My view - Safeguarding and the promises of the main parties

Andy Churcher • July 3, 2024

Which parties have commitments which will support safeguarding? new

A ballot paper from the election with a pencil about to mark the vote

Yesterday I published an article bringing together the commitments to safeguarding within the manifestos of the seven major parties. I tried to be as objective as possible.

Today, I want to be subjective and tell you what I think, based on all those commitments.

In the article yesterday I stated that responsible voting must consider how the parties view some of the most vulnerable people in society. Being vulnerable, in any way, creates spaces for abuse, neglect and exploitation to be more likely to happen. If our safeguarding work is going to be successful, leaders in any organisation, or in this case leading the country, must have a focus on tackling vulnerability and reducing risks to people who are vulnerable. Of course, there are many ways to do that, and you may disagree with my analysis. I am not trying to convince you to vote any particular way but to think, as I have been able to do through writing yesterday’s article, what the manifesto commitments tell us about each party’s priorities to safeguard the vulnerable.

The Winners!

The parties who are demonstrating the biggest commitment to safeguarding within their manifestos are the Green Party, Labour and the Liberal Democrats who have all come out well in the lead in my analysis. All three have commitments across the majority of areas looked at. The Liberal Democrats come out just in the lead and are the only party who have positive modern slavery and anti-trafficking commitments, but broadly these three have priorities which support safeguarding work throughout their manifestos.

In the middle

The Conservatives have a few commitments within their manifesto which is positive. I know it has been said many times by opposition parties, but while these commitments are good, I have to wonder why they have done so little to improve the situations for children in care or care leavers or to develop mental health services (two of the areas they come out strong on) in the last 5 or even 15 years?

It is also concerning to me that they are clearly undecided as to whether they intend to take the UK out of the internationally respected European Convention on Human Rights and the accountability the European Court of Human Rights brings. All other parities (with the exception of Reform UK) make manifesto commitments to keep us in here.

At the rear

And so, Plaid Cymru, Reform UK and the SNP seem to have made the fewest commitments to safeguarding within their manifestos. I guess for Plaid Cymru and the SNP their focus is on the issues that help make the case for independence. For Reform UK however there does seem to be an approach to focus, on a superficial level, on policies which appeal to a majority, but tend to stigmatise the most vulnerable. For instance, their commitments to leave the European Court of Human Rights, and to tackle youth crime through imposing punitive measures rather than through proactive preventative measures, or to relax rules around hate crime.

For context, my politics sits left of centre precisely because of my views around the role of government in protecting everybody and ensuring everybody is provided for. I see the shortcomings of our first-past-the-post electoral system, but feel that no system is perfect and there are really strong benefits of this system. This system generally works best when there is balance and the governing party changes after one or two terms in office. It looks as though the country agrees with me that it is time for change, but we’ll see what that looks like in the early hours of Friday morning.

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The value of safeguarding within a mosaic of factors to improve attainment

By Andy Churcher • March 21, 2025

The recently published DfE research report The link between attendance and attainment in an assessment year [1] outlines the significant benefits to schools and their pupils of improving attendance levels. I know that most schools are very proactive when it comes to supporting pupils to increase their attendance, and rightly so. Ofsted are interested in understanding this work during inspections with a recent report stating, “The school has addressed the significant challenges with pupils’ attendance and punctuality through effective actions to support and engage families.” But, of course, attendance isn’t the only factor impacting attainment in assessment. In fact, much research demonstrates that academic success measured by attainment is influenced by the whole life experience of the child. Ofsted’s 2022 paper Securing good attendance and tackling persistent absence [2] identified interdependencies between attendance and safeguarding. Effective and empathetic communication with parents is also an important tool in reducing absence. The same paper noted, “It is clear that leaders who have succeeded in raising attendance levels listen to parents properly and ask the right questions in order to find out why their children are not attending well enough.” There is also extensive research which helps us to understand the link between challenging behaviour and abuse, neglect and exploitation. The Truth Project, part of the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse [3], gathered the insight of more than 6,000 victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. In its report, IICSA noted that victims and survivors knew their behaviour deteriorated as a result of being sexually abused sometimes, but not exclusively, as a deliberate attempt to communicate that they needed help, although sadly these signals were rarely recognised by others. And if behaviour can influence attainment then, of course, so can being the victim of abuse. The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s 2024 National review into child sexual abuse within the family environment [4] stated that “abuse was reported to have impacted children’s education in nearly a third of reviews”. And, if all that’s the case we can begin to see a complex mosaic of interdependencies for children which have the power to influence their risk of being a victim of abuse, their behaviour in school, their attainment throughout their education and their whole life experience. Safeguarding and wellbeing should never be seen as separate to any other part of a child’s experience. I wonder if school leaders take a truly strategic view of this mosaic which results in a co-ordinated approach which is greater than the sum of its parts. Or if work to support pupils is often too fragmented at an organisational level to be sufficiently effective in tackling these interdependencies. Last year the Department of Education published a rapid literature review [5] to shape the work of the longitudinal Education and Outcomes Panel Study (EOPS). It identified this mosaic of issues that impact educational outcomes categorising them into four themes: Theme 1: Children’s cognitive and non-cognitive capabilities and wellbeing Theme 2: Children with SEND and experience of social services Theme 3: Home environment Theme 4: Experiences of school