Leading a safeguarding culture

This is part of our safeguarding insights section.  Our aim is to provide you with a broader understanding of a specific topic through a researched and referenced article that contributes towards your professional development and ensures that you can support your staff accordingly.

15 minute read

DSLs and Safeguarding Teams

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, or so we are told in Keeping Children Safe in Education, but a culture of safeguarding doesn’t simply evolve. This article explores how we understand the nature of our safeguarding culture in schools and colleges, then how to influence your setting’s approach through effective strategy and leadership.

Safeguarding Network provides Designated Safeguarding Leads with monthly training materials to deliver in-house training to their staff, covering every area of Keeping Children Safe in Education. Each pack includes presentations, quizzes and scenarios and makes the task of ensuring all staff know, understand and can apply the guidance much less time-consuming, while ensuring it is robust and systematic. We also offer training on a wide range of topics, provide safeguarding audits and safeguarding supervision and have a wide-ranging free resource base.

Values

Whether explicit or implicit, values guide decision-making. We’ve mentioned one common to all settings already – safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility – but while this might exist in your policy, is the understanding value the same at governance, leadership or staff levels and in your student group?

Perkins (2019) offers four questions in exploring your values and culture:

1. Review your stories – what do people say about safeguarding activity in your setting? When a culture reflects on the stories the members tell we sometimes gain insight into the context and drivers that affect the behaviour of the culture as a whole.
   

   One academy setting judged inadequate for leadership and safeguarding heavily invested resources, training and skills in their safeguarding team. This led to a strong, accountable culture that prioritised children and their needs: a good judgement followed, more and more issues were passed to the team and they began to be overwhelmed. We worked with the safeguarding team to reflect on their story, recognising that a dependency culture had been created and the safeguarding team were dealing with wider welfare concerns. This was at odds with the need to empower their staff and was affecting the quality of the safeguarding work. The setting recognised that now they were past the crisis they could improve their strategy and developed clearer guidance and provided support to the wider staff group to hold their pastoral responsibilities more effectively.

2. Explore how staff perceive safeguarding leadership – we think we know what we want to achieve and hope we communicate our vision and values to our staff, but is that how we are seen? For example, we might talk about valuing every child, but do the staff team see and feel this, or do they think that your setting’s focus on results and inspection outweigh the priority given to individual children? They are difficult questions to ask, but exposing these divergences allows work to be undertaken to adapt and improve with more effective results for children as a result.

3. Observe behaviours – do your values come through in the work that is undertaken. What do you see your staff doing? Are they approachable? Do they truly listen empathically to young people? Do they have an ‘it could happen here’ around their colleagues? Are there some staff who exempt themselves from the behaviour of the rest of the system?Data provides another perspective on behaviour – domestic abuse prevails across class and cultural boundaries, but do your staff come to you with concerns, or does it remain hidden. We worked with one school who were proud there had been no complaints for 10 years. On reflection there was recognition that raising challenge was difficult and painful in this organisation, so parents and staff felt unable to raise concern leaving children exposed.

4. Discuss together how safeguarding values are interpreted – “Communication leads to community” (Rollo May) and a shared approach to safeguarding. Regular conversations about how you safeguard children are important. Safeguarding Network’s approach, using monthly scenarios, presentations and quizzes to explore safeguarding topics together, is a good example of how to create the conversations that model how you want your staff team to respond. There’s a free set of materials for discussing domestic abuse at safeguarding.network/domestic.

Cultural style

When thinking about safeguarding cultures within schools it is interesting to reflect on the differing priorities. Groysberg et al (2018) consider how the priorities of an organisation might affect their ‘cultural style’. The relative importance of flexibility and independence create different operating environments for organisations – an organisation that encourages radical, free thought might create a diverse range of learning opportunities, while one focused on stability and interdependence may ensure a more focused, cohesive approach.

Schools and colleges don’t always operate within the ‘learning’ cultural style (!), but our work does tend to be oriented towards the left half of the chart – learning, enjoyment, results and authority. Safeguarding on the other hand is aligned with safety, care, purpose and order (following procedures while attending to individual need). Organisations can hold oppositional goals, but this requires time and resources which, when scarce, force implicit choices to emerge.

Culture is a significant factor, although individuals within any culture are also shaped by their own history and beliefs. Not everyone will hold the same ideas, the same values or the same priorities.

• How are the conflicting cultural styles of safeguarding and learning managed within your school culture?
• Is there a recognition that safeguarding requires a different kind of response?
• How does your safeguarding team/SLT bridge this gap, respond to the challenge that may bring and provide the time and resource to respond?

Wider dynamics

Our shared value base is a key driver in creating a safeguarding culture, but other attributes of your organisation also affect behaviour, performance and capacity to develop.

