Safeguarding Is A Jigsaw Puzzle
Every member of staff matters in safeguarding. Explore the safeguarding jigsaw and why staff should never underestimate the importance of passing concerns on.
Every member of school staff matters
Last week, I delivered safeguarding training to around 150 members of school staff.
Three hours worth. A lot of information with a lot of important conversations.
Afterwards, one of the things that I reflected on wasn't about the content of the training but rather how much we ask school staff to understand, notice and respond to when safeguarding is just one part of their role.
Teachers, teaching assistants, pastoral staff, senior leaders, site staff, business managers, finance teams, IT technicians, site maintenance teams and many others all have their own responsibilities, pressures and priorities.
Yet, alongside all of that, we ask them to remain alert to the risks and vulnerabilities that young people may be experiencing.
That is a huge ask.
It made me reflect on something I often talk about when explaining safeguarding:
Safeguarding is a jigsaw.
And every member of staff may hold a different piece.
You don't always know what is happening for a young person
One of the challenges with safeguarding is that we rarely have the complete picture.
A young person may say something in passing or a teacher may notice a change in their behaviour.
A teaching assistant might pick up on something during a conversation, whilst someone working in reception may notice something when a parent arrives at school.
A member of the site team might see something completely different when they unlock the school building in the morning.
None of these things necessarily confirms that something is wrong. Sometimes, they don't even appear particularly significant.
But that doesn't mean they aren't important. Because another member of staff might hold another piece.
The safeguarding team might have information from previous concerns. There may be information from parents, social workers or other professionals.
There may be meetings taking place outside of the classroom and gradually, those individual pieces can all begin to fit together.
A picture starts to emerge.
The person holding the piece doesn't necessarily know what picture we're building
This is perhaps one of the most important things I would want school staff to understand.
You don't necessarily know what the bigger safeguarding picture looks like.
In fact, you might not even know what picture we're trying to build...
You have your piece. The safeguarding team may have several others.
We may have information from different sources and professional networks and we may be beginning to understand what we need to explore further.
Even then, we don't necessarily have the complete picture either.
We're often working to understand what is happening for a young person, what risks might be present and what support, help or intervention may be needed.
This is why I would encourage staff not to make the decision themselves about whether something is “serious enough” to pass on.
You don't have to solve the puzzle. You just need to make sure your piece doesn't get lost.
Never underestimate the information you are about to pass on
This is probably the biggest message I wanted those 150 members of staff to take away from the training.
Never underestimate the weight of the information you are about to pass on.
I don't mean that staff should feel frightened about reporting concerns. There should be reassurance in knowing that you don't have to carry that weight yourself.
Your role might simply be to notice something, record it appropriately and pass it on.
Then the safeguarding team can consider it alongside the wider information available.
They can assess it, ask questions and coordinate with other professionals where appropriate. They can consider what support or intervention may be needed.
They can continue to manage the risk.
Safeguarding being everyone's responsibility doesn't mean everyone has to carry safeguarding responsibility alone.
The work that happens behind the scenes
One of the things I shared during the training was the scale of safeguarding activity taking place behind the scenes.
Across the last academic year in my pupil referral unit, there were more than 28,000 entries logged on our safeguarding system.
That's 28,000 puzzle pieces...
My safeguarding team also sat in more than 2,000 meetings to coordinate and support appropriate provision and interventions for young people.
These included meetings involving social care and other professionals, as well as discussions around safeguarding, support and intervention.
If every one of those meetings lasted just one hour, that's more than 2,000 hours. Realistically, many meetings take considerably longer, as most professionals will know.
I think those figures surprised people.
Not because safeguarding should be measured by numbers but because they helped to reveal something that isn't always visible to the wider school workforce: there is an enormous amount of safeguarding work happening behind the scenes.
It reminded me just how much of this has become normalised for me.
For safeguarding teams, this is our day-to-day work. For many other members of staff, it isn't.
Perhaps that's something we need to remember when we deliver safeguarding training.
