Best Practice

Thinking the unthinkable: Addressing emerging safeguarding risks

With new safeguarding threats emerging constantly, how can designated safeguarding leads keep up-to-date with the knowledge they need to protect pupils? Elizabeth Rose advises
What if? When faced with significant and complex concerns about a child‘s welfare, it is essential that safeguarding professionals in schools ‘think the unthinkable’ - Adobe Stock

Often in safeguarding training, we are told to “think the unthinkable” – and this was a clear message to come from the Serious Case Review after the death of Daniel Pelka in 2012 (Coventry Safeguarding Children Board, 2013).

Daniel Pelka, aged 4, suffered abuse and neglect over a prolonged period of time and the review into his death stated: “The practitioners involved were not prepared to ‘think the unthinkable’ and tried to rationalise the evidence in front of them that it did not relate to abuse.”

It also states: “When faced with significant and complex concerns about a child‘s welfare, it is essential that professionals ‘think the unthinkable’ and always give some consideration to child abuse as a potential cause of the presenting problems.”

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