OUR TRAINING
The only certified framework for trauma-informed safeguarding interviews with students
Child Focused ©SAFE Interviewing
While most safeguarding training covers how to recognise and report abuse, it rarely prepares professionals for the critical step that follows: the disclosure conversation itself.
This course bridges that gap, ensuring your team is fully equipped to navigate initial disclosures safely while keeping the child’s well-being at the centre of your practice.
Built on trauma-informed principles, international best practice and decades of specialist interviewing experience.
©SAFE Interviewing provides safeguarding professionals with a structured, defensible, and child-focused methodology for conducting child-protection enquiries.
This advanced programme equips your team to secure reliable information, actively reducing the risk of influencing a child’s account, increasing distress, or compromising future investigations.
©SAFE Interviewing - A Practical Framework
Managing complex child protection enquiries requires more than just confidence—it demands a structured, step-by-step approach to gathering information and making high-stakes decisions. To meet this need, this framework combines three essential elements that are rarely brought together in school-based safeguarding training:
Defensible Practice
Ensuring information gathering discussions are ethical, child-focused and capable of withstanding scrutiny from parents, leadership teams, regulators and external agencies.
Trauma-Informed
Understanding how trauma, memory, development and emotional regulation affect a child's ability to communicate information.
Structured Methodology
A clear, evidence-based framework that helps professionals ask the right questions in the right way.
Developed specifically for international schools, the methodology recognises the additional challenges created by culture, language, boarding environments, international mobility and differing legal frameworks.
The result is an approach that is both robust and realistic for educational settings.
What Does SAFE Stand For?
Strategic
Accessible
Keep the child protection enquiry child-focused. Every decision is made in the best interests of the child.
Meet the needs of THAT child. The approach is adapted to their age, development, culture, language aquisition and individual needs.
Factual
Ask the RIGHT Question's in the RIGHT Way. Structured questioning gathers accurate information without leading, suggesting or influencing.
Empowering
Remember, this is YOUR work but THEIR LIFE. The child's voice, experience and wellbeing remain central throughout the process.
The ©SAFE Curriculum
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All school staff
Having safe and appropriate safeguarding conversations
Recognising concerns, checking in with students and establishing basic facts
Conversations with students, parents and colleagues
Onsite : 20 - 80 participants per group
WHO
WHAT
HOW
Safeguarding teams, counsellors and senior leaders
Conducting structured safeguarding enquiries
Gathering information ethically and defensibly to inform safeguarding decisions
Child protection enquiries, allegations and complex safeguarding situations
7-8hr asynchronous online learning +
2-day onsite practical workshop
The two programmes are designed to work together.
©SAFE Conversations empowers every adult to confidently check in with students and recognise exactly when a concern reaches the threshold to be passed to specialist staff.
©SAFE Interviewing provides the advanced skills required by those responsible for conducting safeguarding disucssions and managing complex child protection situations.
Train your team to ask the right questions, in the right way
Why does this matter?
Without specialist interview training there is a risk of:
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Missing important information.
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Influencing a child's account.
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Increasing emotional distress.
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Delaying intervention.
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Compromising future investigations.
©SAFE Interviewing was developed to reduce these risks while keeping the child's needs at the centre of every enquiry.
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©SAFE Interviewing training runs throughout the year. Places are limited to ensure every participant receives the quality of coaching and feedback the programme requires.
One Certification. Two Connected Components.
©SAFE Interviewing is a single certification programme delivered through two connected learning components. Most participants complete both parts as one continuous learning experience, finishing the online theory immediately before attending the practical workshop.
©SAFE Interviewing Certification
Part 1: Theory and Foundations Online | Self-Paced | Approximately 7–8 Hours Participants develop the knowledge, understanding and ethical foundations of the ©SAFE methodology. This component explores: The ©SAFE Framework. Planning and preparation. Child development and trauma. Evidence-informed questioning. Ethical decision-making. Professional responsibilities.
Part 2: Practical Skills Embedding Two-Day In-Person Workshop Participants apply the methodology through practical exercises, coaching, case studies and structured reflection. This workshop focuses on: Practical interviewing skills. Complex safeguarding scenarios. Peer-on-peer abuse enquiries. Cognitive interviewing techniques. Defensible safeguarding practice. Real-time feedback and coaching.
WHAT
Flexible Learning Pathway Part 1 (online theory) is typically completed immediately before Part 2 (the live workshop). If needed, Part 1 can be completed independently and Part 2 attended at a later date. To maintain quality, Part 2 should normally be completed within six months of Part 1. Beyond this timeframe, participants must refresh and re-complete the online theory component before progressing.
HOW
What Participants Say
Versatile Communication: Beyond Child Protection
Although designed for child protection, this methodology equips leaders to handle a much wider range of critical conversations. Participants frequently apply the framework to enhance communication and decision-making during:
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Parental & Staff Concerns: Handling difficult discussions and professional allegations.
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Adult Information Gathering: Managing safer recruitment and complex evidence gathering.
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Strategic Leadership: Guiding high-level discussions and complex safeguarding situations.
Excellent course. Hugely beneficial as a pastoral middle leader and accessible for all levels of safeguarding experience. Manageable steps to follow and clear strategies to apply. Thank you!
- Anna Brutti
Developed by Leading Interviewing and Safeguarding Specialists
©SAFE Interviewing was created by a multidisciplinary team with extensive experience across child protection, forensic interviewing, social work, policing, and investigative psychology.
Built on decades of frontline experience and international best practice, this evidence-based methodology is tailored specifically for the practical demands of educational settings.
