In today’s ever-changing world, safeguarding has become more important than ever. We are committed to providing our clients with the knowledge and skills they need to create a safe and secure environment for all.
The Essential Safeguarding Company offer a wide range of safeguarding training options, tailored to the specific needs of our clients. Our courses are designed to be informative, engaging, and practical, and they are delivered by experienced and qualified trainers.
We believe that everyone has the right to feel safe and secure, and we are committed to helping our clients create an environment where everyone can thrive.
Safeguarding is a crucial aspect of protecting individuals, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from harm, abuse, and neglect. It encompasses a range of measures and practices aimed at ensuring the well-being and safety of those who may be at risk. Safeguarding is a collective responsibility that requires collaboration between various organisations, including schools, healthcare providers, social services, and the wider community.
Trusted Partner of Safeguarding 24
Safeguarding 24 is a cloud-based solution that allows your users, e.g. students & staff, to report any safeguarding concerns they have from anywhere.
The reported message of concern will be sent securely to a designated representative in your organisation (for example, a safeguarding officer) and can include a screenshot of the users current browser window, a photograph from a mobile device, and the users GPS coordinates if desired.
I am proud to have worked as a senior manager and Designated Safeguarding Lead in education for over fifteen years, working as a DSL across four different organisations, working with tens of Local Authorities and overseeing more than 3,000 safeguarding referrals.
This gives me an invaluable insight into both the demands and rewards of being at the helm of safeguarding thousands of students and vulnerable adults. I didn’t know quite what I was taking on board when I first became a DSL back in 2007, but I do know that it has become one of my greatest passions.
My vision is that all DSLs and Deputy DSs working in education will have access to the vital knowledge and support they need to work effectively and sustainably to safeguard children and vulnerable adults. My purpose in creating The Essential Safeguarding Company is to ensure that we provide high-quality, timely and valuable ongoing support for DSLs and their teams. We do this by providing safeguarding supervision both as 1:1 and group support; safeguarding training for staff and students; and safeguarding audits and advice to help you safeguard effectively and with confidence.
In addition to running The Essential Safeguarding Company, I am a certified coach supporting educators and activists in leadership and empowerment.
My favourite things include learning, being out in nature, debating politics, adoring Vlodi our pet rabbit and socialising with family and friends.
Emma Hemmings
After working with children of various ages in various sectors, it became clear to me that my passion lay in pastoral care and safeguarding. It’s a hugely complex area and I’m proud to be able to share my experiences and skills with others to help support them in both the practical side of their role and processing the emotional impact that is so often ignored in favour of all of the tasks on the ever growing to-do list.
As a mum of two young boys I often struggle to tell people what my hobbies are because, quite honestly, I’m not sure. I know my time is taken up with story books, crafts, looking at lots of different things on lots of different Playstation games and a 100 ‘would you rather’ questions each day… and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
When I do get time to myself I love to read, enjoy good food (extra points if it’s been cooked by somebody else) and binge on box sets with my Husband. I adore spa days and city breaks and I will never, ever turn down a night at the theatre… especially if there’s the option to go in fancy dress.
Our Associates
Jenny Lewis
Counsellor and Supervisor
Sometimes we need a safe space in which to be truly heard and understood. A space offering comfort, acceptance and empathy, in which to make sense of things that are happening in life or with which we are struggling. Such an environment can offer the opportunity to connect with our own ability to better understand ourselves and discover solutions to our problems. If you are struggling to cope with the challenges you are facing, either personally or professionally, we can navigate them together, to find a way forward from areas of concern, pain or trauma. As a person-centred counsellor my belief is that we all have within us the potential to know and do what is best for us. No one else knows exactly how it feels to be you. Our sessions will not be about me telling you what to do, but about ensuring you have the time and space to explore how you are feeling about what is troubling you and moving towards a solution which is best for you. As a registered member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapy (BACP) my practice is bound by their guidelines, putting you at the heart of our work together.
Our Wider Support Team
We are able to do what we do because we are ably supported by other brilliant professionals. Our wider support team who offer us invaluable advice and guidance, as well as sometimes just the listening ear we need, includes people we’ve worked with in the past and whom we now count among our friends.
