'Courageous Conversations' with Families

Safeguarding children and young people often requires professionals to have difficult conversations with parents and carers about concerns. These discussions can be met with resistance, including defensiveness, blame, hostility, or disengagement. Managing these reactions — alongside our own emotional responses — can feel challenging and may lead professionals to avoid conversations for fear of conflict or damaging relationships.

Resistance often stems from fear, shame, feeling judged, or previous negative experiences with professionals. Such conversations can trigger fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses, adding complexity to an already sensitive situation. Understanding this is key to responding effectively.

Course Overview

This course focuses on how to approach safeguarding conversations with clarity, confidence, and compassion. It explores why resistance occurs and how skilled, trauma-informed communication can reduce conflict and support constructive dialogue.

Participants will learn how to communicate concerns using clear, non-judgemental language that focuses on observable facts and the child’s needs, alongside active listening and emotional awareness.

Rachael Courage challenges ideas, draws on research and suggests helpful practice models in working with families we find difficult to engage.

Rachael Courage is a qualified social worker with 20 years practice experience. She is an experienced trainer in child safeguarding and child protection and has managed sexual exploitation and missing services for Barnardos, including setting up services in new areas and working with Child Safeguarding Assurance Partnership around their strategic response to child sexual exploitation.

Rachael has been the safeguarding lead for the children and young people's service within a hospice and has worked for the NSPCC delivering individual and group therapeutic interventions for children who have experienced abuse.

Rachael is currently practicing as a Chair for Child Protection Conferences for a Local Authority.