makes her so needy?’. Now I would know that needy means 'in need' rather than attention seeking. Instead, I was focused on how to ‘manage’ her behaviour, which surprisingly I didn’t do very well!

I very quickly however became very fond of Nora. She wasn’t my favourite or anything so unprofessional, she was just a child who I felt needed me or needed someone and at times she could be so receptive to the smallest things, that she fascinated me. Again, my gut was telling me so much, if only I had understood how important it was to listen to my gut. I had taught Nora for perhaps a term before I had the first insight to what was going on for her and it blew my mind.

We were doing a circle time about jobs; it was linked to our topic, and I thought a nice way to introduce the idea was to ask the children what type of jobs they did at home. How they maybe helped out their mummy or daddy or whoever they lived with, or things that they did for pocket money. Some of my children were quite shy and so rather than telling us the job, you had to mime it or act it out and then other children would try and guess what it was. Lots of the children did cooking, dusting, gardening – the type of things that I was expecting. It then got to Nora. Her mime was brilliant, so brilliant that my conscious mind would not let me accept what I was seeing for a good few seconds. Her mime was her filling a syringe and preparing a vein so that she could then inject what was in the syringe into someone else. I really hoped that there was a medical explanation for why she was doing this….. I instinctively knew that there wasn’t.

It felt like an eternity before I took action, I am since reassured by the timings that I must have reacted quicker than it felt. I was totally in swan mode now – my head and voice were somehow calm when below the surface I was in freefall panic, and I was paddling like crazy to keep afloat. I thanked Nora and explained that I thought she was maybe doing a very grownup job that the others may not be able to guess and asked if I could guess later. We then moved on to the remaining children who could have quite frankly mimed anything as I was just willing the lesson to be over so I could ask for help. I have never felt so far out of my depth, or so convinced that what I did next was crucial. 

As I am sure you have worked out, Nora’s job at home was to prepare her Mum’s heroin. I didn’t ask her properly about it I don’t think, as I am sure there were a few leading questions in there. I rather clumsily did establish that this was the tip of a rather large iceberg that we knew nothing about. Nora was 7 years old. She was the person in her house who got her and her sister up and ready for school. She was the person in her house who fed them, with whatever she could find – raw eggs were a particular speciality. She was the person in her house who was worried that she might go home from school and not be able to wake her Mummy up. She loved school, because it was the only place she could be 7 years old. 

Nora was eventually fostered by a very lovely lady, after I had had a crash course in referrals to Social Care, Section 47 investigations, Child Protection Conferences and Core groups. I learnt so much about the systems and processes with Nora and as much from what was done well as those things which even in my naivety I could see could have and should have been done better. I saw first-hand how much Mum had been let down, it was that scary and inevitable cycle of abuse and neglect that we see so often. I will never forget how shocked and guilty I felt that despite everything she had done to Nora, I felt sorry for her too. She was also just a needy and demanding child, even though she was at least ten years older than me at the time.

I came across professionals that I had so much respect for and learnt so much from, and I came across those who taught me how never to be when working within safeguarding. I saw how processes sometimes helped and sometimes hindered, and I started to make the link between the guidance and the legislation and the actual children it was there to protect.

I learnt the most however from Nora. I learnt that I wasn’t the hero in this story. She did not see me as saving her, she saw me for a long time as the person who turned her world upside down. I learnt that most children still love their parents, even if they have harmed and neglected them. I learnt that Nora was perhaps always going to struggle to trust adults now, as she had told me something that she felt safe to share and the result was that her and her sister no longer lived with her Mummy. I learnt that a 7-year-old child is more incredible than you would ever imagine, and I began to understand a little about what resilience actually looked like. I also learnt that I had to hang in there. It took a very long time however Nora and I parted on amicable terms. I wish I could meet her now and hear her reflections on that part of her life as I bet, I could learn even more. I also learnt that I did the right thing, even though Nora didn’t see it this way, and that might be the case with so many of the children I was to come across in my career. I learnt that you have to have hope that one day they might understand and be thankful that you did what you did, and that these ‘rewards’ may never come or if they do they might be a long time coming.

 

When I saw this quote years later, it was Nora that immediately sprung to mind:

“A child that’s being abused by their parents doesn’t stop loving their parents, they stop loving themselves.” – Shahida Arabi

So, when I am writing, creating and delivering safeguarding training, I always have Nora in mind. I see her face and hear her voice and aim to help one more Nora through every member of staff that listens to my training. I ask that when you are thinking about safeguarding you likewise have a child in mind. A child that reminds you why recording that incident is so important, a child that prompts you to take a concern seriously, a child that drives you to make a difference every day. I am so grateful that I met Nora when I did, without her knowing it, she shaped the following 20 years of my career and continues to influence what I do now. She teaches me to constantly reflect, I know so much more now than I did then, I understand so much more about why and how she behaved as she did, I would hopefully do so much better were I to meet Nora today and that is why I do the job I do. If I can give people their ‘Nora moment’ as early in their career as possible, and ideally before they come across the actual child, maybe they will do a slightly better job than they may have done otherwise. 

And as always, the way we spot those indicators, signs or symptoms of abuse or neglect is knowing each of our children really well so we can see when something is not okay and wonder what is going on for them. The key to safeguarding as with so much of what we do in schools is to be curious and to just be kind.