Kindness in our surgeries: our key safeguarding tool

When I train GP and practice nurses about child safeguarding, I like to finish with a true story.  This story is about my father, who remains the best GP I have ever worked with, and someone who knew more, and taught me more, about the art of medicine than anyone else. It’s a story about a woman we both looked after, who’d taken the very courageous step as a teenager to tell him about the abuse she was experiencing.  This disclosure led to a successful prosecution of her abuser, and her safety. I recount to audiences that I once asked her why she’d chosen Dad to disclose to, other than the other professionals involved.  She replied that it was an easy choice – she’d known him throughout her childhood, and he’d always seemed kind to her.

This highlights two crucial things that lie at the heart of the safeguarding work that we all do.  He had indeed known her, and her family, throughout her life.   This continuity of care across generations meant he had become a familiar figure in her life, and it meant that her disclosure was immediately informed by his knowledge of her parents, and her siblings.  The saying “No man is an island,” is especially true for a child. More so than any other professional, we have access to the inner lives of our patients through them, and those connected to them, and this means our insights and opinions have great value, and need to be heard.

Equally importantly, he had been kind to her.  We all need to constantly think about how we make our surgeries, and ourselves, safe spaces for disclosure to happen.  We need to be aware that abuse is common, and each day we could be seeing someone inwardly struggling with a vital need to share, and looking for the professional to do that with.  We know that 80% of children try to disclose their abuse, and that sadly – unacceptably – the large majority of them report a poor experience at some point¹.  The child in my story was unusual in disclosing in direct terms; most children will approach this critical moment indirectly, and we need to be attuned to them.  However, it is vital that we place ourselves in that position of trust as that access to such a professional is a key factor in children seeking help².  How we speak to our patients, how our teams interact with them, the environment in which we work: all of these influence this perception of reliability and kindness and we must all consider this daily.

My next safeguarding webinar is free and is going to be focussed on domestic abuse, which is something that played a very large part in the experiences of the child mentioned at the start of this, as it does to so many abused children and adults.  I’ve talked about the need to create safe spaces for children in this blog, but of course, all of my comments ring true for victims of all ages.  I look forward to you joining me on March 14^th for this complimentary webinar as we look at this important issue and how it impacts on child safeguarding work.