🏷️ £135-470
📍 Online

Safeguarding in Practice: Professional Wellbeing & Reflective Development Series

Join our new Safeguarding in Practice online seminar series, designed to strengthen the emotional resilience, self-awareness, and trauma-informed practice of safeguarding leads and professionals.

Each interactive session combines research, reflection, and practical strategies for those working in high stakes, emotionally charged safeguarding environments. 

Benefits to the Individual 

• Enhanced Emotional Resilience: Participants gain tools to manage stress, burnout, and vicarious trauma, reducing sickness absence and emotional exhaustion. 

• Reflective Insight: Understanding attachment styles, ACEs, and personal triggers fosters greater self-awareness and professional maturity. 

• Improved Practice Quality: Trauma-informed and reflective practitioners make better, more consistent safeguarding decisions. 

• Sustained Motivation: Restorative elements such as mindfulness and Yoga/Qi-Gong promote long-term wellbeing and job satisfaction. 

 Benefits to the Organisation 

• Reduced Turnover & Absenteeism: Investing in staff wellbeing improves retention, morale, and engagement. 

• Increased Safeguarding Capability: Teams become more trauma-aware, emotionally intelligent, and consistent in decision-making. 

• Stronger Organisational Culture: Embedding reflective supervision and emotional literacy creates a safer, more supportive environment for both staff and service users. 

• Positive Reputation: Demonstrates a proactive approach to workforce development, safeguarding excellence, and staff care — aligning with inspection and compliance expectations (e.g. Ofsted, CQC, charity governance standards). 

 Benefits to the Community 

• Safer Outcomes for Children & Families: Practitioners who are emotionally grounded and trauma-informed are more effective in identifying and addressing harm. 

• Improved Trust and Engagement: Families experience more compassionate, consistent, and balanced interventions, strengthening community trust in safeguarding systems. 

• Ripple Effect of Wellbeing: When professionals model healthy emotional regulation and resilience, it influences the networks and services around them, creating a more empathetic safeguarding culture across sectors. 

Session 1 –  Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) & Their Impact on Safeguarding Capability January 20, 2026

Overview: 

Learn how trauma and ACEs affect behaviour, learning, and resilience, both in children and professionals. Discover how to build trauma-informed practice and mitigate the impact of personal ACEs on decision-making. 

Audience:

Safeguarding professionals, educators, early help practitioners, and health or social care staff. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Deepen understanding of ACEs and their lifelong effects. 

• Explore the neuroscience behind trauma and resilience. 

• Strengthen trauma-informed responses in safeguarding practice. 

Session 2 – Domestic Violence: Impact on Children & How to Identify Coercive Control February 23, 2026

Overview:

This session examines the hidden dynamics of coercive control and its profound impact on children. Learn to identify subtle indicators and respond safely and effectively. 

Audience:

Safeguarding leads, teachers, health visitors, social workers, and anyone supporting families affected by domestic abuse. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Recognise signs and patterns of coercive control. 

• Understand the emotional and developmental impact on children. 

• Build confidence in assessing and responding to complex family situations. 

Session 3 – Burnout & Vicarious Trauma Among Professionals March 17, 2026

Overview: 

Frontline safeguarding is emotionally demanding. This restorative session combines evidence-based understanding of vicarious trauma with guided mindfulness and Qi Gong techniques/yoga to promote wellbeing and longevity in the profession. 

Audience:

Safeguarding leads, managers, social workers, counsellors, and mental health professionals. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Recognise early signs of burnout and secondary trauma. 

• Learn practical mindfulness and grounding exercises. 

• Develop a personal resilience and wellbeing plan. 

Session 4 – Attachment & How It Impacts You as a DSL April 21, 2026

Overview:

Explore how attachment styles influence professional judgement, boundaries, and emotional resilience. Gain insight into how your personal experiences shape your safeguarding responses. 

Audience:

Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs), social workers, school counsellors, safeguarding officers, and pastoral leaders. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Understand core principles of attachment theory. 

• Identify how your own attachment style affects professional interactions. 

• Develop reflective strategies to maintain empathy and objectivity in safeguarding roles. 

BOOK NOW

Speakers:

Dr Mariya Ali, Director, SACPA

Mariya Ali is Director of SACPA and an internationally recognised safeguarding and child protection expert. With over two decades’ multidisciplinary experience in legal, academic, advisory, and leadership roles, she is strongly committed to advancing child rights and welfare. Formerly Deputy Minister in the Maldives, she led national reforms in child protection policy and legislation. Internationally, she has worked with UNICEF, Save the Children, and Lumos Foundation on child sexual abuse, exploitation, and systems reform across South Asia and beyond. An academic and practitioner, Mariya has published widely and specialises in trauma-informed, survivor-centred, and systems-based safeguarding approaches.

Gaelle Sullivan, Director of Research, Inclusion and IELA

Gaelle is Director of Research, Inclusion and IELA and joined the BSA in January 2023. She is an experienced senior leader and has worked in a range of state and independent schools. She is a qualified SENCO and holds a Masters Degree in Inclusive Education. Prior to joining the BSA, Gaelle was Deputy Head Pastoral, DSL and Head of Boarding at an all-girls independent school in the South-East.