Headway Tutors – Safeguarding Essentials sheet

Useful Reading

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025 Part 1 – this will help you to understand more about how safeguarding works in schools, especially if you’ve been out of the classroom for a while. It also contains definitions of different types of abuse. There have been no changes to Part 1 since 2024.

Child and Adult Safeguarding

Anyone under the age of 18 is a child.

If you have tutees aged 18 or over, they are adults under English law. Safeguarding duties apply to any adult (18 years and over) who meets the following criteria:

• has needs for care and support (whether or not the local authority is meeting any of those needs)
• is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect
• as a result of those care and support needs, is unable to protect themselves from either the risk of, or the experience of, abuse or neglect.

How to refer concerns

If you have a concern about a child or an adult at risk, you need to contact either Children’s Social Services or Adult Social Services. You can find their details on your local authority page. You would use the local authority where the child or adult lives, not where you live (unless it is the same). As an example, here are the Kent links:

Kent Children’s Social Care

Kent Adult Social Care

In an emergency

You should always dial 999 in an emergency.

Further advice

You can get advice about a safeguarding concern, disclosure or situation involving a child from the NSPCC by calling 0808 800 5000 or emailing [email protected].