Twinkl feature Pete Mill's interview with Yvonne Sinclair from Safeguarding Support Ltd

We're delighted to share the second in our series of blogs, working alongside Twinkl, that focus on celebrating professionals from the schools management sector. This time, Crysp’s CEO, Pete Mills talks to Yvonne Sinclair from Safeguarding Support Ltd, focusing on Yvonne's background, accomplishments and mission to simplify safeguarding for schools.

Read the Twinkl blog Simplifying Safeguarding Compliance in Schools: An Interview With Safeguarding Support, for a summary of Pete and Yvonne's interview here.

Or read the full-in depth interview below:

Pete: Lovely to see you this morning and thank you for joining us. If we can kick things off… you can tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started with the business of safeguarding support. 

Yvonne: Okay. Well, it's a long tale but I'll start. I sold my wholesale distribution company, to be at home with my ill son, as he needed me to be at home. So I did that and he started becoming well, and I decided I wanted to get back to part-time work. So I had two children at home and I became a support worker for a national children's charity who worked in primary schools and supported children who struggled with reading.

It was a national charity, so I went along there and I worked 10 hours a week for that charity. And very quickly I became the Regional Operations Manager. I became full-time very quickly and if I can put this into context, it was about the time when there were the service case reviews of the death of children, primarily Victoria Climbié, Soham murders and Baby P. So just after all those, legislation in safeguarding started changing. And, of course, we were a charity working in school. We had the same compliance regulations as the education sector. So we needed a National Safeguarding Officer and that was my task! I was tasked to become the National Safeguarding Officer, so I had to do all the research and everything else to make sure that we were compliant and that our volunteers going to schools met requirements. So my responsibility was the policy procedures, training - internally, for volunteers, and externally - and quality assurances

So it was quite a big role, and it was primarily based in London. In 2015, I thought, I need to be back working in Yorkshire. I became independent in 2015, and in 2018 I incorporated Safeguarding Support Limited. 

Pete: Amazing. So you really saw the opportunity, I guess, from the inside out. So you were in the environment already, and you saw these changes, and got started from there?

Yvonne: Absolutely. And we worked with schools, because schools were in the same position. It's new, we all had to start learning this new legislation, because it was one service case review after another. Therefore, there were a lot of learnings coming in, a lot of legislation changes at that time, a lot of training required. So yeah, that's what we did. In 2015, I went independent. 

Pete: Amazing. And so fast-forwarding to today, what are you seeing as the biggest problems that are faced by schools with respect to safeguarding? 

Yvonne: Yeah, lots. Let's start by saying that I've not worked with a trust or a school that hasn't wanted to safeguard and protect children in their care. They want to be compliant. And of course, safeguarding is a priority because the first thing that any inspector would do is look at safeguarding. Whether it's Ofsted or ISI if their safeguarding is non-compliant, then of course they don't go any further, they go into a deeper inspection.

So, that's a big challenge. And as you can imagine, safeguarding and legislation is not black and white. It's not clearly defined. And to understand how that legislation fits into a school environment and instil safeguarding procedures etc, is quite mind-boggling and dare I say, it's overwhelming, because schools are trained to run a school and educate children. And then they've got these additional responsibilities coming in here. And, most schools do not have a standalone safeguarding person within the school, it's incorporated within another role. 

Pete: That's interesting. And that's leading into: how do you… breaking it down into the reality… how do you help schools with this challenge? Because like you say, they're there to educate children, but they have this… I think 'burden' is the wrong word because they have to have this legislation in place, but it does create a lot of work, doesn't it? So how do you help them with those challenges? 

