NSPCC Learning Podcast

This summer, we are releasing a compilation of episodes on key topics related to safeguarding children and young people within your community.   Learn more about: building a safer culture in your organisation how to deal with and respond to concerns about a young person or adult making the nominated lead role visible to children, staff and parents so they know who to go to for support training and development needs, including supervision and support for nominated leads the importance of establishing multi-agency relationships. These episodes were produced as part of a partnership led by NCVO, funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the National Lottery Fund within the Safeguarding Training Fund programme. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Helen Munn is the Head of Online Learning at the NSPCC and is responsible for the organisation’s elearning courses and our podcast programme. Prior to joining the NSPCC, she held a similar role at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Cate Meredith has been working for the NSPCC for 10 years as a Senior Consultant in our Safeguarding in Communities team. She shares her expertise with organisations in the voluntary and community sector to ensure their safeguarding responsibilities are supported, understood and met so that children and young people are kept safe. Trupti Kavia is Head of Family Services for Home-Start in Barnet, Brent, Enfield and Harrow and has worked with the family support organisation for 15 years delivering efficient and effective services. As a Designated Safeguarding Officer (DSO), Trupti is responsible for ensuring that safeguarding procedures are followed and staff and volunteers receive ongoing safeguarding training and support. 📚 Related resources > View our safeguarding resources for voluntary and community groups Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

In this episode, we focus on: advice, tips and guidance on safeguarding to get you started common challenges organisations face when addressing safeguarding issues bringing organisations up to speed with current legislation the need for organisations to tailor policies and procedures keeping communication channels open between children and organisations. These podcasts were produced as part of a partnership led by NCVO, funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the National Lottery Fund within the Safeguarding Training Fund programme. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Chris Cloke was the Head of Safeguarding in Communities at the NSPCC for over thirty years.  He has a huge wealth of experience and knowledge in safeguarding, particularly within the voluntary and community sector where he has been a trustee and advisor to several voluntary groups. He has been a member of and worked closely with a number of local safeguarding children boards and was chair of the Anti-Bullying Alliance for many years. Cate Meredith has been working for the NSPCC for 10 years as a Senior Consultant in our Safeguarding in Communities team. She continues to lend her expertise to organisations in the voluntary and community sector to ensure their safeguarding responsibilities are supported, understood and met, so that children and young people are safe.  Heidi Bradley is a Club Support Manager for England Athletics and leads on the development of safeguarding resources. She also sits on the NSPCC’s National Advisory Group for the voluntary and community sector. 📚 Related resources > View our safeguarding resources for voluntary and community groups > Browse our introductory safeguarding and child protection elearning courses Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

The lead author of the report, Holly Bentley, a Senior Information Specialist at the NSPCC speaks about:  why we chose to focus on online safety and online abuse this year where we sourced the data from  how we collaborated with experts who have an insight into the world of online safety the key findings and main conclusions drawn from the report  how our surveys gave children a safe space to talk about their experiences. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Holly Bentley is a Senior Information Specialist at the NSPCC leading on the organisation’s use of statistics and data. Holly has worked at the NSPCC for eight years and has managed the compilation and delivery of the ‘How safe are our children?’ report since 2013. Prior to working at the NSPCC, she was a librarian at the Guardian. 📚 Related resources and further reading > Read the full How safe are our children? 2019 report > Get an overview of data on abuse of adolescents in our 2020 report > Find out more about preventing online abuse and harm > Read a summary of risk factors and learning for improving practice around online harm and abuse > Take a look at the NSPCC helplines report about online safety Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

Tune into the podcast to listen to our experts discuss: what professionals should consider when working with military families how the child’s voice was incorporated into our evaluation activities safeguarding and child protection issues faced by military-connected children parental resilience, social connections and emotional development key findings and recommendations from our service evaluation report. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Nicola McConnell is a Senior Evaluation Officer within the NSPCC’s Evidence Team who has over 20 years of experience in evaluating health and social care services for children and families, including training and supporting others to undertake this work. She has researched and published a range of evaluations across different topic areas such as child protection, domestic abuse and preventing child abuse as well as recently completed an evaluation of NSPCC’s early help services to military families. Vicky Wainwright has worked as the Team Manager at the NSPCC’s Service Centre in Tidworth for the last three years where she has supported practitioners in delivering direct services to the local community. She is a qualified social worker who has previously worked within local authority safeguarding and child protection teams and has personal experience of the military as her husband is in the RAF. 📚 Related resources > Read our military families evaluation report to learn more about our key findings > Find out more about how early help/intervention services can reduce risk factors Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

