Trauma-Informed Safeguarding Practice

This course provides learners with a practical, trauma-informed approach to safeguarding children, young people, and adults at risk. It explores how trauma impacts behaviour, decision-making, communication, engagement, and risk. Learners will develop skills to ensure safeguarding responses are empathetic, safe, and effective.

What the course covers

• Understanding trauma: types of trauma (single-incident, chronic, complex, developmental and intergenerational), trauma versus stress, and fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses.
• Trauma and behaviour: why traumatised people can seem challenging or resistant, and the links between trauma, exploitation, avoidance and risk-taking.
• Trauma-informed principles: safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, empowerment and cultural sensitivity in safeguarding conversations.
• Communication: curiosity without interrogation, grounding and de-escalation, and language to avoid.
• Re-traumatisation: how systems and processes can cause harm, trauma-informed risk evaluation, multi-agency working and defensible decision-making.
• Responding to concerns: how trauma affects disclosure, indicators of exploitation and grooming, recording, escalation and trauma-aware safety planning.

Who it’s for

Safeguarding practitioners, teachers and SEN staff, social and family support workers, youth workers and mentors, foster and residential carers, health and early help teams, police and community safety staff, and voluntary sector workers. No previous trauma training is needed.

How it works

Six self-paced modules with case studies, scenario activities and reflective tasks, plus downloadable tools including a trauma-informed safeguarding checklist, communication scripts and a risk assessment template. A final assessment (pass mark 70%, two attempts) leads to a CPD certificate of completion.