Yvonne: Well, when I founded Safeguarding Support in 2015, what I wanted to do was simplify safeguarding. And that is my strapline. So our aim here is to provide no nonsense (we are from Yorkshire), no nonsense advice explaining what the guidance means in layman's terms if you like, how it affects their processes and arrangements and what they need to do to comply with that legislation. So it's simplifying things. And basically, you asked me what one of the biggest challenges was in the previous question, it's knowledge - because they're not safeguarding consultants, they are teachers. And secondly, because safeguarding is getting bigger and bigger, the onus on the school to understand that, takes a lot of resources, and a lot of money as well, and resources and money, as you know Pete, are very scarce at the moment. So, what we try and do is provide that no-nonsense support, at a cost-effective price. So that they can afford it, basically. We have a wide range of services. We make sure that we do the training. So we have statutory training and that's anything from designated safeguarding and lead which is required every two years, to whole school training, which is required annually, and safer recruitment training as well. And, governor training. So amongst other things, we do all those things, but also our training legislation says those in the education setting have to have a mechanism in place to evidence the understanding of the content and staff’s understanding of their responsibilities. So to make sure that we meet that, and our clients meet that, we provide online assessments.

Every training session we have has an assessment, so then they can judge and evaluate the understanding of the content. So that is how we meet that compliance. We also provide audits. We do audits and safeguard arrangements audits on several recruitment practices. And what that does for trusts and governing bodies, is it assures them that the school is meeting compliance. Because it's okay the school saying I'm compliant, but our audits then give them that assurance that they are, or not, and then we would advise what they need to do and to get them up to date with compliance. We also support schools on policy development. So policies change all the time, because the legislation changes all the time. So, therefore we have a various amount of services there, so we can do policy management, which, means that we write the policy and every time there's a change in the policy, we update it and then send that policy out.

Then, we draw the old policy, of course. So, that the school is compliant at all times, and we have support service packages as well. We can do one or all of those things for a school to support them, as I said, give cost-effective advice.

Pete: I know you were saying before… you've had those early beginnings in London. Do you still do work across the country then? Or do you predominantly work in Yorkshire? 

Yvonne: No, we have clients in [across] England. We primarily work in England. However, I do have a client in Sri Lanka as well.

So yes, we do have international clients, British schools in other countries. As long as they've got the same legislation as England and Wales, then we provide support for those people.

Pete: In terms of some practical advice on the safeguarding culture itself… if you were to give three tips to a school leader, how can we create a strong safeguarding culture? What, what would those tips be? 

Yvonne: Well, safeguarding is everybody's responsibility. So, therefore, to create a whole school approach, we need everybody involved. That's from the trust to governors, to staff, to pupils and parents as well. So, we need everybody to work together to make sure that we put children at the forefront, and we have the best interest of children at heart.

My three top tips would be: make sure you have quality and accessible training. So going back to the challenges schools have, we just said before, COVID… where you would have to go to a setting and be trained for a whole day. Now, if you've got five designated safeguarding leads in your school, you can’t have all five DSL’s away from school on training at the same time. That resource is difficult for schools to manage and expensive as well. My top tip would be to go to an organisation, a training organisation, that can provide you with quality training… in line with legislation, but also flexible. So here at Safeguarding Support Ltd, what we offer is face to face [training], like in the olden days, which is great.

We also do virtual [training sessions], like we're doing today, and live, so the DSL is on training but also school on-site, but we also do e-learning. We, well, we call it blended learning, so they do e-learning, but also we are here because often the challenge of e-learning is you can't ask questions, so we have the team here that you can email and ask questions to. And, I have webinars like we're doing today, so that our delegates can come online. So we try to offer a flexible package. I would suggest that is what schools look for in any training provider. And to make sure that they are working in compliance with the local and latest legislation as well.

The other thing I would say for the whole school approach is policies. Policies shouldn't just be another tick boxing exercise that we give out on the first day back on an inset day in September, because what people will do is just go “Yeah, yeah, tick, sign, yeah”.

Safeguarding is too big for that. So make sure that your policies are relevant to your school, to your staff and your pupils, because if they're involved in it [safeguarding] then they will understand the importance of it, and it will be relevant to them. 

Pete: Yeah, absolutely.  I love what you're saying now, it makes it a living and breathing, culture doesn't it, on that basis, because otherwise it's just a tick box exercise.

So, from that perspective, how do you think digitising safeguarding and the policy element could benefit the school? 