We’re proud to introduce you to our wider team, which includes:
Neil King
Website developer, IT consultant & Safeguarding 24 partner
As a software engineer I have built myself a strong reputation in the industry for creativity and technical problem solving. I’ve developed cloud-based and stand-alone applications for multiple sectors including education, automotive, child safety, medical and gaming, and have two number 1 best selling apps on the App Store. My 20 years of experience in Further Education hopefully enables me to explain complex, technical instructions in an easy-to-understand way. My day usually consists of caffeine, hoodies and code.
Jamie Smith
Safeguarding 24 partner
Innovative leader helping people to be more impactful with technology that’s simple to use, trusted, and makes life better. Passionate about education, digital, people, new thinking, disruptive technology and innovation. On a technology enabled but people driven mission to empower organisations to achieve more. Honorary Doctor of Technology, Board positions in both the public, private and charitable sectors, keen mountainbiker and gamer. If my camera isn’t on, I’m likely joining the meeting from my bike.
Vlodi & Wickes
Our wellbeing champions
OK, so their advice is limited, and we wouldn’t necessarily trust their guidance, but our faithful friends are along side us in (separate) offices and give us much-valued furry cuddles throughout the working day.
When Wickes isn’t attacking Emma with his teeth, and Vlodi isn’t attempting to bite through Trudie’s ethernet cable, they truly are our wellbeing champions.
Our Values
Our values guide our lives. For us, our core life values sit also at the heart of our work, informing what we do and how, who we work with and how we show up in the world.
So what are our core values? They are:
Compassion
Safeguarding people effectively means exercising compassion. For children, young people and vulnerable adults. For the staff supporting them. For ourselves. For all.
Justice
Having compassion for all does not mean that we don’t recognise right and wrong. We most certainly do, and we advocate passionately for justice. We call out wrongdoing, we stand up for the vulnerable, abused and oppressed and we use the fire in our belly to fight to protect those who need help. We use our rage at wrongdoing to power our work for good.
Integrity
Who was it who said that integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching? Whoever said it, amen to that. We seek to be our authentic selves. We take responsibility. If we make a mistake, we own it. We say sorry. We learn from it. We do better next time. If we don’t know the answer, we find it out. We stay honest with you, and honest with ourselves. In our company, we feel safe to be seen for who we really are and our wish for you is that you feel the same with us.
Joy
Sometimes people ask us how we cope with the difficult emotions and feelings which safeguarding cases can evoke. Quite simply, we top ourselves up with joy. We seek glimmers of joy in the everyday. The soft fur of our office pets, the laughter of our children, lovingly teasing one another about our funny quirks, the positive difference we know our work makes to clients. Amongst the toughness there is a world of joy. Our job is to look for it, savour it and spread it.
Love
Our cultural paradigm puts huge emphasis on romantic love. We like a bit of that, but actually when we speak of love as our value, we mean ALL love. The energy of who we are. How we show up in the world. The good we wish for others. The hope, kindness, support, generosity and positivity that we seek to be in the world.
We want the spaces that we create for our clients to always be supportive, even when we challenge as critical friends, and we want you to feel that we’ve got your back. We check our intentions to make sure they’re good. If we get a bit bogged down or uncertain, we lift ourselves up by remembering that we love what we do and we do it with love.
Values in Action
Our core values – Compassion, Justice, Integrity, Joy and Love – mean we feel particularly strongly about some things. We feel called to take action and operate in particular ways. Here are some examples:
Love for our planet and humanity
Climate change is here. The impact, especially on some of the world’s poorest countries and most vulnerable communities, is already plain to see. It makes us feel rather sad and sometimes despairing to be honest. But when we feel like that, we remind ourselves of the question we could ask of our clients if they told us they felt like that: What can you do to make a difference?
In light of this, what we are doing is as follows:
We travel as little as possible for work. We work from home, we turn the heating down low, we use energy savings lightbulbs and we don’t overcharge our devices.
When we do travel for work, we use public transport wherever possible. And we plan our work so that if, for example, we need to undertake audits for clients at a similar time and in similar locations, we try to timetable it as a team so that we can car share. Plus, we use the route which is most fuel efficient.
We don’t buy or print anything that we don’t need. For example, when we needed new exhibition banners with new messages, we sought to reprint on existing ones rather than chuck away former ones which were in perfect condition.
We seek to ensure that any corporate gifts given are useful or can be consumed. We reduce waste as much as we can.
We’ve signed up to the national Make My Money Matter – Green your money campaign. We are reviewing our corporate pension scheme to ensure that our pension contributions will only be used ethically.
We ask ourselves all the time what more we can do.
