With the outstanding London conference fresh in my mind, I thought I would offer five things I learned and useful and insightful snippets from last week.

Serious Case Reviews (SCR)

SCRs are changing but the recommendations within SCRs are something of a constant:

• better multiagency working
• more information sharing between agencies
• better record keeping. 

The excellent advice from Ann Raymond on achieving best practice went down very well.

Safeguarding recording

My workshop on the importance of detailed safeguarding record keeping to ensure best outcomes and to evidence your actions built on Ann’s comments.

It included a case study designed to challenge you to critically review your current standard of recording and reflect on how it can be improved. 

Prevent

The Prevent keynote focused on:

• discharging your duty
• the importance of engaging with the community
• understanding staff training needs. 

Whilst the duty is not new and the guidance has not changed the landscape we work in has, and this session provided an important refresher and best practice tips.

S​taff training

Ella’s extremely well received session on new and innovative ways to train your staff helped delegates put some of the theory in practice and offered some new ways to engage and train staff with easy and effective methods.

Special schools

There is not much Ann doesn’t know about safeguarding and this session, focusing on the challenges of safeguarding in special schools, provided some excellent advice and support for the special school delegates.

Additional resources

The additional conference resources and supporting documentation, from model policies to checklists to a referrals poster (Optimus members), were extremely popular and gave the delegates even more to takeaway to make their lives easier and ensure the safeguarding practices in their schools remain strong.