Weary, Worn, and Working the System: The Reality of Safeguarding
The Game
She rolled the chair back into the desk, feeling the wheels drop into the familiar, worn divot of the carpet tile. As the screen came to life, muscle memory logged her into the system. The stack of A-level marking balanced precariously at her left hand.
But first, she needed to decide if this new notification was a genuine safeguarding concern, or if some new-hire do-gooder had simply decided Jack’s temper tantrums were a sign of deep emotional distress. In her book, they were a sign of idiocy and usually a hangover; nothing ‘safeguarding’ could fix. She scanned the document, marked it as ‘complete,’ and closed the tab. If they kept him away from the police and inside a classroom, it was a win.
Glancing up, she saw the school counsellor pass the window. Tensing, she waited for the inevitable knock on the door. She braced herself with a restorative gulp of lukewarm, knock-off Nescafé just as Jamie entered.
Photo by Jesus Hilario H. on Unsplash
Jamie had been at the school for two years now, enough time to earn respect from some, though others remained wary of the therapist. He knew the safeguarding leads generally hated to see him coming... apart from the deputy head, who always had a distinct twinkle in his eye when inviting Jamie into his office. Jamie didn’t like to analyse that too much. It was why he routinely chose Alison’s office instead, even though he was acutely aware that her fifteen-plus years of service had left her thoroughly disillusioned. To Alison, students were either “wasters” or they were alright, and that was it.
Taking a quiet breath, Jamie prepared himself to play the institutional game. First, he acknowledged her situation so she felt seen.
“Oh, that’s a big stack of marking, Alison. I bet you hate people arriving at your office when you are clearly so busy.” He offered a subtle, sympathetic head tilt. “I’ll be as quick as possible.”
He sat down on the uncomfortable, rigid edge of the visitor’s chair, intentionally indicating he wouldn’t be staying long. She smiled back tightly and wafted a hand, signalling him to continue.
“OK, so it’s about Alisha Cuthbert,” he paused, watching her reaction.
Alison’s nose flared, unconsciously sorting Alisha into the ‘waster’ category. Jamie immediately revised his pitch.
“I know she’s a difficult character around school,” he said, acknowledging the institutional reality. “However, I’m getting something entirely different in our sessions. She’s always been highly evasive about her dad. When I mention him, she holds herself, cradling her own arms, self-soothing, I think. She goes entirely mute and will only speak again if I completely change the subject. This, alongside a few other small comments, has had me concerned.”
Alison opened her mouth to interrupt, but Jamie was faster.
“I know this isn’t enough to action a formal concern on its own,” he added smoothly. Alison closed her mouth, an eyebrow now raised in slight irritation. “However, her mum is pregnant, and Alisha has just given me a garbled statement of concern about the baby. I haven’t got anything concrete yet, but she did explicitly use the words ‘safeguarding concern’ herself.”
This finally caught Alison’s full attention. Her eyes widened in genuine surprise. “She said it was a safeguarding concern?”
“Yes. But I think she might struggle to be clear when she talks to you. There’s maybe something much bigger at play here. If this is elevated to social services, can you ask them to be delicate? We need them to hold awareness that there is a wider story here.”
This message wasn’t just a note for social services; it was a gentle intervention for Alison herself, delivered in a way her middle-management ego could accept. (Jamie took a brief microsecond to acknowledge and squash his own internal, bitchy tone here).
Alison’s gaze dropped back to the teetering stack of marking. Jamie waited.
Slowly, Alison moved the stack to one side. “Where is she?”
The tension Jamie had been holding dropped slightly. Alisha had been prepped, Alison was on board, and the door was open. Now, fingers crossed for a real conversation. Almost instantly, the tension crept right back.
Photo by Pars Sahin on Unsplash
The Policy vs. The Reality
In training rooms and policy documents, safeguarding is consistently painted in clean black-and-white lines: hear an issue, write down the facts only, make no promises to the young person, and report directly to your designated lead. If only it were that simple.
In the real world, disclosures are messy. They are garbled, defensive, evasive, or framed as happening to a ‘friend.’ They are littered with vague language like “thingy” and “you know.” To make matters more complicated, disclosures are frequently denied by the young person as soon as the system escalates the situation.