The McKinsey 7-S framework is an approach to understanding organisations. Centred on shared values it considers six other elements that exist in organisations, from the IT system and software you might use, such as the roll out of a mobile app for MyConcern, to the skills and capacity of staff at all levels of the organisation

We will explore each area and key questions to explore in your setting, but the linkage between each of the elements is also very important. For example, is the strategy of your setting understood by staff, are the systems and skills in place to carry it out and does it accord with your organisational values? While you may have in place tools, techniques and change strategies, other aspects of organisational culture might inhibit impact (Cameron & Quinn, 2006).

There are some useful templates and further questions to ask to support your analysis at Mindtools – we will explore each element and the implications for safeguarding tailored to early years, schools and college settings.

Strategy

While safeguarding work is bound by much guidance and procedure, healthy organisational development is underpinned by effective strategy. This sets direction and priorities, keeps people together, informs decision-making and ensures everyone is on the same page (Wilkinson, 2011). Keeping Children Safe in Education requires a child protection policy, but a safeguarding strategy captures the range of safeguarding requirements, reflects on contextual safeguarding issues, features of the student group (such as age, development, culture), your staff group, the wider organisational priorities and the history of your setting in addressing abuse or neglect to create an improvement track you can support and monitor.

• Do you understand the strengths and development areas for safeguarding in your setting?
• Does your setting have a safeguarding strategy?
• What are your key development goals and how will you know when you meet them?
• Does your strategy align with your setting’s values, structure, skills and resources?

Structure

This explores how staff and resources are organised in your setting, perhaps through a structure chart or similar. Under Keeping Children Safe in Education the Designated Safeguarding Lead must be an “appropriate senior member of staff, from the school or college leadership team”. We talk about safeguarding being everyone’s responsibility, but how is this understood in terms of connection to governors, the head teacher or SLT? What are the boundaries around roles? Does the safeguarding team have sufficient authority when working alongside teachers and other parts of the organisation? Smaller settings have an advantage here: the larger your organisation the more time should be spent thinking about this communication.

Supervision is vital and highlighted within the new inspection framework:

Staff and other adults receive regular supervision and support if they are working directly and regularly with children and learners whose safety and welfare are at risk.

Ofsted (2019)

Designated Safeguarding Leads should ensure there is a structure in place to ensure everyone in direct work roles has regular supervision, that informal supervision opportunities are available but approached with the same rigour around recording and decision-making, and that lines of accountability are clear and effective. Supervision should demonstrably improve the safety and welfare of children, enhance staff skills, compliance and approach, and contain the emotional aftermath of working with trauma. DSLs and head teachers must also consider their own supervision arrangements, including the need to seek expert external support.

• Is the structure of your safeguarding team clearly set out?
• How does the safeguarding team operate in relation to other parts of the organisation?
• Is everyone clear about their role? Do they understand the limits of their competence and authority?
• How does your setting communicate about safeguarding, both explicitly and implicitly
• Do all relevant staff receive effective, regular supervision?

Systems

These are the daily activities, procedures and resources you use to get the job done. This begins with the child protection policy (safeguarding policy in early years settings) which should set out what people should do if they’re worried about a child. Sometimes these policies are administrative, overweight and don’t set out what to do when worried about a child at an early stage. What does this communicate to parents, staff or regulators about the importance of safeguarding in your organisation?

The inspection framework has an improved emphasis on risk assessment and response – have staff had training in undertaking a risk assessment? Does their approach link to your local safeguarding children partnership threshold tool? Does the safeguarding team have access to up to date guidance on assessing the level of risk and the best response to neglect, child criminal exploitation or fabricated or induced illness? A good starting point for safeguarding teams are the free resources on Safeguarding Network – each area under Keeping Children Safe in Education has an article setting out what it is, what to look for and what to do. Members also have access to a magazine and sometimes further tools to audit their practice.

Recording should be a tool for analysis and communication. In our reviews of case records we sometimes find it difficult to see the child’s experience, or to follow the thread of a school or college’s actions. Sometimes records can be disorganised, taking time to manage and creating safeguarding or data protection risks. Systems such as MyConcern can streamline this approach saving time, improving analysis and ensuring information about children is indexed and secure. It is still important to consider how you integrate these systems into your organisational culture – structuring the records to align to your school or college structure, ensuring prompts support safe practice rather than staff “feeding the machine” and that you use the reporting and analysis functions to improve safeguarding across your setting.

• Is your child protection policy up to date, is it used and is it effective?
• Is there a consistent and effective risk mitigated approach to case management?
• Do staff have access to safeguarding knowledge, resources and audit tools?
• Is your recording structured and clear?
• Do you use your records to improve safety and welfare of students?

