What Child Safeguarding Really Means And Why It Matters

Safeguarding can sound like a threat, but it was built to solve a different problem: adults seeing harm and not acting in time. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I’m starting a series on safeguarding children because the confusion around it causes real hesitation, silence, and delay. When people assume safeguarding is automatically about punishment, blame, or removing children, they can miss the point and the chance to prevent escalation.

We walk through where safeguarding came from and why it exists at all, including how systemic failures in well-known cases led to public inquiries, new expectations, and clearer law. I explain how the Children Act framework reshaped responsibility across agencies, why “diffusion of responsibility” is such a common failure point, and why safeguarding only works when someone is willing to think clearly and act even when they feel unsure.

Then we get practical: how safeguarding operates across universal settings like schools, GP surgeries, and community groups; why professionals must name, evidence, and grade risk; and how support can begin with early help and family intervention before moving toward child protection. We also demystify the pathway from a concern to a referral into MASH, how triage and thresholds work, and what Section 17 and Section 47 signal in real decision-making.

If you work with children, parent a child, or simply care about child safety, this is a grounded starting point for understanding child safeguarding and child protection without panic. Subscribe for the rest of the series, share this with someone who needs clarity, and leave a review with the question you want answered next.

Transcript

Why Safeguarding Feels Scary

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Welcome back. This is Kim Lee, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist. This is episode one of a series concerned with the safeguarding of children. And I feel that very often there's a considerable amount of confusion about what safeguarding is and isn't. And I think very often it is seen as a punitive intervention, or that underneath it lies blame and the possibility of significant consequences, ranging from having children removed from the family home through to prosecution in the courts. And certainly there are situations that require quite extreme responses, but those don't normally happen out of the blue. They normally happen as a consequence of a repeated failure or series of failures, and where other types of intervention have been tried but just not worked. Now I think we have to understand the context of safeguarding from the point of view of its origins. Many years ago there was no such thing as the safeguarding of children, not in any joined up kind of way. Because the different systems didn't have a universal approach to identifying concerns and intervening. Many high-profile cases came to light as a consequence of what we call systemic failure, namely when children's expressions of being at risk or of experiencing harm were essentially ignored, not taken seriously. And as a consequence, these systemic failures resulted in tragic outcomes that then warranted investigation. And collectively, the investigations informed policy and law. And this is very this is very important because it didn't come out of nowhere and it hasn't it hasn't all always existed. And I think there is a big difference between when safeguarding protocols were introduced and how they are used now. They're much more informed, they were very reactive at the outset. Now things are much more considered. The only thing I would say is that even though the safeguarding assessment protocols are more sophisticated, it isn't always the case that the services that may subsequently be required are available, or at least available in number. So let's start with the fact that in essence safeguarding didn't begin as a system. It began as a series of moments where adults didn't act, didn't see, or were not allowed to intervene. The standout cases that come to mind, Maria Colwell, who was returned to an abusive birth family and subsequently died in a public inquiry, changed everything. Similarly, Victoria Colimbier, who was seen by multiple agencies, but there was no coordinated action. She also died. And that warranted a complete systemic overhaul. Peter Connolly known services, and there were repeated missed opportunities which resulted in his death, and there was public outrage, and reform occurred after that. Now the systems developed, and the Children Act of 1989 put at the center of its concern what they called the paramountcy of the child. Prior to that, the 1969 Act was formed, which had similar principles, but there were no safeguarding facilities or no safeguarding frameworks in place at that time. Subsequently, in 2004 of the Children Act, the interagency responsibility became clear and gave way to a process known as every child matters, and then working together to safeguard children. Safeguarding failures are rarely about not caring. They tend to be to do with a diffusion of responsibility. Whose responsibility is it? Fear of getting it wrong, sometimes junior staff in organizations not escalating something which required intervention. And sometimes emotional avoidance, not wanting to see the harm. Safeguarding exists because children can't protect themselves when the adults around them can't think clearly enough to act. Now, how safeguarding works in terms of its systems, responsibility, and real practice, first of all, we have to understand that safeguarding operates across three levels universally for all children, schools, GPs, and allied health workers, community services, and that can be anything from scouts to the church to a community service. And everybody who works in these environments has to undergo annual safeguarding training so that they are aware of not just how to identify the signs of risk and harm to a child, but what to do. Quite often, when a safeguarding referral is made, most often, the first consideration is what is what is the risk, and what level of risk. We have to name and