Safeguarding Roundup: Key Updates, Research and Developments- October 6th
Safeguarding never stands still. Over recent days we have seen important developments across domestic abuse, child safeguarding, early help, online safety, sexual violence, youth justice, dementia care and public protection.
For safeguarding professionals, leaders and organisations, keeping up to date isn't simply about knowing that new guidance or research has been published. The important question is always:
What does this mean for practice?
Here are some of the developments we think are worth knowing about.
Domestic abusers to be formally marked and tracked through the justice system
New measures came into force on 5 October requiring courts to formally record when domestic abuse was a factor in an offence.
Until now, despite domestic abuse being recognised as an aggravating factor in offences including assault and stalking, there has not been a consistent way of recording that context following conviction.
The new Judicial Finding of Domestic Abuse creates a clear court record which can be shared across police, prison and probation systems. The intention is to make patterns of offending easier to identify, improve risk management and enable more appropriate interventions.
This sits alongside wider measures including increased electronic monitoring and restriction zones intended to keep some high-risk offenders away from victims.
Why it matters: Safeguarding so often depends on professionals being able to see the whole picture. Individual incidents viewed in isolation can significantly underestimate risk. Better identification and sharing of patterns of domestic abuse should support more informed risk assessment and multi-agency decision-making.
Read the government announcement
Serious child safeguarding incidents: new rapid review analysis
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has published its Q4 analysis of rapid reviews relating to incidents between January and March 2026.
There were 60 rapid reviews, with half involving the death of a child. Particularly strikingly, 48% involved children under one year old, while hidden males were identified as a theme in 30%.
Why it matters: These figures reinforce themes that safeguarding professionals will recognise from previous reviews: the vulnerability of babies, the importance of understanding everyone who has access to a child, and the danger of assessments becoming overly focused on the presenting caregiver.
Professional curiosity means asking who else is in the child's life, who is spending time in the home, what is known about them and whether information from different agencies creates a different picture of risk.
Read the Q4 rapid review analysis
Safety alert issued for baby sleeping bags
The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) has issued a safety alert relating to certain baby sleeping bags because of risks of overheating and suffocation.
The alert relates particularly to sleeping bags without armholes and those incorporating hoods. OPSS says there have been nearly 50 recalls or product safety reports concerning dangerous sleeping-bag products in the UK since 2023.
Parents and carers are advised not to buy or use baby sleeping bags without armholes or with hoods for unsupervised sleep.
Why it matters: This is useful information not only for parents but for early years providers, health professionals, family support services and anybody providing safe-sleep advice. Safeguarding includes remaining alert to emerging product and environmental risks, particularly for babies who cannot remove themselves from danger.
Healthy Babies support to be expanded across Family Hubs
The Government has announced that the Healthy Babies programme will be expanded to all local authorities, with support ultimately available through more than 1,000 Best Start Family Hubs.
The programme includes enhanced infant-feeding and mental-health support, help with parent-infant relationships, health visiting and midwifery support.
The announcement also included further measures relating to adult social care and a strengthened NHS response to violence against women and girls.
Why it matters: Effective safeguarding isn't only about responding once harm has occurred. Accessible early help, strong relationships with families and services that recognise emerging pressures before they become crises are fundamental components of prevention.
Read more about the Family Hub expansion
Parental burnout and the overlooked needs of families with adolescents
New findings from Action for Children highlight increasing pressures experienced by parents of adolescents.
Among parents of 10–15-year-olds accessing the charity's one-to-one support during 2025/26, 40% raised concerns about their own wellbeing, compared with 28% in 2022/23. Of those parents, 82% were also concerned about their child's wellbeing.
The charity identifies the transition to secondary school as a particular pressure point and highlights challenges involving school attendance, SEND, mental health, family conflict and long waits for services.
Why it matters: Early help must not become synonymous solely with early years. Family stress, parental wellbeing and children's safeguarding needs remain interconnected throughout childhood and adolescence.
Professionals should be curious about what is happening around the child as well as what is happening to the child.
Read the Action for Children findings
New guidance on retaining and storing child protection records
NSPCC Learning has published updated guidance to help organisations understand the principles involved in retaining, storing and appropriately destroying child protection records.
The guidance highlights the importance of organisations having clear policies and procedures covering safeguarding information and reminds organisations that some sectors will also need to comply with additional sector-specific requirements.
Why it matters: Good safeguarding recording is not an administrative extra. Records can become crucial in identifying patterns, supporting future assessments, responding to allegations and demonstrating how decisions were reached.
Organisations should know what they record, where it is stored, who can access it, how long it is retained and how it is securely destroyed.
Growing Up in the 2020s: what life looks like for 12 and 13-year-olds
The Department for Education has published findings from the first wave of its major Growing Up in the 2020s longitudinal study.
Based on information from nearly 8,000 young people in Year 8, alongside information from parents, carers and teachers, the research provides a contemporary picture of adolescence in England.
It examines physical and mental health, family relationships, socioeconomic circumstances, friendships, school belonging and attendance, enrichment and social-media use.