How much safeguarding training do staff really need?
Safeguarding is constantly evolving. There are new risks, new information, new expectations, new guidance and new examples of what young people may experience.
As safeguarding professionals, we naturally want to share that knowledge. But where is the line?
How do we give staff enough information to recognise and respond appropriately without overwhelming them? How do we make safeguarding training practical without treating people as though they don't understand? How do we explain complex safeguarding issues in straightforward language without losing the complexity that matters?
Most importantly: Do staff in every role really need to know everything that safeguarding professionals know?
I'm not convinced they do and that isn't about lowering expectations. It's about recognising that different people have different roles.
Safeguarding professionals need a depth of knowledge because safeguarding is their specialist area.
A teacher needs to understand what they need to recognise, what they need to do and when they need to pass something on. A member of the site team may need something different again.
A governor has different safeguarding responsibilities.
The aim shouldn't necessarily be to turn everybody into a safeguarding specialist. It should be to give everybody enough knowledge, confidence and clarity to play their part effectively.
You don't need to know everything to make a difference
Perhaps that's the reassurance I would most like staff to take away. You don't need to know every possible safeguarding scenario, nor do you need to be able to identify exactly what is happening for a young person.
You definitely don't need to investigate and you don't need to decide whether something definitely meets a particular threshold.
You certainly don't need to carry the risk on your own.
You need to notice. You need to respond appropriately. You need to pass it on.
You never know what information someone else already has. You never know what another member of staff might notice tomorrow.
You never know whether your observation might be the missing piece that helps the safeguarding team understand what is happening. You never know whether passing that information on could help a young person receive the right support, help or intervention at the right time.
We are all part of the same team
Ultimately, I don't think safeguarding works when people see the safeguarding team as a separate entity within the school.
We are one team, with different roles and responsibilities. We each have different experiences and will naturally obtain different pieces of the puzzle.
Ultimately, we are all working towards the same thing: keeping young people safe and helping them access the support they need.
The teacher who notices something and the teaching assistant who hears something. The pastoral member of staff who spots a change and the receptionist who has an interaction with a parent. The site team assistant who sees something unusual...
The safeguarding professional who brings different information together.
Every one of those contributions can matter. None of us should underestimate the influence we can have on a young person's experience.
The piece you hold might matter more than you realise
When I walked away from the training, I found myself reflecting on just how much safeguarding knowledge I have accumulated over the years.
So much of what can feel complex to others has become normalised for me. That is one of the biggest challenges for safeguarding professionals.
We need to remember that what is everyday knowledge to us may be completely new to someone else.
We need to give people enough information without overwhelming them. We need to make safeguarding serious without making it frightening. We need to empower staff without making them feel responsible for solving things that aren't for them to solve.
We need to make sure every person understands the value of the piece they hold.
Because you don't need to see the whole picture to make a difference, you just need to recognise that your piece may matter.
So if you notice something, hear something or become concerned about something involving a young person, don't make the decision that it is probably nothing.
Pass it on.
You may never know what happened because of the information you shared. You may never know where your piece fitted into the wider picture.
But you never know what difference it is going to make either.
Effective safeguarding depends on more than policies and procedures. It depends on people having the knowledge, confidence and support to understand their role within the wider safeguarding picture.
I provide Safeguarding In Practice Training, Strategic Safeguarding Leadership Training, Safeguarding Training For Governors, and 1:1 and group safeguarding supervision for those with safeguarding responsibilities.
The aim isn't simply to give people more information. It's to help schools build confident, informed safeguarding practice, while recognising that different people hold different responsibilities and different pieces of the puzzle.
If you're looking to strengthen safeguarding practice within your school, develop safeguarding leadership or provide meaningful support and supervision for those carrying safeguarding responsibility, I'd be happy to explore how I could help.
Safeguarding works best when everyone understands the piece they hold and nobody feels they have to carry the whole picture alone.
Pass it on, because you never know what difference it's going to make.
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