Why safeguarding needs to be created within caring relationships with trusted adults

• 18 August 2016
• Jane Evans
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When I speak at the upcoming conference Safeguarding and Protecting Every Child, The First National Early Years Safeguarding and Child Protection Conference it will be on how anxiety and trauma increase a child’s vulnerability and what we must all do to offer them experiences of safety within care-giving relationships.

Having worked with children and families for over 2 decades, I firmly believe that safeguarding needs to be understood through the prism of indicators of increased vulnerability. Safeguarding should be a broad term in order to be proactive in the protection of children from abuse, exploitation, mental and physical illness and social isolation, both in the short and the long term. Children internalize safety by being surrounded by emotionally available adults who understand, and offer, attachment relationships and ongoing body safety education. To help with this, I can highly recommend Jayneen Sanders excellent, simple and comprehensive book, Body Safety Education.

Nowadays I no longer have the privilege of working with young children, however, I regularly train early years professionals on how to understand and support children impacted by exposure to early, repetitive trauma. They tell me that they are increasingly caring for children who are showing signs of ongoing anxiety, some at an alarmingly high level.  This should be of great concern to us all as it will impact all areas of a child’s development whilst increasing their vulnerability.

• Once a child experiences ongoing stress this shapes the way their brain and body wire, connect and communicate.
• Once a child’s body and brain believe they are under ‘threat’ that automatically becomes their primary focus – survival trumps learning, playing, thriving and making friends.
• Once a child’s whole system is pre-occupied with survival they are less reflective, less able to communicate how they feel or what they need, and more vulnerable to manipulation.
• Once a child is highly anxious they will either become very still, overly compliant, or the ‘problem child’ who lashes out and causes disruption so is harder to ‘get to know’.

If a child has been removed from their birth family, has experienced domestic abuse, parental mental illness, has highly anxious adults around them, has fled from any violence and threat, has experienced any level of neglect, emotional, physical or sexual abuse these should be seen as indications of a need for extra safeguarding awareness. These early experiences will mean that a child is less ‘able’ to make connections with adults and to work out who are their ‘safe people’.  They won’t have an internalized sense of safety, or have had experiences which have proved that adults can be trusted and sought out in times of possible threat. Not having this as a road map for daily life makes any child more vulnerable to isolation, manipulation and exploitation.

The good news is that when this is a priority which underpins all aspects of work with a child and their parents, or carers it can offer them direct experiences of what safe, unconditional relationships look and feel like. This a vital first step in creating safe people in their lives whilst also nurturing lost or buried instincts about who or what, feels OK to be around.

When relationships are at the heart of all that is done with, and for, a child it creates endless possibilities to offer experiences and insight in to what it feels like to be safe and how to act when it does not. Being their ‘safe person’, nurturing their instincts, and educating all children about ‘body safety’ offer a great safeguarding foundation for life. Safety always lies in instinctively knowing who is safe and who is not and how to seek safety. This can only be learned effectively within a caring relationship.

“If you feel safe and loved your brain becomes specialized in exploration, play and cooperation; if you are frightened and unwanted, it specializes in managing feelings of fear and abandonment.”

Bessel van der Kolk