This informal CPD article ‘The Designated Safeguarding Lead in Children’s Residential Care: Leadership, Professional Curiosity and a Culture of Safeguarding’, was provided by Rachel Webb of Phoenix-Kaw Care Consultancy, a health and social care training and consultancy organisation dedicated to improving standards of care across the sector.
Introduction
Learning Outcomes
• Describe the leadership responsibilities of the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL).
• Recognise patterns and emerging safeguarding risks affecting children in residential care.
• Apply professional curiosity to complex safeguarding concerns.
• Explain the importance of recording, escalation and multi-agency working.
• Evaluate how safeguarding leadership can improve outcomes for children.
Safeguarding is central to every aspect of children’s residential care. Children living in residential settings may have experienced abuse, neglect, trauma, exploitation, family breakdown or other adverse experiences, and some may continue to face significant risks within their communities, peer groups and online environments.
Although safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, effective safeguarding requires strong leadership and oversight. The Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) has an important role in ensuring concerns are recognised, appropriately recorded, assessed, referred and escalated.
Effective DSL practice goes beyond ensuring that policies and procedures exist. It involves creating a culture in which children are listened to, staff are professionally curious, concerns are reported promptly and safeguarding decisions lead to improved outcomes for children.
Creating a Strong Safeguarding Culture
A strong safeguarding culture should be visible throughout the organisation. Children should feel able to speak to trusted adults, while staff should feel confident reporting concerns without fear that they will be dismissed or blamed.
The DSL contributes to this culture through leadership, professional challenge, supervision, training and oversight. Safeguarding systems should be clear and understood by staff, with effective arrangements for recording, reporting and escalating concerns.
The DSL should also examine the quality of safeguarding practice rather than simply confirming that procedures have been followed. Case audits, chronologies and reviews of incidents can identify patterns, delays or missed opportunities that may not be obvious when individual incidents are considered separately.
Professional Curiosity and Recognising Patterns
Professional curiosity is particularly important in complex safeguarding situations. Practitioners should not automatically accept explanations at face value when information or behaviour indicates that something may be wrong.
For example, repeated missing episodes, unexplained money or possessions, associations with older individuals, deteriorating mental health or significant behavioural changes may indicate exploitation rather than simply challenging behaviour.
A DSL should consider patterns across incidents and bring information together to form a wider picture of the child’s circumstances and level of risk. This is particularly important when responding to contextual safeguarding concerns including child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, county lines, harmful sexual behaviour, online grooming, serious violence and other forms of extra-familial harm.
Responding to Safeguarding Concerns
When a safeguarding concern or disclosure is received, the child’s immediate safety must remain the priority. Information should be recorded accurately and promptly, and appropriate action should be taken according to the nature and severity of the concern.
Good safeguarding records should contain more than a description of individual events. Chronologies can help identify patterns, while records of professional decision-making should explain the rationale behind actions and demonstrate how risks have been assessed.
DSLs must also recognise when concerns require escalation. Uncertainty about thresholds should not result in significant risks being ignored or indefinitely delayed.
Multi-Agency Working and Professional Challenge
Children experiencing significant safeguarding risks are frequently supported by several organisations. Effective safeguarding therefore depends upon good communication and cooperation between residential care providers, children’s social care, police, health services, education and other relevant agencies.
The DSL should contribute effectively to multi-agency processes, share relevant information appropriately and ensure the child’s welfare remains central to decision-making. There may also be occasions when professionals disagree about thresholds, risk or the appropriate response. Effective safeguarding leadership requires confidence to challenge decisions and use escalation procedures where necessary. Professional disagreement should never prevent action when a child may be at risk.
Supporting and Developing Staff
DSL leadership also involves developing the safeguarding confidence of the wider staff team. Regular training, reflective supervision and discussion of safeguarding scenarios can help practitioners recognise emerging risks and improve professional judgement.
Supervision should provide opportunities to examine decision-making, challenge assumptions and identify emotional responses that could influence practice. Staff should understand that raising concerns about colleagues, including low-level concerns, forms part of a healthy safeguarding culture.
Learning from incidents and safeguarding reviews should also result in measurable changes to practice rather than simply being discussed and forgotten.
Measuring Safeguarding Impact
Effective safeguarding should ultimately improve children’s experiences and outcomes. DSLs should therefore consider whether actions have resulted in earlier identification of risk, faster intervention, better recording, reduced repeat incidents or children reporting that they feel safer.
Quality assurance should identify weaknesses in systems and lead to clear action plans and sustained improvements. Safeguarding leadership is therefore both operational and strategic.
Reflective Practice
DSLs should routinely reflect on the quality and impact of safeguarding decisions. This includes considering whether risks were identified early enough, whether information was shared appropriately, whether professional challenge was used when necessary and what difference the intervention made to the child. Reflection should inform supervision, audits, training and service improvement so that learning becomes embedded in everyday practice.
Conclusion
The Designated Safeguarding Lead has a crucial role in creating and sustaining effective safeguarding practice within children’s residential care. The role requires knowledge, professional curiosity, leadership, sound judgement and the confidence to challenge and escalate concerns.
Outstanding safeguarding is not demonstrated by policies alone. It is reflected in how quickly concerns are recognised, how effectively information is shared, how confidently professionals act and, most importantly, whether those actions make children safer.
CPD Reflection Questions
- How effectively does my organisation identify patterns across safeguarding incidents?
- Would staff feel confident reporting and professionally challenging a safeguarding concern?
- How do we evidence the impact of safeguarding decisions on children’s safety and wellbeing?
- What aspect of my DSL or safeguarding practice will I strengthen following this learning?
We hope this article was helpful. For more information from Phoenix-Kaw Care Consultancy, please visit their CPD Member Directory page. Alternatively, you can go to CPD Industry Hubs for more articles, courses and events relevant to your Continuing Professional Development requirements.
References
1. Children Act 1989.
2. Children Act 2004.
3. Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015.
4. Department for Education, Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the Quality Standards.
5. HM Government, Working Together to Safeguard Children.
6. Ofsted, Social Care Common Inspection Framework (SCCIF).
7. Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR.
