Safeguarding children with SEND – are you making these mistakes?

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Hi all,

Safeguarding children with SEND – are you making these mistakes?

I hope you are well in these weeks approaching the Christmas break. I am right now preparing my delivery of numerous non-managerial supervision sessions for safeguarding leaders which I usually schedule for the last two weeks of term. I am also planning to carry out a safeguarding audit early next year, which is always an exciting prospect because it allows me to understand an organisation in depth and offer detailed advice and guidance. Of course, I am continuing to also deliver training sessions online and face to face to a range of different organisations to old and new customers.

Recently an organisation commissioned me to deliver a safeguarding awareness training session which included an additional element which focussed specifically on the safeguarding of children with special educational needs, disabilities or health issues (SEND). I thought I would share some of my research in this newsletter.

It is widely accepted that children with SEND face specific safeguarding challenges compared to other children. Research suggests that children with SEND are three to four times more likely to be abused*. The reasons for this are many and varied. Children with SEND can:

  • be targeted by abusers because they may be less likely to understand or communicate what is happening to them and are therefore less likely to resist or report their abuse;
  • be more prone to peer group isolation or child on child abuse (including prejudice-based bullying) than other children;
  • require intimate care from a range of people which may compromise their safety;
  • struggle to understand the difference between fact and fiction in online content, putting themselves at risk of self-harm, radicalisation and grooming; and
  • be victim of stress felt by their caregivers, leading to poor and potentially abusive treatment.

In addition to this, child safeguarding practice reviews over the years reveal repeated mistakes made by professionals in the safeguarding of children with SEND. Earlier this year in February 2024, the NSPCC shared an in depth analysis of a large sample of case reviews where serious mistakes in the safeguarding of children with SEND were made to uncover these recurrent themes.

The NSPCC found that the most common mistake made by professionals was in failing to recognise abuse because of assumptions about behaviour, mood and injury related to the child’s condition. Related to this, professionals could also exhibit unconscious biases which could impacted their ability to recognise those signs e.g. labelling a child with complex needs and behaviours as ‘difficult’. More practically, the NSPCC report also found that professionals also missed opportunities to adapt communication (including providing essential resources in a timely fashion) to allow children with SEND to fully express themselves and communicate abuse directly. Professionals sometimes lacked the confidence to challenge parents and other caregivers or question their knowledge, sometimes due to feeling that parents knew the most about their child’s additional needs; they too often allowed parents to speak for the child, so the voice of the child was missed.

Working with parents of children with SEND could pose considerable challenges for professionals. Professionals sometimes focussed on the child’s impairments rather than being able to reflect on the whole picture of family life for the child and the interplay between disability and other adversities, meaning opportunities to support families facing issues such as poverty or domestic abuse and the cumulative effect of these on the child’s existing vulnerability, were missed. They sometimes failed to work in a ‘joined-up’ way with other services, leaving communication of important information to parents which lead to inaccurate or insufficient information being shared. Professionals didn’t always consider parents’ understanding, feelings or beliefs around their child’s additional needs and sometimes overestimated parents’ ability to meet these needs. 

It was common for professionals to fail to acknowledge that both children with SEND and their parents could be very depressed, anxious, angry or embarrassed about their needs, which resulted in low self-esteem and feeling unable to engage with support services. Working with children with SEND and their families can be challenging (as well as rewarding) for many professionals, and the NSPCC report found that often staff did not get the support or specialised training they needed to enable them to effectively support children with SEND and their families.

For more detail in this this important study, read: NSPCC – Safeguarding child protection/deaf and disabled children and young people:
d/Deaf children and children who have disabilities: learning from case reviews

In safeguarding children with SEND, my advice is that every setting should:

  1. Have a child protection policy reflects the fact that additional barriers can exist when recognising abuse, neglect and exploitation in children with SEND.
  2. Ensure all staff understand the increased vulnerabilities of children with SEND to abuse, especially if those children are affected by the cumulative risks of poverty, domestic violence and parental mental ill health.
  3. Support staff with the time and resources to work creatively with children with SEND help them to communicate their needs and to express themselves.
  4. Provide children with SEND with a trusted person, extra pastoral support, peer support and advocacy services.
  5. Give staff working with children with SEND support and training to do so effectively.
  6. Ensure staff can both support and challenge the parents of children with SEND.
  7. Offer targeted and timely Early Help as soon as problems arise and before problems escalate.
  8. Liaise closely with the special educational needs coordinator when dealing with cases of suspected abuse of children with SEND.
  9. Offer education on online safety and relationships and sex to children with SEND, as appropriate.
  10. Always work in partnership with support services, putting the child at the centre of all your work.

Extra support and reading can be found at:

I hope you found this newsletter useful. Remember I can offer inhouse training direct to your setting, ensuring that the date, venue and content caters exactly to your needs. Do contact me directly if you want to find out more.

In addition, I am continuing to offer scheduled open courses throughout the year. These are all coordinated by my partner organisation Delegated Services (DS). DS also offer a diverse range of other related training). Find out more about the range of services they offer here: 

Delegated Services | Home – Delegated Services

Remember I also offer a range of consultancy safeguarding services to settings, including supportive safeguarding audits, policy writing, a safeguarding subscription service, and non-managerial safeguarding supervision.

For information on all the courses and services I can offer, please visit my website www.mandyparrytraining.co.uk