Course 02
Safeguarding
Layered protection, and the seams where harm gets through.
Nine courses. Sixty-two lessons.
Built around the nine Quality Standards in the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, and the day-to-day reality of caring for children who have been through more than most adults ever will.
- 0Courses
- 0Lessons
- 0minPer lesson
- OfstedAligned, England
Ofsted, not CQC
Children's homes in England are registered with and inspected by Ofsted, under the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015. The Care Quality Commission regulates health and adult social care. An Ofsted-registered children's home is exempt from registering with CQC as a care home — though a home delivering separately regulated health activities, such as nursing care, may need its own CQC registration alongside.
We say this plainly because getting the regulator wrong undermines everything built on top of it.
Infographic
Nine standards. Every course maps to at least one.
Hover or tab through any standard to trace it on the dial. The three in amber are where the flagship course does its heaviest work.
Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015
The Quality Standards
Ofsted inspects against all nine at every inspection. The Statement of Purpose must show how each one is met.
Regulation numbers for Enjoyment and achievement and Positive relationships are inferred from the sequence in the Regulations. Verify against legislation.gov.uk before citing in formal documentation.
Infographic
Mapped to the statutory clock.
Regulation 33 sets real deadlines for new staff. Every course sits somewhere on that timeline, so a manager can see which courses serve which requirement.
-
Week 0–6
Induction training
Delivered within six weeks of starting.
Courses 1, 2, 8 -
Month 0–6
Foundation training
Completed within six months.
Courses 3, 4, 5 -
Year 0–2
Level 3 Diploma
Residential Childcare, within two years.
Courses 6, 7, 9 -
Every year
Ongoing CPD
Minimum six paid training days annually.
Full refresh cycle
0
Weeks to induction
Regulation 33 deadline for induction training.
0
Months to foundation
Foundation training complete.
0
Years to Level 3
Diploma for Residential Childcare achieved.
0
Paid days per year
Statutory minimum ongoing training.
We do not award the Level 3 Diploma. That is a regulated qualification delivered by awarding organisations. These courses support and supplement it — they do not replace or confer it.
Infographic
The line AI does not cross.
Course 08 spends eight lessons on this single distinction. It is the difference between a tool that gives a shift two hours back and a tool that causes a safeguarding incident.
Course 08 · AI literacy and ethics
Assistive, never deciding
Genuinely useful for
- Drafting a handover note you then edit and own
- Rephrasing something into plain English for a child
- Summarising a long document you have already read
- Explaining an unfamiliar term or process
- Checking your own writing for unclear phrasing
- Translating information for a family
Never, under any circumstance
- Making or grading a safeguarding decision
- Producing a risk assessment you do not verify
- Anything resembling a diagnosis
- Entering a child's identifiable data into a consumer tool
- Predicting a child's future or outcomes
- Writing a record you have not read and cannot defend
Professional accountability for any output is always the human's. AI assists a carer's judgement; it never makes the call on their behalf.
Infographic
Why the count matters more than the item.
Adverse Childhood Experiences research consistently finds a cumulative effect: risk rises with the number of categories, not with which particular one. Course 01 covers both what this shows and how it gets misused.
Course 01 · Lesson 1.2
Cumulative, not single-event
Illustrative shape of the relationship, not figures from any one study. The teaching point is the direction of travel — and its limits.
An ACE count describes what happened to a child. It is not a prognosis, a diagnosis, or something to write in a file as though it predicts their future. England has no DfE framework equivalent to the Trauma-Informed Wales Framework — we cite the research base, not a statutory English mirror.
In motion
Six clips, moving.
Each card plays as it enters view. The first three are generated for the idea they carry; the last three are real footage — adults only, never children.
Course 04
Reducing restrictive practice
Turbulence resolving into calm. Theory only, by design.
Course 08
AI literacy and ethics
Pattern prediction passing signal. Not understanding.
Course 09
Supervision, used properly
Bringing the hard material, not just the tidy version.
Course 01
Relationship as the intervention
Steady, ordinary, repeated. That is the mechanism.
Course 05
Records a child will one day read
Write it for that reader.
Catalogue
The nine courses.
Trauma-Informed Practice Foundations
The interpretive lens for everything else. Without it, the rest becomes compliance box-ticking.