Yvonne: Well, as with the other sectors before us – health and safety, all the other different sectors – then safeguarding digitalisation in my opinion is the future. It's a game changer.  Thankfully, most schools now that I've worked with have moved away from paper based systems. And they've long gone now, but by utilising the advances in technology, which has come along since COVID, it's been absolutely brilliant. I believe it not only improves communication through policies and things like that, but it also provides, and we have this in safeguarding, it provides a mechanism and that mechanism is how that information is not only received, but how we can evidence it for compliance. And, you can also understand how that content's being perceived and understood by staff. Again, going back to those policies, it's no good just going “here’s the policy”, we've got to understand it and understand the importance of that and digitisation allows for that.

And on the audit trail as well, which an inspector will be looking for as well, is that evidence of safeguarding compliance. So I think digitalisation can also help because it can illustrate behaviour changes as well. So again, it's that impact on safeguarding, and protecting the children and staff. 

Safeguarding is about protecting staff as well. Safer working practice is there, which I think is essential for safeguarding, and that possible culture that you're just talking about. But also I think digitalisation makes a positive change to schools as well. It makes things simpler for the people involved.

I believe it reduces human error. Which is always there as well, and it certainly helps trust standardised procedures so that they can put that across different schools, within their trust and a biggie for me is it allows identification of areas of concern because it's visual and we can see that coming through.

Of course, digitalisation in the long run reduces costs as well. So that is a massive benefit of digital translation. 

Pete: And that's a big thing right now, isn't it, in schools?  I think we're seeing that, where in the past… I don't know whether it's to do with where the funding pots were configured for our budgets… but you know, there are some expensive solutions kicking around in schools.

And I think you share this vision as well Yvonne, that really, we can make a fair living from helping schools, but ultimately the money that they have is for educating children. And I think that's been lost on a lot of businesses that provide services to schools.

Yvonne: A lot of expensive processes and software that were there originally but are now expensive, but now there's better and more cost-effective systems available. And that I believe in. 

Pete: An important one (because you touched on this) on thinking about the benefits to school and people that are obviously entrusted with children every day, but it's a heavy topic, isn't it? And what I mean by that is when I have conversations with head teachers and they talk about, at a very high level, some of the issues that they encounter in school. What am I trying to say? It's just, it's one of those topics, isn't it? That you've got to do it, and you've got to make sure that it's right every day, but it is, it can be hard on a human level for people to be having to take on board. What might be happening or might not be happening. So I guess a couple of ways of splitting this, how do you find time to wind down from this? Because you must come away sometimes and think ‘phew’. But, also, how do you guide or help the head teachers or teachers that you're training, to also wind down from what is a very difficult and challenging topic? 

Yvonne: It is. If you are involved in any child protection concerns, and there's been quite a number in the last couple of months, then that is going to have a profound impact on anybody involved in that process. Therefore, what we have in safeguarding and in with our, the safeguarding partners, which are the police, social workers and our health workers as well, we have something called effective supervision. And it is the best practice that a school has. We have effective supervision procedures in place so that we can de-escalate.

You know, and be able to download some of that, that concern, some of that weight with somebody else. Now it's not mandatory at the moment (effective supervision), but it is highly recommended that all schools have that. And I think it's imperative that they do it so that they can be supported.

We do effective supervision training. What we say is, we can't continue pouring from an empty cup. Therefore, we have to change and be able to have, opportunity to do it and de-escalate within the school environment. 

Pete: That's, that's so important, isn't it?  Well, you know, it's been an absolute pleasure, this morning, talking to you about your business and what you do to help schools.

And it's been an absolute delight to listen to some of your stories there. So, thank you very much, Yvonne.

Find out more about Safeguarding Support Ltd and how they can help you simplify safeguarding in your school.

Crysp are revolutionising the industry by offering a digital platform that will help schools with their compliance lifecycle. Take a look at how digitalising compliance processes can help save time and effort. 

Read Crysp’s interview with Darren Harvey Hill from Carlton Academy Trust: Managing Compliance Within Multi-Academy Trusts