grade the risk. Expressing concerns is useful, but for those of us who make make the referrals, then we have to be much more specific in terms of what risk we are identifying. We have to name it, we have to evidence it, and we have to grade it. Grading it means how how serious do we regard the risk as being? And we have a number of protocols that we follow in order to do that. The idea, though, is that it could be possible, and is most often the case, that family support is what is required, and other targeted intervention. And the focus is really to try and prevent escalation before harm becomes entrenched. You know, these situations get worse. So the idea of intervening and helping a family is is a is a good one. In my experience, it doesn't always work. And what can happen is that a process known as TAF or team around the family is actually quite a soft intervention. And although it can be useful, many many TAF processes de-escalate situations. My view is that it's not a forensic enough approach. And this can then lead, if there are repeated concerns, to the next the next stage, which is a child protection procedure. And this ultimately can be this can be a situation where the local authority applies for legal control over the child. Child protection is a more serious level, and it's a multi-agency system where all of the relevant professionals, teachers, social care, mental health are involved. Statutory intervention of this of this kind will almost always find its way through to the courts. Now there's a legal threshold concept which has to do with clarifying the right process to take. Now, section 17 indicates that support is needed, and section 17 is is is made, the order is made following sufficient evidence to support the application, and it is an application which indicates the need for support for the family. Section 47, however, is more serious because it indicates that there is a risk of harm and it requires further investigation because that may take the case into the territory of more formal child protection. So what actually happens? Well, step by step, a concern arises and it is communicated to either directly to the multi-agency service hub, also known as MASH. The concern may arise from within a system like school or a community service, something will be reported. It could be that the police are involved, a young person is involved in something which they are then possibly arrested for, and as a matter of course, depending upon the nature, this information will almost always find its way through to MASH. So in that case, it will be the police who are the referers. So this information is then shared, and what will normally happen is that it will be triaged and graded before it goes to the MASH team who will then discuss it and decide on the correct threshold that's been reached. Then there is likely to be a multi-agency discussion with intervention and monitoring as possible outcomes. Now the role of professionals is really quite simple in that we as professionals have particular tasks and are positioned in ways which can help us to see risk. Teachers are quite often the first identifiers of risk. And within schools, there is a designated safeguarding lead officer, someone who is responsible for ensuring that when concerns identified and voiced, they are acted upon appropriately. People like myself, clinicians who work with children, we are very well positioned to identify a whole host of possible risks, not least of which the risk of emotional harm because of situations that the child may be in the centre of. So there are times when it is necessary to say to parents before all of this, I see the following things, and I have the following concerns. I'm informing you that if I'm not satisfied that those concerns are being acted upon, and this requires the full engagement of parents, that I make it very clear I will refer this to safeguarding. And it's not punitive, it's it's saying, look, this cannot continue. This has to be managed differently. And if they engage in that, then the probability is it's not going to go to mash at all. If they don't engage and the and the concerns continue, then they will automatically be referred. GPs, of course, tend to see patterns over time that are that then cause them to think, is there a safeguarding concern here? Why am I constantly seeing this child? Why am I what what what is it that underpins this child's physical difficulties? They're very alert to these sorts of things. And of course, social workers will assess risk and act accordingly. Safeguarding is not just procedural, it's relational and interpretive. So two people can see the same child, and one sees difficult behavior, another sees distress, which is signaling harm. Safeguarding works not when systems exist, but when someone is willing to think, to feel, and to act despite uncertainty. And that's really important because sometimes we're just not sure. We don't know whether there is a risk, but we know that something isn't right. What do we do? How do we respond? Because this isn't just about the professionals, it's about anyone who has contact with children, it is about the responsibility to communicate the concerns because, as I said at the beginning of this episode, things can go horribly wrong. And I've been involved in cases where the degree of systemic failure that's resulted in a fatal outcome has indicated frequently that people could see but did not act, or did not act appropriately, that there was no joined up approach, despite the safeguarding protocols being in place. I realise this is possibly a tough series to listen to. It is necessary to communicate, but I do understand it's tough because there are people almost definitely who will know of cases where safeguarding has been used. There will be people who are listening who may in fact be currently or have been subject of safeguarding interventions. In the next episode, I'm going to look at what do we mean by risk? How is risk signalled? How do we understand it? In the final episode, I want to talk about and so what do we do? I hope this has been a helpful beginning, and I look forward to speaking with you again soon.