No. 46: Safeguarding Case Studies
Contents
What are case studies?
Case studies are a handy way to evidence the good practice that settings undertake to identify and safeguard its vulnerable pupils. They can be used to illustrate how schools monitor pupils and ensure timely interventions, how attendance monitoring has identified the need to provide Early Help support as well as occasions where escalation of a case has been required (from Early Help to CSC) or challenges have been made. Case studies demonstrate clearly the impact support provided by settings has had on the child and their family.
Evidencing such cases provides an aide memoire to those in settings involved in external reviews, preparing for inspections or to supplement safeguarding or CP reports. Case studies can also support new DSL’s (and/or SLT) in their role, evidencing previous school practice and cases when they were not in post, providing a smooth transition of knowledge around historical or ongoing cases.
How many case studies?
It is tempting to create a huge number of case studies but it is advisable to develop only a few that evidence specific areas of your settings practice. You may decide that you want to illustrate the impact of new processes, staff training, a revised PSHE curriculum or even how you safeguarded your most vulnerable pupils during the recent Covid 19 pandemic.
Having a small number of case studies will enable you to review these, update when necessary or generate new studies as incidents evolve. You may want to review case study topics and content on a regular basis perhaps in half termly safeguarding team meetings or annually as part of a school review.
What should be in a case study?
As well as a timeframe a short pupil profile should start a case study, briefly giving academic status, family and social background, SEN or previous safeguarding concerns, any interventions and impact of these. The area of concern, the possible category of abuse should be highlighted in the case study supported by a bullet point list of issues affecting the pupil and the impact these concerns are having on the wellbeing and development of the child/ren. Those members of staff involved and multi-agency support should be listed along with the strategies used. You may want to include a brief chronology of the case. Finally the impact of the interventions or support provided by the setting and partner agencies needs to be included as well as reflections on practice.
How can case studies be used?
Not only are case studies useful to demonstrate to external visitors the good practice in your setting they can also be used for safeguarding team and staff CPD; to generate discussion and review
- were school processes used effectively?
- were concerns escalated in a timely way?
- would you do anything differently?
- what was the role of staff?
- have the improvements to the pupil’s lived experiences been sustained?
What ‘subjects’ could be used for a case study?
The choice of case study focus is not exhaustive but you may want to consider:
Attendance monitoring
- this could have led to the identification of a previously unknown young carer
- difficult morning routines may have been identified, parents having to drop a child with significant physical disabilities to their school first makes them late to drop off other siblings to their settings
- communication with other settings, health professionals as a result of monitoring may have been established
- neglect is suspected, oldest child is getting younger siblings ready for school, lack of boundaries at home mean all children are up late and oversleeping
Receiving an Operation Encompass call
- were there any signs and indicators prior to the call that may have been a warning flag to staff? How has this fed into CPD?
- what support was put in place for the pupils/parents (victim and perpetrator)
- what was the impact of this support
- was this support extended, e.g. posters to local DV&A organisations added to school website
- review of PSHE and RSE curriculum coverage
Covid 19 engagement monitoring and contact
- home visits may have identified neglect concerns
- how has remote school access for parents improved communication and engagement?
- how have remote meetings improved other agency involvement with families and setting?
Staff safeguarding awareness training
- how recent training or updates improved school response and identification to safeguarding concerns
- how Governors have evaluated effectiveness of training
- demonstrating that all staff recognise their duty to safeguard and their role in plans and support provided
Monitoring of school safeguarding systems and processes
- providing examples of how regular monitoring has enabled a timely response to concerns
- giving examples of how cases have been successfully escalated
- demonstrating the identification of ‘persistent’ cases, working with multi agencies
- providing evidence of effective Early Help plans and support
- where has challenge been required