All Safety, No Guarding

Back in the spring, while walking across fields near where I live, I witnessed an extraordinary display of entirely spontaneous parental protection.  As the trees were only beginning to bud, rooks’ nests were clearly visible in the bare treetops against the sky.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a red kite appeared, hovering against the blue.  Wasting no time, several rooks immediately took wing and consistently and vigorously harried the hungry predator – dive-bombing the larger bird, surrounding it, driving it further and further from the nests. Meanwhile, other rooks were clearly visible, standing guardian over their young, making a huge noise to alert others to a clear and present danger. Eventually, the kite gave up and set off for pastures new.

Now that autumn is approaching, and with it the start the start of a new academic year in the northern hemisphere, it is a good time to reflect on whether or not current approaches to ‘safeguarding’ are actually fit for purpose.  Despite an increased emphasis on ‘safety’, and government admonitions that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, are we actually protecting children effectively?  Or are we stifling them with ‘safetyism’ while ignoring other threats to their wellbeing?

All depth, and no breadth

Every professional or volunteer, quite rightly, needs to undergo a series of checks before working with children. Ticking the boxes, following the flowcharts and uploading training records now seems to have become a safeguarding exercise in itself.  Senior staff often emphasise the importance of ensuring that their backs are covered, by having the right documentary evidence, in the event of any incident.

A degree of tunnel vision has, however, left children prey to all kinds of other hazards.  In addition, frequently they are ill-equipped to cope with those challenges.  This is barely recognised, let alone acknowledged.

‘Safetyism’ and safeguarding

In their 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff coined the term ‘safetyism’.  This describes a culture in which ‘safety’ – both physical and psychological – is considered ahead of everything else, regardless of how minimal the risk may be, or the greater benefits of allowing children to participate in any given activity.[1]

Young people need to learn to assess and navigate risk as they grow and build resilience so that they can cope when things don’t go according to plan.  “We should not be rash or foolishly court danger”, writes R R Reno in an article in the online magazine First Things.[2]  “But we should not be timid, either, unduly fearing the misfortunes that might befall us”, he continues.  After all, most things which make life worth living involve a degree of risk, whether that is falling in love, driving a car or going for a swim.

This culture of ‘safetyism’ has now taken hold, involving extensive risk assessments for everything, and the constant supervision of children, from playground to play date.  At the same time, ’safeguarding’, as we have generally understood it, is demonstrating significant shortcomings.  First, too much time is spent standing downstream, watching out for children caught in the raging torrent, rather than turning our attention to what is happening upstream, where they fall in.  Secondly – and clearly related to this – the concept of safeguarding has been distorted by the ubiquitous influence of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). 

The truth, which dare not speak its name, is that meaningful safeguarding and child protection are not possible without discrimination, discernment and – yes – judgement, based upon a clear moral framework of what is right and wrong. It does not always serve the common good to include everyone and everything.

Right at the start of the Department for Education’s key guide, Keeping children safe in education[3], there is an explanation of the words ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’, and the care which we should take in using these terms.  However, victims and perpetrators don’t appear out of nowhere. They emerge from the surrounding landscape.

Home and away

Rapid social and cultural change is the dominant feature of today’s landscape. In the past, children could lean on age-old support networks of family and community for guidance and guardianship in the early years.  In turn, parents could rely on shared values within society, and an agreed understanding of right and wrong – and indeed what constitutes harm – to offer a degree of protection in the wider world.

Now, ever-less-stable households fail to provide the scaffolding of safety and security which children need.  At the same time, social change has ushered in a superficial culture which is both nihilistic and narcissistic. There is no longer shared acceptance of common values, leaving children to grow up without protection, in a world where ‘anything goes’.

This has also allowed a number of ideas to flourish, unchallenged, which are profoundly harmful to children, but which we have yet to tackle with any degree of seriousness.  We now need to look up river and make at least some attempt to address these at source.

