The annual safeguarding update for staff: what to cover about the local area
Most of an annual safeguarding update is the same in every school: the categories of abuse, the signs, the procedure. The part that is not is the local area. This guide sets out what that part should cover and how to keep it to a page staff will read.
What the guidance asks
“all staff should receive safeguarding and child protection (including online safety) updates (for example, via email, e-bulletins, and staff meetings), as required, and at least annually”
Two other passages tell you what the local part of that update is for. Staff should “consider whether children are at risk of abuse or exploitation in situations outside their families” (paragraph 21), and:
“Schools should also try to be alert to when children might be at highest risk around the school day (for example, immediately after school).”
And when staff are worried, “Referrals should follow the local referral process” (paragraph 65).
What the local part should cover
This is our advice, not wording from the guidance. Four things, each short.
- The area in two or three sentences. What is around the gate and on the routes in, described plainly. If the area is quiet, say so. If something is recorded often, say what and where, with its limit: recorded crime describes places, never pupils.
- The places and times to be alert to. The stops, stations, parks and parades where pupils wait or gather, especially in the hour after school, named so that staff on duty or on the way home know where to look.
- What has changed since last year. A rise or fall in what is recorded, a new pattern the partnership has flagged, a place that has come up in the school's own records. This is the part that makes the update worth reading again.
- Who to tell. The designated safeguarding lead and deputies by name, the local safeguarding partnership or regional board, the council's route for reporting a concern about a child, and 999 when a child is in immediate danger.
Keep it to one page
A one-page briefing gets read, pinned in the staffroom and kept by supply staff. Anything longer belongs in the policy. Date it, so it is clear which year's figures it carries, and record who received it, so the governors' annual report can say that every member of staff had the update.
Where the figures come from
The area description can be built from published sources: police-recorded crime and anti-social behaviour around the school, the factors children's social care records across the authority, and open maps of the parks, stops and stations nearby. None identifies a child. The safeguarding context report produces this page for each school as its staff briefing, with a space for the school to write in its own DSL, and the guide to harm outside the home sets out the sources in more detail.
Quotations are from Department for Education guidance, Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Every school page on this site names the school's safeguarding partnership and the council's page for reporting a concern. Find your school.