Developing a Safeguarding Culture in Education Conference SaferEd 2025

This workshop explores the critical role of student voice in creating and maintaining a robust safeguarding culture within educational settings. Participants will explore strategies to empower students to actively contribute to the ‘sense of safety’ leading to more effective safeguarding practices and a safer, more inclusive environment for all. 

Key themes covered in the session include: 

• The Importance of Student Voice: Understanding how student input helps identify potential risks, concerns, and areas for improvement in safeguarding systems. 
• Empowerment and Ownership: How involving students in decision-making processes gives them a sense of responsibility and encourages them to speak out about issues affecting their well-being. 
• Practical Strategies: Implementing tools and platforms that encourage student feedback, such as surveys, student councils, or peer mentoring programs. 
• Building Trust: Fostering a culture where students feel confident that their voices will be heard, respected, and acted upon. 
• Collaboration with Staff and Leadership: Developing strong partnerships between students, teachers, and school leadership to create a united approach to safeguarding. 

By the end of the workshop, participants will gain additional strategies for their ‘student voice toolbox’ including actionable insights on how to increase levels of student advocacy, integrate student voice into their safeguarding practices to ensure that students are not only protected but also actively involved in shaping the safety culture around them. 

Hannah Smart is a passionate and dedicated educational leader with extensive experience in driving school improvement and fostering inclusive learning environments. As the Interim Deputy CEO of Transforming Futures Trust  and Executive Headteacher at ACE Tiverton, Hannah leads with a commitment to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background or individual challenges. 

The presentation is designed for professionals working with young people to familiarise themselves with the current online safety landscape, covering technologies and the behaviours that develop around them. We will provide an overview of current trends, threats and issues as well as signposting useful resources and support.

Outcomes from this workshop will include:

• Understanding the evolving threat landscape
• Covering basic online safety advice
• Providing available tools and resources
• Looking at trends and data for harm recognition
• Understanding the evolving nature of childrens online behaviour

Boris is proficient in the field of online safety, and he has been working with the European Commission on expert missions to Belarus, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia to present the topic of online safety to government officials, NGO’s and stakeholders. He is also a former member of the Trust and Safety board at Twitter and has advised governments on creating and adopting online child safety policies and best practices under the auspices of ITU Europe. He is a member of the Ad hoc Awareness raising group of ENISA, Chair of the IEEE 7004 Standards for Child and Student Data Governance and has delivered hundreds of presentations on the topic of online safety to various stakeholders.

Driven by a contextual safeguarding framework that places understanding the voice of the child at its core, this workshop will develop our understanding of how to evidence and respond to extra familial harms. Emphasis will be placed on how an authentic relationship-based collaboration between young people and local authority services can support colleagues and organisations in Working Together to Safeguard Children. Case study examples will be presented throughout as to how this can be achieved on a practical level. 

Outcomes from this workshop will include:

• A practical implementation of contextual safeguarding for schools 
• How contextual safeguarding and student voices can be embedded into your safeguarding and organisational culture 
• Implementing Working Together To Safeguarding Children guidance for schools, police, social care and local authority 

Jason Tait is the Director of Pastoral Care and Designated Safeguarding Lead at a leading independent international school in the UK. In addition to having specific responsibilities for all aspects of pastoral care and safeguarding across the school, Jason has particular interests and expertise in positive psychology and contextual safeguarding.

Jason is also the co-founder of the award-winning Student Voice, a contextual safeguarding tool, currently supporting 50,000 young people and children, that seeks to create brave spaces that empower young voices and inspire society to develop safer communities.  

Working in international schools or in UK schools with a multicultural community enables schools to offer children a board understanding of the world helping to enrich their education. However, international diversity can pose challenges for school safeguarding leads. This workshop will explore possible barriers in implementing safeguarding systems in countries that may have little or no concept of safeguarding, where cultural norms and legal processes may be contradictory to UN Rights of the Child and how international schools approach mitigating risks to children’s welfare in these circumstances. Whilst exploring similarities that UK schools may face from the possible impact of having a diverse international community of families, how the cultural norms in other countries may impact parents understanding of safeguarding issues and what is deemed appropriate parenting in the UK. Looking at ways of introducing and embedding safeguarding in a school community which helps international parents and schools overcome any cultural misunderstanding by working in partnership with families to safeguard children.  

This workshop will highlight the positive impact of teaching in a multicultural school community whilst underlining difficulties safeguarding leaders may encounter when implementing safeguarding systems in internationally diverse communities giving practical ideas that can be implemented to aid the embedding of safeguarding procedures that support all members of a school community to safeguard children. 

Lisa Brown is an Education consultant who specialises in safeguarding. She began her career as a police officer with secondments to the Child Protection Unit before entering the education profession over 20 years ago, during this time she has held diverse leadership roles including Headships in the UK and the Middle East. Her work has included safeguarding training in schools for local authorities, running university initial safeguarding sessions for trainee teachers. As Designated Safeguarding lead for numerous schools, trusts and school groups in the maintained and public sector she has been responsible for all safeguarding training and implementing robust safeguarding procedures in diverse school communities most recently as Head of Safeguarding for a large international schools group.

The workshop will examine the sexting behaviours of  teenage boys in the UK as they reflected on the motivations associated with self-generated explicit images and messages (sexting).   Data from a cross-sectional study examined 14-18 years old were examined using a Motivational Determinants Model that mapped individual cognitive characteristics and contextual determinants that impacted on the boy’s sexting behaviours.  The workshop will challenge curriculum, policy and practice development relating to how the concept of teenage sexting is framed. Resulting in a new typology model that addresses the ‘why’ behind the motivation to sext, rather than the ‘what’ associated with message content.

Jon originally trained as a nurse specialising in adolescents with life limiting illness before moving to become an advisor to a  strategic health authority and a health commissioner. He worked briefly as a specialist advisor on two World Health Organization projects before becoming the lead for early help  within a large unitary authority. 

He worked as an education safeguarding advisor supporting 530 schools and for the past 6 years has worked as the National Director of Safeguarding & Mental Health in a multi-academy trust. 

He holds a PhD in Education (Safeguarding) from Liverpool Hope University. He also acts as a mentor to five young men starting in business ensuring that they develop to their full potential. In his spare time, he is a voluntary youth worker. When (if) he ever relaxes he is a keen fan of Korean dramas (though must use subtitles).

Outcomes from the workshop will include:

·        Develop a modern definition of a sexting

·        Understand the motivational determinants that prompt sexting behaviours

·        Examine the data about sexting incidence

·        Identify a typology model that moves beyond ‘content’ to address ‘motivation’ 

Consider the role of education in addressing this issue 

LFF share what they have learnt from a three-year action research project on managing and preventing harmful sexual behaviour in schools.

By the end of this interactive workshop, participants should be able to:     

• understand the context, aims and design of Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s ‘Everyone’s Safer’ action research project
• recognise the key research outcomes by identifying cross-cutting themes and evidence-based promising practice
• reflect upon what our findings mean for wider education policy and explore how their own professional practice could be supported by our recommendations.

With a background in probation and voluntary sector service management, Laura moved to the Lucy Faithfull Foundation to develop their multi-disciplinary schools’ team. Working alongside researchers from the University of Surrey, Laura led ‘Everyone’s Safer’: a three-year action research project gathering evidence on what works to manage and prevent harmful sexual behaviour in schools.