Safeguarding: Negative and Positive

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What does safeguarding mean? For some it has become one of these weasel words, like 'Healthandsafety' which is too often wheeled out to mean 'no', or, even worse, to mean 'I'm going to impinge on your freedom by reporting you to an unspecified higher authority'. It shouldn't be like this, of course, but I fear that future generations will look back and think that much of the work done under the flag of 'safeguarding' did more harm than good. This is absolutely not to deny the central importance of keeping children safe, merely the manner in which it is done.

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The 'official' government definition of safeguarding can be found in the DfE document Working together to safeguard children (2006, 2010, 2015, 2018):

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• protecting children from maltreatment

• preventing impairment of children’s health or development

• ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care

• taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

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The first two parts of the definition are, in effect, 'child protection' and they amount to the requirement to hold children safe in the face of harm. This can be thought of  as the negative side of safeguarding. The second two parts are the positive safeguarding duties, although they could hardly be written in blander, less inspirational language.

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The purpose of the Working Together document is to provide guidance to "inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children". But if the definition of safeguarding already includes the requirement to promote the welfare of children then this is a strangely tautologous phrasing. Regardless of this the specific guidance which relates to education settings is called Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE; 2015, 2020, 2021)

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The NSPCC has a neater definition than the DfE and is preferable as the positive duty comes first: 

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• Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm.

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Much safeguarding training is concerned with understanding what is meant by 'harm'. The usual definition is centred around the four types of abuse: Physical, Emotional, Neglect, Sexual; but also includes Cyberbullying, Forced marriage, Female Genital Mutilation and Radicalisation.

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In order for staff to carry out their statutory safeguarding duties, some organisations refer to the 5 Rs:

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• Recognition

• Response

• Reporting

• Recording

• Referral

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These are all very necessary but they all refer to negative safeguarding. We believe that equal importance should be attached to positive safeguarding, which essentially means building children's capacity to resist temptation, to risk assess dangers, to choose the right option, all of which can be summed up by another R:

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• Resilience

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Resilience is defined by the US Department of Health as the "ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from adversity and stress. In other words, resilience can manifest as maintaining or returning to one’s original state of mental health or wellbeing or reaching a more mature and well-developed state of mental health or wellbeing through the use of effective coping strategies."

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Painful experiences cause negative emotions but it does not automatically follow that they must be avoided at all costs; it is a question of proportionality. Difficulties and challenges are not only unavoidable in life, they are also essential for growth and development of character. At a certain level of difficulty, of course, experiences become scars and it is now generally accepted that having experienced large number of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ie a high ACE score) is linked with later ill health, both mental and physical.

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When difficulties fall towards the outer limits of someone's coping capacity they are a stimulus for growth. As Gever Tulley, author of 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), says: 

• Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.

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There are lots of scales which attempt to measure resilience but none of them are reliable because it is so idiosyncratic. Nevertheless some general themes emerge when looking at what makes someone resilient (taken from Courtney Ackerman in PositivePsychology.com):

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• "Optimism – those who are optimistic tend to be more resilient as well since they are more likely to stay positive about the future even when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
   

• Altruism – the most resilient among us often turn to help others when they need to relieve stress and boost their self-efficacy.
   

• Moral Compass – people with a strong moral compass or steadfast set of beliefs about right and wrong generally have an easier time bouncing back.
   

• Faith and Spirituality – while not a required factor for resilience, people often find their faith helpful in surviving challenges and coming through stronger and wiser on the other side.
   

• Humor – people who have a healthy sense of humor and are able to laugh at their own misfortune are at an advantage when it comes to bouncing back, for obvious reasons!
   

• Having a Role Model – this is also not a requirement for resilience, but those who have a role model in mind can draw strength from their desire to emulate this person.
   

• Social Supports – unsurprisingly, social support is important when it comes to resilience; those with strong social support networks are better equipped to bounce back from loss or disappointment.
   

• Facing Fear – this is not so much a characteristic as an action or tendency to act, but people who are willing to leave their comfort zone and confront their fears are more likely to overcome their challenges and grow as a person.
   

• Meaning or Purpose in Life – it shouldn’t be surprising that those who feel they have a specific purpose in life or find a tremendous amount of meaning in their lives are more likely to recover from failure or disappointment; when you fervently believe you have a purpose, you are less likely to give up when faced with tragedy or loss."

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This looks very like a good definition of what a good education should be about and in fact these nine factors have lots of overlap with the IB Learner Profile (which we describe in detail in our page on Enrichment), which the IB describe as their mission statement in action. Taken together these characteristics describe someone who is scoring high on wellbeing, someone who is thriving, or flourishing. Naturally the Ancient Greeks had a word for this: eudaimonia, literally 'good spirits', which was, for Aristotle, the highest human good.

Surely this is what safeguarding actually means, but only the YMCA seem to have made the connection with their groundbreaking research report in 2016 into Eudaimonia: How Do People Flourish? Average wellbeing score across all respondents was 6.13. The top five factors which made the biggest difference to this were:

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1. Financial: Happy +19%  Extremely Worried -33%. Total swing 52%

2. Positive relationships +17%, Negative relationships -33%. Total swing 50%

3. Mentally stimulating life: +13%, Mentally unstimulating -35%. Total swing 48%

4. Active: +13%, Inactive -19%. Total swing 32%

5. Educational experience: positive +10%, negative -20%. Total swing 30%

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This last finding is hugely important and deserves to be emphasised because it shows, with bitter irony, that for some children, mainstream school itself is an Adverse Childhood Experience which leaves lifelong scars. 

"Our research revealed a 30% disparity in wellbeing scores between those that have had positive and negative experiences during their time in education. That means, if you have a bad time at school because you didn’t fit in, you were bullied, or mainstream academia wasn’t right for you, it could leave you feeling 30% less happy long after you’ve left. That could include feelings of stress, issues surrounding confidence, depression – even thoughts about suicide."

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International Comparisons

Despite enormous efforts, and endless policy and guidance re-writing, the UK consistently scores poorly on measures of childhood wellbeing. IN 2007 a Unicef survey placed it bottom of 21 wealthy countries. In a follow up study in 2013 it had improved, but not much: 16th out of 29 countries, well above the USA which was down in 26th place. The countries at the top of the leaderboard were all small, Northern European countries with very different attitudes to childhood than the UK:

1. Netherlands

2. Norway

3. Iceland

4. Finland

5. Sweden

There are doubtless many factors at work but one of them is clearly the importance the Dutch attach to play, and especially outside play:

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"In the Netherlands, play is encouraged and considered an important part of childhood development. This idea is evident based on the endless amounts of children’s playgrounds, petting zoos, and even kid-zones in stores! Not to mention, it’s normal to see Dutch kids playing outside whenever they can on their bikes, scooters, tricycles, rollerblades. Through play, children learn how to react in situations, confrontations, and social settings." (Heather Hager, 2021)

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