Strong families, strong societies

Strong families underpin resilient societies and offer protection for individuals in so many ways – from encouraging personal flourishing and protection against predators, to a guard against state overreach and ideological indoctrination. It is notable that a Home Office publication investigating the child rape gangs in the UK found that offenders are most likely to access victims “in circumstances where they feel able to act with impunity”.[4]

The same is true for children recruited into county lines drugs’ gangs, and ultimately those who are trafficked.  Young people who have a strong first line of defence to protect them – especially a father in the home – are far less likely to fall prey to the evil and the sick who wish to exploit them.

However, too many children and young people spend too much time alone.  At home, online, they are vulnerable to multiple dangers, from grooming to gaming addiction. At school, many sit unchallenged, eating their lunch alone.  Young people are permitted to leave lessons in which they feel ‘uncomfortable’, or offered a reduced timetable, which leaves them at both a social and educational disadvantage. Many now refuse school altogether and stay alone in their bedrooms all day.

The importance of secure attachment for infants has been repeatedly demonstrated.  Secure attachment helps with later relationship building and ‘buffers’ children in adversity.  There is evidence that it also underpins good mental and emotional health in later life.  Rather than providing support only for those who return to work as soon as possible after giving birth, consideration should be given to enabling mothers – or another consistent caregiver – to be at home and bond with the children in the crucial early years.

The clamour for increased ‘child care’, has obscured what is actually involved in the raising of a secure and rounded human being. Emphasis on protection from physical danger, along with education and entertainment, has overlooked the moral, spiritual and emotional elements of development needed to build maturity and independence. Children absorb these from their caregivers – they cannot pick this up effectively from their peers. The truth is that children need to have their parents around – a permanent part of the landscape of their lives – long after learning not to stick their fingers in a plug socket, and particularly in the teenage years. 

It therefore makes sense to encourage and support strong, committed families. Unlike many other countries, however, the benefits of family life are largely overlooked by policymakers, and neither marriage nor the cost of raising children is acknowledged within the tax system, as it is in many other countries.

Mini adults and childish grown-ups

Currently children are frequently shouldering adult responsibilities before they are ready to do so.  In some cases, they are ‘parenting’ the adults in their lives, who are weighed down with physical, emotional and social problems of their own.  Young people are also routinely exposed to situations and subject matter which they are emotionally ill-equipped to handle.

The ‘adultification’ of children leads directly to the infantilising of adults.  Young people who have not experienced the freedoms of childhood later struggle to grow up and often fail to forge successful careers and relationships later on. 

This trend is being encouraged by a growing tendency within education and elsewhere to place undue weight on children’s wishes and feelings.  Rather than using the input of young people to inform decisions, too often their desires lead decision-making. This entirely overlooks the reality that what children might want may not, in fact, be in their best interests. However, diversity and inclusion too often means blurring the boundaries between adulthood and childhood and letting children call the shots before they are ready.

The onward march of DEI

Children have been introduced to the supposedly well-intentioned policies of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion' not for their benefit, but in order to ‘safeguard' the ideological beliefs of adults. The damage wrought to children by this approach, to everyone and everything, has been incalculable, from the instilling of contentious ideology across the curriculum, to some schools excluding parents from decision-making for ideological reasons.

Professionals in the education, health and therapy sectors have irresponsibly suspended their better judgement to promote ‘queer theory’ which seeks to overturn established norms – and reality – in all walks of life.  Many schools have contracted in external providers with ‘lived experience’, usually only of their own dysfunction, to challenge the reality of sex being binary, to undermine so-called ‘heteronormativity’ and to promote ominously titled ‘gender, sex and relationship diversity’. [5]

There have always been sadists and perverts (a word which tellingly, has largely been excised from the lexicon) from whom children need protection. It is only recently, however, that such people have been able to claim that their predilections are part of a ‘diversity’ which merits ‘inclusion’, with very little in the way of official challenge. Where previously adults might have trusted deeply rooted instincts and intuition, the current left-brain-dominated world prefers relying on bureaucracy and ‘be kind’, to avoid accusations of bigotry, regardless of the consequences.