This episode features two of our Senior Consultants at the NSPCC, Donya Pourzand and Craig Keady, who discuss the importance of safer recruitment in educational institutions.  They explore:   how schools, colleges and academies can recruit safely  what can go wrong when a safer recruitment process isn’t followed  examples of high-level profile cases that have put education in the spotlight for the wrong reasons the common errors made by educational institutions during recruitment processes why training is key to bringing safer recruitment statutory guidance to life the importance of including the child’s voice in recruitment. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Craig Keady is a Senior Consultant for Education at NSPCC. He has worked extensively in the education sector and has experience in varied roles including safeguarding, leadership and management, special educational needs and inclusion in schools, multi-academy trusts. Donya Pourzand is a Senior Consultant with the NSPCC Consultancy Service specialising in HR safeguarding. She has over 11 years of experience in HR and consultancy roles across the public and private sectors and now works on a consultative basis with schools and external organisations to explore ways to improve their HR practice for children and young people. 📚 Related resources > Find out more about safer recruitment policies, vetting, disclosure and barring checks and managing allegations of abuse > Get bespoke face-to-face training sessions on safer recruitment in education or take control of your learning with our online course > Read our four top tips on how you can start incorporating safer practices in your recruitment processes Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

We talk to the NSPCC’s Senior Educational Consultant, Kay Joel, about the following: the importance of having anti-bullying policies and procedures  why schools need an anti-bullying ethos approach how policies and procedures have changed over the years what makes an effective anti-bullying policy and procedure where to go for further tips and advice on bullying. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speaker Kay Joel is a Senior Consultant at the NSPCC who works closely with schools to provide external consultancy. This includes undertaking safeguarding policy audits and visiting schools to verify safeguarding practices. She has also worked for over 25 years as a qualified teacher in primary and special education. 📚 Related resources > Read more about how you can protect children from bullying and cyberbullying > Download a range of specialist training and resources aimed at teachers, schools and colleges > Use our free online tool to assess your current safeguarding procedures Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

Speak out Stay safe is our free safeguarding service that we’ve been running in primary schools since 2011. The programme is delivered by specially trained staff and volunteers with the help of our Speak out Stay Safe mascot, Buddy the speech bubble. Pupils are taught in a lively, memorable and child-friendly way. Joining us in this podcast, we have Rose Bray, NSPCC’s Reach Development Project Manager for the NSPCC’s Schools Service, Karen Squillino who leads on our direct work with schools, and Katie, a parent whose son has taken part in the programme. This podcast explores:  the scale of the programme and its delivery in schools  a real life example of how the service has benefitted a parent and their child how the child’s voice is kept at centre of the programme challenges around reaching and accessing schools next steps for the Speak out Stay safe service. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Karen Squillino has a lead role in the development of the NSPCC’s Speak out Stay safe programme and is a registered social worker who has 28 years of experience in child protection and safeguarding. Rose Bray is the Reach Development Project Manager for the Schools Service at the NSPCC. Her role focuses on ensuring the Speak out Stay safe programme reaches as many schools and children as possible. Rose is also a volunteer for the Childline service. 📚 Related resources > Learn more about Speak out Stay safe Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