- 8 lessons
- 2 hours
- Reg 10, 11, 12
Safeguarding in Residential Childcare
Grounded in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, including its strengthened focus on children in residential settings.
- Your safeguarding duty, concretely
- Recognising abuse and neglect in a residential setting
- Extra-familial harm
- Child sexual exploitation and grooming
- Online harms and digital safety
- Allegations against staff, and whistleblowing
- Notifications and serious events
- Missing from care
- 8 lessons
- 2 hours
- Reg 12
The Nine Quality Standards and Inspection Readiness
What each standard actually asks of you on a Tuesday afternoon, and how practice becomes evidence.
- Why the standards exist
- Quality and purpose of care
- Children's views, wishes and feelings
- Education, enjoyment and achievement
- Health and well-being
- Positive relationships
- Protection of children
- Leadership, management and care planning
- Evidencing practice for inspection
- 9 lessons
- 2.25 hours
- All nine regs
Reducing Restrictive Practice
De-escalation, prevention, recording duties and post-incident repair — the thinking around restraint, not the technique.
Scope limit: does not teach physical intervention and does not replace accredited in-person training or annual refreshers.
- Least restrictive practice as a principle
- The escalation cycle
- De-escalation that actually works
- Environmental and relational prevention
- When restraint does happen — duties and recording
- Post-incident: repair and debrief
- Deprivation of liberty and restrictive interventions
- 7 lessons
- 1.75 hours
- Reg 20, 40
Care Planning and Record-Keeping
Where AI assistance is most immediately useful, and most risky. Includes writing about children as someone who will one day read it.
- What a care plan is for
- Writing about children with respect
- Daily logs that are actually useful
- Handovers that transfer understanding
- Using AI to draft — safely
- Data protection with children's records
- Reading records as a child one day will
- 7 lessons
- 1.75 hours
- Reg 14
Health, Education and Everyday Childhood
The ordinary things that stop being ordinary in care — school, sleep, hobbies, birthdays, ambition.
- Being the adult who backs their education
- Physical health and everyday routine
- Emotional and mental health support
- Medication awareness in a children's home
- Neurodiversity in a care setting
- Enjoyment, achievement and ordinary childhood
- 6 lessons
- 1.5 hours
- Reg 8, 9, 10
Children's Voice, Rights and Advocacy
Participation that changes decisions rather than filling in a form, plus identity, contact and leaving care.
- Participation that isn't tokenistic
- Complaints, advocacy and independent visitors
- Rights in care
- Identity, culture, faith and belonging
- Life story, contact and family
- Transitions and leaving care
- 6 lessons
- 1.5 hours
- Reg 7
AI Literacy and Ethics for Care Teams
Assumes zero technical background. What AI is, what it is genuinely good at, and the lines it must never cross in a children's home.
- What AI actually is, without the hype
- What AI is genuinely good at in a care setting
- What AI must never be used for
- Children's data and AI tools
- Spotting confident nonsense
- Bias and fairness
- Being honest about AI use
- Your organisation's boundary
- 8 lessons
- 2 hours
- UK GDPR
Professional Resilience and Team Practice
Staff who leave take relationships with them. Retention is a child-outcome issue, not just an HR one.
- Why this work costs something
- Using supervision properly
- Reflective practice as a habit
- Team consistency
- Boundaries and professional love
- Burnout, compassion fatigue and staying
- 6 lessons
- 1.5 hours
- Reg 13
What this is built on
Every course cites its source.
Training content for people caring for vulnerable children should be traceable to the guidance it claims to reflect. These are ours.
- The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 — legislation.gov.uk
- Guide to the Children's Homes Regulations including the quality standards — DfE
- Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 — GOV.UK
- Social Care Common Inspection Framework: children's homes — Ofsted
- Level 3 Diploma for Residential Childcare; Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Residential Childcare
- PACE and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy — Dr Dan Hughes
- Adverse Childhood Experiences research base; Trauma-Informed Wales Framework, Public Health Wales
- Trauma-informed approaches within children's social care — Early Intervention Foundation
- Training and developing staff in children's homes — DfE research report
Guidance changes. Ofsted has consulted on reforming children's social care inspection judgements, so our courses teach what inspectors look for in practice rather than presenting any grade scale as permanent. Every course carries a last-reviewed date.
See it against your own rota.
Fifteen minutes to walk through the curriculum, the pathway mapping, and how it fits your policies.