Safeguarding children in Rotherham by listening to them – and their peers

Rotherham Safeguarding Children Partnership presented its annual report to an RMBC scrutiny meeting in the town hall chamber last Tuesday.

The document says: “We continue to demonstrate a commitment to ensuring the voice of children and young people is at the heart of the safeguarding agenda in Rotherham.”

Cllr Joanna Baker-Rogers said: “I was very pleased to hear how you want to hear the voices of children more. I was also wondering are you going to include the voices of their peers?

“If I had an issue at home and couldn’t talk to my mum or dad, I would talk to my friends at school. As I have been sitting here, I’ve had a flashback to me at age 11, having just started senior school.

“I had made a new friend who was talking to me about her home life. It was not good, and getting worse. She’d tried to talk to her mum and dad, and it wasn’t doing any good.

“I said to her: ‘Would you talk to our form teacher?’ She was a bit hesitant and I said I would come. I can still see me knocking on the staffroom door.

“I can’t possibly have been the only child that had a friend telling these stories about home life, and I feel that if we are to catch things at an early stage we need to not just engage with the children but their peers who may have critical information that we need to know.”

Partnership chairman Darren Downs said: “I know with my kids that they won’t always want to come and talk to me or even my wife but they will talk to their friends at school, and teachers they may confide in. They will talk to safeguarding people within schools.

“So what we need to make sure is that we have got a really robust system, so when we gather the data of the voice of children, we are getting it from peers, colleagues, form teachers, pastoral workers, youth workers. We need to be getting it from everyone that’s in [school].”