Building a safeguarding culture of professional curiosity
Written by: Gemma Hargraves
8 min read
GEMMA HARGRAVES, DEPUTY HEAD (SAFEGUARDING, INCLUSION AND WELLBEING), THE CRYPT SCHOOL, UK
Professional curiosity is vital to keep children safe from abuse and neglect, and to help them to thrive at secondary school. It is often defined as the capacity and communication skill required to explore and understand what is happening within a family, rather than making assumptions or accepting things at face value. Professional curiosity enables early intervention (at school and beyond) and its importance has been a recurring theme in many local child safeguarding practice reviews (LCSPRs). This area, in a school context, is relatively under-researched and that must be understood by all adults working in schools, because professional curiosity is paramount for proactive intervention or family support and therefore protecting children from abuse and neglect (Cramphorn and Maynard, 2021). This article seeks to highlight the importance of professional curiosity in schools.
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