The NSPCC runs two services that support parents with their mental health, Pregnancy in Mind (PiM) and Baby Steps. In our fifth podcast, we speak with Louise Harrington, Development and Impact Manager and Victoria Joel (Tori), Implementation Manager about preventative mental health services and perinatal educational programmes.  Find out why parents might be referred to these types of services, how they engage with families to provide the right support and what provisions are currently available to parents outside of the NSPCC. We end the podcast with a discussion about how the child is kept at the centre of the programmes and how this is managed in cases where babies are yet to be born. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Louise Harrington is a Development and Impact Manager at NSPCC and works on developing Pregnancy in Mind, amongst other services. Louise’s background and expertise lies in evaluation, research and service development in the field of children, families and communities, with a specific focus on early intervention and preventative approaches within the early years. Victoria Joel is a trained midwife who works with vulnerable families; in particular, her work has focused on attachment-based interventions and reflective functioning. Victoria is the Implementation Manager for Baby Steps at the NSPCC and seeks out new partners to adopt and deliver Baby Steps and supports organisations that use the service. 📚 Related resources > Learn how Pregnancy in Mind is supporting parents' mental health during pregnancy > Learn more about parental mental health problems Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

The Lighthouse is a multi-agency service for children and young people in Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington who have experienced any form of sexual abuse, including exploitation. At The Lighthouse, the child is at the centre, to make sure they have a safe place to recover at their own pace and rebuild their lives. The Lighthouse (Child House) is led by University College London Hospitals in partnership with NSPCC and Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and will be piloted for two years. In this podcast episode Ali is joined by two members of the Lighthouse team: Emma Harewood, Service Manager and Deborah Hodes, Community Paediatrician and Health Lead, along with Jon Brown, Head of Development and Impact at the NSPCC. Emma, Deborah and Jon provide an insight into how The Lighthouse was established, discussing how the NSPCC along with four core funders (the Home Office, NHS England, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and the Department for Education) helped shape it to become the first service of its kind in the UK. We hear about the range of services children can access under one roof from therapeutic and medical services to support with police investigations, the court system and counselling for them and their family. They also talk about how children are consulted at every step as well as the future plans for The Lighthouse service. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Jon Brown is the Head of Development and Impact at NSPCC. He is a qualified social worker and has been responsible for setting up and managing a range of sexual abuse services ranging from therapeutic services for child victims, services for children and young people with sexually harmful behaviour and services for adult sex offenders. Emma Harewood is the Delivery and Service Manager at The Lighthouse, leading the delivery of the first UK ‘Child House’ pilot. Prior to this Emma trained as a paediatric dietitian, before moving into system leadership and change management. For the last 10 years she has held various director level roles in health providers and clinical commissioning groups, leading change in health and social care with a focus on integrated services to support children and adults. Dr Deborah Hodes is the paediatric lead for The Lighthouse. Deborah has been a Consultant Community Paediatrician since 1990. She has vast clinical, teaching, strategic and research experience in all aspects of child abuse and neglect and has presented and published her work widely. In 2014, she started the only paediatric UK clinic for children and young people with female genital mutilation (FGM). 📚 Related resources > Find out more about The Lighthouse > Learn more about how to protect children from sexual abuse Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros

In this podcast episode Ali talks to four members of the team: Mandy John-Baptiste, Service head of CTAC, Martina Murray, Assistant team manager, and Charlotte Jamieson and Sylvia Vuong who are social workers. Mandy, Martina, Charlotte and Sylvia provide us with an overview of CTAC's work and explain why children and young people are trafficked and the ways in which they are exploited. They also discuss the “tricks” child traffickers employ to control and isolate children and young people and what professionals should do if they suspect a child might have been trafficked. We also hear about the child’s voice and the part this plays in shaping the essential service CTAC provides. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website. 💬 About the speakers Mandy John-Baptiste is the Service Head of CTAC and leads on CTAC's strategic partnerships with the Home Office Immigration Criminal Financial Investigation and Enforcement, National Crime Agency. Martina Murray, Assistant team manager, and Charlotte Jamieson are qualified social workers and provide case consultation, advice and training to a range of professionals who come into contact with children where there is a concern for trafficking. Charlotte also leads on CTAC's work to improve cross border responses between the UK and Calais, France with Refugee Youth Service. Sylvia Vuong is a social worker and led on CTAC's work to improve training with health professionals and developed a partnership with NHS Trusts to deliver modern slavery training to frontline health professionals in safeguarding trafficked children. 📚 Related resources > Find out more about protecting children from trafficking and modern slavery Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros