Safeguarding Together: A Transformative Approach to Child Welfare

Understanding Safeguarding Together

Safeguarding Together is more than just a practice framework. It represents a complete transformation in how we share responsibility for the safety, stability, and well-being of children. This approach is unique because it does not rely solely on the resilience or competence of individual practitioners. Instead, we believe that both staff and the system share responsibility. This shared commitment fosters a culture where collaborative, impactful, and supportive work with families and children can truly flourish and be sustained.

At its core, Safeguarding Together is:

• Organizational Centred (not individual)

• Network Centred

• Change Management Centred

• Staged in its approach to implementation

  
  

These four pillars, supported by six essential organizational elements, distinguish Safeguarding Together as a framework for both cultural and structural transformation.

Moving Beyond Individual Responsibility: Organizational Centred

Historically, the burden of safeguarding has fallen disproportionately on practitioners. Staff members are tasked with identifying risks, building networks, and maintaining safety plans, often without the necessary organizational infrastructure.

Safeguarding Together shifts this focus. The responsibility does not rest solely on staff. Leaders, supervisors, governance structures, and policies must actively align their practices. To achieve this, organizations need to integrate six essential elements into their DNA:

1. Safety: This includes physical safety for children and psychological safety for staff. Staff should feel comfortable raising concerns, saying “I don’t know,” and trying out ideas without fear of reprisal or negative judgment.

2. Community: A collective sense of mission is vital. This sense should extend beyond the organization to include extended family, kin, and community supports. Together, they create a fabric of resilience that protects and promotes children.

3. Learning Ethos: A culture of review and learning is essential. Both successes and failures should be examined to improve practices continuously.

4. Co-Creation: Change should not be imposed. Instead, it should be co-designed with staff, families, and networks to foster ownership and reduce resistance.

5. Distributed Leadership: Leadership should be diffused across levels. Supervisors, team leads, and practitioners should all act as change leaders.

6. Ethical Practices: Fairness, integrity, and respect must be operationalized. Families and staff should experience trustworthy systems.

   
   

By embedding these elements, organizations create conditions where rigorous practice is not only possible but sustainable.

Network Centred: Building Circles of Safety, Not Just Plans

One person or a single plan cannot keep children safe. Safeguarding Together is network-centred because impactful, sustained collaborative safeguarding success occurs when family members, kin, neighbours, teachers, and community allies participate. This approach represents a deliberate shift away from safety-plan-centred models.

Safety plans have their place, but they are often moment-in-time documents that reflect agreements or expectations at one point. Situations can change rapidly: parents may relapse, circumstances may shift, and even the most connected networks can drift apart.

Plans by themselves cannot flex. Networks can.

Safeguarding Together helps networks learn to work together, maintain their connections, and adapt as circumstances change. We empower them to become not just plan followers but individuals who hold each other accountable, problem-solve, and adapt over time. This approach makes networks more resilient and effective at safeguarding children in the long run. By prioritizing networks over plans, Safeguarding Together creates living, breathing safety systems around children and families.

Why We Chose the Word “Safeguarding”

We prefer the term safeguarding over “safety” because safeguarding encompasses more than just the absence of acute harm or crisis. It signifies both safety and well-being, ensuring a holistic approach to child and family welfare.

Where “safety” may imply crisis prevention, safeguarding focuses on resilience. It considers the child’s entire ecosystem, including their immediate and emotional needs, protective supports, and long-term stability. This language choice reflects our commitment to moving from reactive responses to violence and crisis towards proactive and sustainable well-being for both children and families.

Change Management Centred: Embedding Transformation

Safeguarding Together is inherently focused on change management. Implementing such significant change cannot be achieved through new tools and one-off training alone. A fundamental reframing of both culture and structure is necessary.

To facilitate this, Safeguarding Together draws on leading change models such as Prosci’s ADKAR model, Bridges’ Transition Model, and the Burke-Litwin Model. These models address both:

• The psychology of change on an individual staff level (transition, resistance, and meaning-making)

• The structural needs of change (governance, leadership alignment, supervision, and policy)

  
  

In doing so, Safeguarding Together meaningfully blends culture and structure.

Staged Approach to Implementation: Structured and Iterative

Transformational change is not a process that can be hurried or left to chance. Safeguarding Together approaches implementation in stages, allowing organizations to navigate change purposefully and at a manageable pace.

The stages in the implementation process include:

• Orientation and alignment of leadership

• Embedding of practice disciplines

• Developing networks

• Refining governance

• Testing sustainability

  
  

Feedback loops and ongoing testing are integral to each stage, ensuring constant learning and real-time adjustments. This approach allows for both speed and depth, enabling organizations to create momentum while embedding change deeply enough to alter culture and structure.

The Disciplines That Anchor Safeguarding Together

Safeguarding Together employs key disciplines that add rigor, clarity, and accountability:

• Rigorous Risk Discernment: A structured inquiry process into past events, current risks, and conditions for lasting safeguarding.

• Collaborative Responsibility: A clear understanding of how safeguarding is co-produced across families, networks, and professionals.

• Layered Risk Management: Multiple lines of defense using the Swiss Cheese model across policy, supervision, and practice.

• Structured Decision-Making: Transparent, replicable, and testable decision-making tools that replace variable judgment.

• Sustainability Planning: Ensuring that network and safety planning continue beyond case closure.

• Testing and Learning Loops: Integrating dashboards, fire drills, and iterative cycles to keep practice alive.

  
  

These disciplines ensure that safeguarding approaches and practices remain independent of subjective judgment.

Why This Matters

Reforms in child welfare have often faltered because the responsibility for success has been placed predominantly on practitioners. Safeguarding Together addresses this concern. It is organization-centred, building responsibility across the entire organization. It is network-centred, drawing on and fostering resilience from circles of support that can sustain and adapt over time. It is change management-centred, aligning culture, psychology, and structure. Finally, it is staged in its approach, ensuring that change is structured, iterative, and sustainable.

Safeguarding Together ensures that child protection practices are no longer a burden on a few but a system-wide, future-proofed responsibility that endures.

It is this unique aspect of Safeguarding Together that sets it apart: it is how we build cultures and systems where safeguarding is not just done, but sustained.

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