The signs carried by protestors outside migrant hotels in the UK read “Protect our Kids”.  This is an example of parents sensing a threat and acting on millennia-old instincts.  Large numbers of rootless, single, young men, especially from cultures not known for the respectful treatment of women and children, need to be treated with caution.  It is not racist or prejudiced to say so, particularly when the disgraceful sacrifice of children to the rape gangs, through the total abdication of institutional responsibility, is fresh in everyone’s minds.  That was the cost exacted by DEI. 

The dangers of ‘anything goes’

In order to ensure that children grow up to be ‘inclusive’ and question ‘heteronormativity’, their attention is now focused unhealthily on matters of identity and sexual diversity long before they are able to understand these concepts fully.  Adolescents find much of what is taught alarming, anxiety-inducing or disgusting, but don’t feel free to say so for fear of being thought ‘judgy’.  Others develop a warped view of what is natural and expected, which harms both themselves and others.  Such content safeguards nothing, while destroying the normal trajectory of puberty.

Those responsible have evidently never met a young teenager who is too afraid to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, for fear of the stranger they might meet on the landing of their parents’ polyamorous household. General practitioners should not be treating anal trauma in teenage girls, following sexual encounters which they thought were ‘normal’, or having to explain the dangers of strangulation during sex.

Pretending that all manner of niche and depraved sexual practices and fetishes are routine and acceptable endangers children to a degree which should be inexcusable. As Sharna Olfman writes in her book, The Sexualisation of Childhood, “when our culture desensitizes us…child sexual abuse through prostitution and pornography rises and children who are already living marginalised lives are most likely to be targeted”.[6]

The acceptance of gender ideology has undermined schools as bastions of truth, as well as safety, especially for children who already feel ‘different’.  In some instances, children have been required to ignore reality and use ‘preferred pronouns’, or even agree that a classmate is a cat, to avoid being branded ‘despicable’ by their teacher.[7]

A recent report by Reem Alsalem, the UN Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, makes clear that, “the pursuit of [gender] neutrality can often lead to a form of blindness to the distinct needs, rights and vulnerabilities of particular groups”.  She continues, “in sum, what is not defined cannot be protected”. [8] If safeguarding is to mean anything, policymakers need to take note of this.

Key to safeguarding is spelling out loudly and clearly that it is not possible to be ‘born in the wrong body’ and agreeing that any young person who turns against their own body and wishes to reject or harm it in any way, is in need of urgent intervention.

To conclude…

Wrapping children in cotton wool, while failing to address often contentious subjects, leaves children more vulnerable, not only to the predators within our society, but also to experiences and environments which harm them physically, mentally and emotionally. It is time to act fearlessly, to address these broader issues.

As Sharna Olfman writes so beautifully in her book, “when a child travels through all stages of childhood enveloped by a supportive family, community and culture they will develop autonomy, creativity, industry and a sense of identity and will mature intellectually, socially, emotionally and morally”. 

The rooks have it right – the ultimate goal of safeguarding must be to ensure all children have a secure nest in which they can grow and find the freedom to fledge, while responsible adults continually scan the horizon for threats to their long-term welfare.

[1] Lukianoff G and Haidt J, 2018, The Coddling of the American Mind, Penguin.

[2] R R Reno, Safetyism, First Things, 1 November 2021.

[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/686b94eefe1a249e937cbd2d/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_2025.pdf

[4] Home Office, Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation – Characteristics of Offending, December 2020.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fd87e348fa8f54d5733f532/Group-based_CSE_Paper.pdf

[5] Barker M-J, Gender, Sex and Relationship Diversity: Good Practice across the Counselling Professions 001, BACP.

[6] Olfman S, (2009), The Sexualisation of Childhood, Greenwood Publishing Group.

[7] Dyson J, Gender-row school: ‘None of our pupils identify as a cat’, Schools Week, 22 June 2023, https://schoolsweek.co.uk/gender-row-school-none-of-our-pupils-identify-as-a-cat/

[8] Alsalem R, Sex-based violence against women and girls: new frontiers and emerging issues, Human Rights Council, 16 June 2025.