Styles

How leaders in your organisation approach safeguarding will affect the way in which the task is carried out. In our experience the quality of safeguarding is inextricably linked to the effectiveness of leadership and management so have welcomed the integration of these judgements in the inspection framework. The attention to safeguarding by school leaders will influence the emphasis on a “culture of vigilance” throughout the organisation “where safeguarding is an important part of everyday life in the setting”. Their reflective practice will shape views on whether “it could happen here” (Ofsted, 2019). Whether leaders listen to staff feeds into whether you have a listening organisation and staff and young people’s confidence about coming forward with their concerns.

Safeguarding is a bottom-up activity, listening to children and acting on their concerns, but without clear steerage the emotions and other priorities in the organisation can push your practice from its course.

For better and worse, culture and leadership are inextricably linked… The best leaders … are fully aware of the multiple cultures within which they are embedded, can sense when change is required, and can deftly influence the process

Groysberg et al (2018)

It’s complicated, but it is about helping everyone keep a strong focus on children and young people and their individual experiences, having a structured approach that is pro-active rather than always reactive, and ensuring the school are able to deliver on your safeguarding vision.

• How is safeguarding fully owned at governance and senior leadership levels?
• Do you understand your safeguarding culture, where it is strong and where it needs attention?
• What are your key goals? How are leaders shaping and influencing practice towards these?

Staff

This area explores the general competence people bring to safeguarding work and the roles they hold. We’ve widened this to think about relevant staff in other agencies.

Do your staff have sufficient time to become familiar with the range of safeguarding procedures? Are there any specialisms required or roles not held at present? When a safeguarding issue arises this can consume hours of time – how does the school balance this with the core task of educating all the children?

The guidance stresses safeguarding is not a single agency activity, but is about Working Together. Effective organisations are able to network and draw on other organisations’ skills, particularly when those skills are specialist. This becomes increasingly difficult as every agency is affected by the national and media focus on safeguarding within the context of shrinking resources and growing needs.

• Do you have the staff time to commit to the safeguarding task?
• Are there vacancies and how are these being covered?
• Are you effective in developing an interagency team around the child approach?

Skills

Schools, colleges and early years settings are required to ensure “there are clear and effective arrangements for staff development and training… at every level” and for staff to be able to “demonstrate knowledge” in their work with children and young people (Ofsted, 2019). A document setting out training and learning requirements is a useful addendum to a safeguarding strategy or child protection policy – Safeguarding Network members can access this on our training grid, including requirements for specific roles such as interviewing candidates or being a governor.

Keeping Children Safe in Education has over forty different topic areas that staff should have read about in Part 1 and Annex A. The emphasis on implementation and impact rather than simply intent is clear in the inspection framework: staff must be able to apply this knowledge to identify young people at risk of harm and take the right action to keep them safe. This presents a significant challenge to DSLs, to ensure their knowledge is sufficient around each subject and to design CPD for their teams. Research by the NSPCC on delivering effective CPD to teachers around safeguarding work highlighted the importance of a supportive school culture and drawing on external expertise, together with the need to sustain training over time and create space of reflection. Safeguarding Network supports an in-house safeguarding training curriculum for our members. We provide the materials in monthly, bite-size chunks, saving much time and ensuring materials delivered are up-to-date, robust and systematic.

The guidance is even more prescriptive about the skills required and training frequency of the DSL. It is helpful to use Annex B, the Role of the designated safeguarding lead, as a checklist. We are exploring the potential to develop an accredited course for DSLs – please contact us if you are interested in a pilot.

Safeguarding is an area where people often lack confidence. Creating opportunities for staff to practice their safeguarding skills is one way to build confidence, such as through scenario-based discussions. This also creates an opportunity to review the quality of practice – did the team handle the scenario well? Where there have been safeguarding concerns taking a robust approach to reviewing skills through root cause analysis identifies factors that underly problems that occur allowing the organisation to learn and effect change.

• Do you have a clear and effective arrangements for safeguarding learning for your staff?
• Do staff feel confident in recognising abuse or neglect?
• Are staff always skilled in responding to concerns about abuse and neglect?
• Is the DSL suitably skilled and supported to undertake their role?
• What strengths do you have in dealing with safeguarding issues? Where are the gaps?
• How do you monitor and assess the skills of your staff, your DSL and your governors?
• What have you learned from safeguarding incidents in your setting to prevent recurrence?

Conclusion

We’ve explored a range of models and their application to culture and organisational development within a safeguarding context. We hope this article has created a structure to help you see and reflect on the culture of your organisation and provided some additional tools to shape your strategy around the safeguarding work you do.

If you would like to talk through any aspects of the article, consider an independent safeguarding audit or think about the support you need in your setting, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

To access the members materials mentioned in this article you will need to join Safeguarding Network. Visit safeguarding.network/subscribe