Research by the NSPCC and the Child Sexual Abuse Centre repeatedly demonstrates that children rarely disclose abuse in a neat, linear narrative. Instead, they utilise “broaching behaviours”, testing the waters, going mute, or presenting a minor behavioural issue (like a temper tantrum) to gauge how an adult reacts before risking the exposure of their core trauma.
Alison isn’t the villain of this story; she is an underfunded, exhausted middle manager dealing with an avalanche of crisis referrals on top of an already onerous teaching workload.
According to the UK Department for Education’s Children in Need census, there are over 630,000 referrals to children’s social care in England alone every single year, with schools acting as one of the primary gateways.
At the same time, multi-agency thresholds are a massive point of friction across the UK. A recent joint inspection report by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) highlighted that differing definitions of what actually constitutes a “threshold for intervention” between schools and social services frequently lead to dropped cases and escalating professional resentment.
This systemic gridlock is why an experienced teacher looks at a stack of papers and treats a student’s “hangover” as a nuisance rather than a cry for help. She is suffering from compassion fatigue inside a fundamentally overloaded system.
When systems are outdated and unfit for purpose, knowing the specific environment and the unique personalities of the people you work with becomes your primary tool for navigating these choppy waters.
Navigating the Choppy Waters: Your Professional Armour
To ensure you don’t become entirely overwhelmed, disillusioned, or hyper-anxious, you must actively build a framework of boundaried self-care. Standard self-care is entirely reactive (treating burnout after it happens). Boundaried self-care is proactive - it is the practice of setting firm limits to prevent burnout from occurring in the first place.
To survive the long haul in this profession, every practitioner must maintain four core pillars:
Clinical Supervision as a Pressure Valve: Treat supervision as a genuine safe space. It is not just a bureaucratic checklist for clinical reflection; it is the place to actively untangle your “bitchy internal tones,” systemic resentments, frustrations, and sadness.
Systemic Mapping: Accept the reality of the building you work in. Learn who the “Alisons” are so you can intentionally adapt your communication strategy to fit their language and bypass their defences.
Temporal and Physical Breaks: * Lock your door at lunch. Eating a sandwich while staring at a marking pile isn’t a break.
Strictly limit access to work emails at home.
Intentionally build 5-minute buffer spaces between heavy sessions and administrative meetings.
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The Decompression Ritual: Create a distinct boundary between work and home. Turn up the music on the drive back, consciously take off your school lanyard and watch the second you walk through the door, or immediately shower and change your entire outfit to shake off the day’s residue.
Faced with a broken system, we must recognise exactly where we do and do not have the power to create structural change. Trying to carry the weight of an underfunded institution personally is an impossible burden. It requires absolute courage to occasionally disappoint the system to ensure you have the longevity to be there for the next young person who needs you.
Over to you: Which of these boundaries do you personally find the most challenging to maintain when the institutional pressure starts to mount? Let’s discuss!
It’s lovely to share a few quiet moments with you today.
Until next time,
💛🌿 Helen
About the Author: Helen Gifford is a counsellor, supervisor, and author of ‘A Practical Guide For Working Therapeutically with Teenagers and Young Adults’.
Support this work: 📕 Order the Book: A Practical Guide for Working Therapeutically with Teenagers and Young Adults ☕ Buy me a toasted teacake: Ko-fi 🌿 Work with me: Clinical Supervision and Training via www.branchcounselling.co.uk
Author Note & Transparency: All case studies or stories are entirely fictitious and intended to illustrate the experiences many professionals face; no confidentiality has been violated. I recommend resources based on a combination of clinical experience and consideration of available evidence. These are offered for interest only and are not endorsements of scientific efficacy or clinical recommendations. Please apply your own critical judgment.
References:
NSPCC Learning: Recognising and responding to abuse, and findings from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) on barriers to disclosure.
Department for Education (DfE): Characteristics of children in need, National Statistics.
Ofsted & Care Quality Commission (CQC): Joint targeted area inspections (JTAIs) of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.