Introduction

Welcome to C4EO’s e-learning resource for Safeguarding – part of our remit to gather and share local, regional and national evidence of what works to improve outcomes in services, especially for the most vulnerable children, young people and families.

Safeguarding children is a key theme for C4EO. High profile cases have made it clear that, while there is much good practice that ensures that children are kept safe, more is needed to guarantee that all children enjoy this fundamental right.

Front line practitioners, local managers and strategic leaders play a key role in:

• ensuring that every child enjoys their right to grow up safely
• restoring public confidence in public services, demonstrating that the most vulnerable are protected.

A series of reports paid particular attention to the need to focus on addressing the outcomes gap between some children and others. In this context, C4EO and its partners decided that identifying effective practice for ‘highly resistant’ families should be a priority. A review was carried out to address the following points:

• What are the circumstances, characteristics and prevalence of families that are resistant to change?
• What challenges to practice do resistance, and the underlying characteristics and circumstances, raise?
• What services, treatments and interventions are effective for families that are resistant to change?

The research summaries on the C4EO website are currently being enhanced by examples of validated local effective practice and through examples of Sector Specialists’ work with local authorities and their Children’s Services partners. You can find out more about the support available through the ‘How we can help’ section at the top of this page. You may also find the sections on Outcomes Based Accountability (OBA) helpful if you have not already adopted an OBA approach.

About C4EO

C4EO’s unique remit is to ‘gather and share’ evidence of what works. We therefore hope that you will continue to support us by engaging in regional events, giving us feedback about our data and sharing your local examples of effective practice, to help us to continue to build the evidence base for early years work in the future.

The authors

You can use the main navigation above to start working your way through this resource.