Campaigning
We are passionate advocates for ensuring that statutory duties to safeguard children and vulnerable adults are upheld. We worry that the diminution of local government budgets is significantly affecting local authorities’ ability to do that effectively.
Our clients in education tell us repeatedly that they are concerned about capacity in the social care system. They see a lack of social workers, high staff turnover rates and high numbers of complex cases with inexperienced social workers attached to them. This makes our clients scared that something could go dangerously wrong for a vulnerable child or adult in their setting or their family. This adds to the pressure of already demanding roles for Designated Safeguarding Leads and their deputies, creating unnecessary stress for them.
It’s not good enough. It’s stressful for the responsible adult and deeply dangerous for the children and vulnerable adults who need and serve the protection of the state.
We won’t just observe this and stay quiet about it. We are building a profile of what we are witnessing and we will use it to campaign for justice for children who need protection. Our social care system needs:
A level of financial backing which reflects the growth in safeguarding cases, with the legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic, the impact of the cost of living crisis and the ubiquity of the online world, leaving children at increased risk of neglect and abuse.
More and better trained social workers in ALL parts of the country, with bursaries to support those who are priced out of living in certain areas; and
Named social care links as a matter of course between schools and colleges and the local authority area in which they are based.
In the 2023/24 academic year we shall produce the first ever UK Report on Safeguarding to share our findings and support our campaign for justice for children.
Giving With Gratitude
We are grateful that we get to do the work that we love and that it has just a positive impact on our clients.
Our gratitude makes us want to give even more and so we do. We give in a number of ways:
By saying thank you for recommendations When our clients recommend us to other companies who become clients we like to say thank you to them by donating to a benevolent cause of their choice. For schools or colleges, they will often cite their PTA, Student Association or chosen charity for the year. Sometimes they leave it to us to choose a charity. It gives us pleasure to show our appreciation in this way.
Recognising young people Every now and again we run a competition on a theme which excites us. This year we ran a programme with one of our clients as part of their Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) curriculum. The students’ engagement in the programme on sex and relationships was superb and we wanted to celebrate this by launching a competition for them to draw up a manifesto for what they believe should be taught about sex and relationships as part of the national PSHE curriculum. The entries were so thoughtful that we expanded our prizes from one to three. It was a joy and we’ll be doing more of that.
Supporting charity campaigns Each year there are some charities whose work touches us in particular and we ensure that we give them our backing. This year we have supported The Trussell Trust and their vital work in funding Food Banks which are, all too sadly, an essential lifeblood for people in need throughout the UK. We have also supported The British Red Cross. We have seen first hand how their support for Ukrainian refugees to the UK has given them critical support, especially in the first few months of being in the UK and needing some funds and a UK SIM card to get connected. We also want to support their impartial and essential humanitarian aid efforts in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Testimonials
Trudie is a passionate advocate for equality and diversity, safeguarding and the prevent agenda and is a recognised expert practitioner in these fields.
Jamie E. Smith, MBA, FRSA
Executive Chairman C-Learning. CEO S24
I have really appreciated your wisdom and support as we have gone through this process of safeguarding training – it has been more than a training programme, more like guidance and support as we go through a really important change in our ways of working.
Rachael Saunders
Education and Policy Director at Speakers for Schools
Trudie is an inspirational educational leader with exceptional knowledge and experience of safeguarding in education.
Steve Grant CIWFM MCMI
Head of Operational Property & Facilities Management
Listening to other leaders talk was so useful. It was a listening and learning exercise for me as a new headteacher and I found a lot of value in hearing what others were saying
All of the information was highly relevant and important to know.
Trudie is a first-class safeguarding expert with a brilliant understanding of the industry and the solutions needed to deliver effective safeguarding.
Stephen Wileman
Head of Technology and Development & Chief Executive
Trudie McGuinness at The Essential Training Company is at the top of my list of ‘go-to’ people when it comes to all aspects of safeguarding and issues related to vulnerable children and adults. Her advice is always current and in an area of legislation that can easily generate organisational panic and overreaction, she can be relied upon to provide clear, calm considered guidance to both individuals and teams.
Graham Morley
Former Principal
It was really brilliant CPD. You can sit in training and hear the theory but to hear it in real time, from real staff about real families, is just so valuable
Having the opportunity to completely, safely, and without judgement, discuss a really serious case was really powerful
I was sceptical at first, but the experience has changed my perspective. I was surprised at how much I carried myself