While most young people were doing well across many areas, the research identifies a substantial minority experiencing challenges around mental health, engagement and belonging, alongside inequalities between different groups of young people.
Why it matters: Safeguarding practice must evolve alongside children's lived experiences. Understanding belonging, relationships, online lives, mental health and inequality gives professionals valuable context when considering vulnerability and protective factors.
Explore the Growing Up in the 2020s research
Intimate image abuse: new expectations for online platforms
30 September marked an important milestone in the implementation of online-safety requirements relating to non-consensual intimate image abuse (NCII).
SWGfL reports that online platforms are now required to have measures in place to detect and prevent the spread of NCII content, including explicit AI-generated deepfakes.
Ofcom has highlighted proactive approaches including hash-matching technology, which can identify known abusive images and help prevent them being repeatedly uploaded and shared.
Why it matters: Image-based abuse is an increasingly significant safeguarding issue affecting both adults and young people. AI-generated imagery also means safeguarding policies, education and staff knowledge need to keep pace with forms of harm that may not have existed when existing procedures were written.
Women’s Aid: survivors continue to face barriers when seeking safety
Women’s Aid's Nowhere to Turn 2026 report draws on a decade of its No Woman Turned Away project and highlights the additional barriers faced by some survivors seeking safe accommodation.
The report identifies shortages in refuge spaces capable of meeting more complex support needs and concerns about statutory services not always fulfilling their responsibilities.
Women’s Aid reports that 92.2% of 103 recorded instances where services failed to provide support related to statutory services. It also highlights barriers experienced by survivors with no recourse to public funds and those requiring mental-health or substance-use support.
Why it matters: An effective safeguarding response must consider intersectionality and accessibility. Having a pathway on paper does not necessarily mean that every survivor can access it.
Organisations should consider who may face additional barriers to support and whether safeguarding pathways work equally well for everybody.
Northern Ireland launches campaign to support victims of sexual crime
Northern Ireland's Department of Justice has launched its Justice is Changing campaign, highlighting changes designed to improve the experiences of victims of sexual crime.
Developments include Remote Evidence Centres, legal-advice services for adult and child complainants, stronger anonymity protections and reforms intended to reduce delays and minimise additional trauma caused by the justice process.
More than 600 vulnerable witnesses used Remote Evidence Centres during 2025.
Why it matters: Trauma-informed safeguarding should consider not only the original harm experienced by a person but the potential for systems and processes to compound that trauma.
Read about the Justice is Changing campaign
Scotland's Promise: progress must translate into lived experience
Scotland's Oversight Board has published Report FOUR, examining progress towards keeping the promise made to care-experienced children, young people and families.
The Board concludes that the promise can still be achieved by 2030, but warns that too much remains on paper rather than being experienced in people's lives, calling for greater urgency in translating commitments into meaningful change.
Why it matters: There is an important message here for safeguarding organisations everywhere.
Policies, strategies, frameworks and action plans matter but assurance must ultimately test impact.
The question isn't simply “Do we have the right safeguarding arrangements?”
It is also “What difference are those arrangements actually making to people's safety and experience?”
Read about Oversight Board Report FOUR
Youth justice and anti-racism in Wales
The Youth Justice Board has responded to the publication of the Criminal Justice Board Wales Annual Report and Anti-Racism Report.
The YJB highlighted progress around prevention, reducing reoffending, victim safety and early intervention, while also emphasising the continuing need to tackle disproportionality and learn from lived experience.
Youth justice services in Wales are using local data and youth justice plans to address persistent disparities, alongside a disproportionality steering group.
Why it matters: Equity is a safeguarding issue. Organisations should understand whether particular groups experience different risks, responses or outcomes and importantly, use data rather than assumption to identify those disparities.
Tougher restrictions for offenders released on licence
New measures introduced from 1 October significantly expand restrictions and monitoring for offenders leaving prison.
Measures include electronic monitoring, new restriction zones for some high-risk sexual and violent offenders and powers to prohibit attendance at locations including pubs, clubs, football matches and other public events.
The Government says the measures are intended to strengthen victim protection and enable probation services to respond more quickly to breaches.
Why it matters: Effective safeguarding does not end at conviction or release. Risk management requires communication between criminal justice agencies, safeguarding services and other relevant organisations, particularly where victims or children may remain at risk.
Read the Ministry of Justice announcement
Proposed crackdown on access to dangerous chemicals
The Government has announced proposals to tighten controls on substances capable of being used to produce dangerous poisons or explosives, following recommendations from the Southport Inquiry.
The proposals include tighter restrictions around castor beans containing ricin and rosary peas containing abrin, alongside requirements relating to suspicious transactions involving other regulated substances.
Why it matters: The development is another reminder of the importance of joining information across safeguarding, Prevent, public protection and organisational risk.
Professional curiosity about concerning behaviour, unusual purchasing patterns, online activity or escalating risk can form one part of a much wider safeguarding picture.
Read the Government announcement
Developing guidance on what good dementia care looks like
The Care Quality Commission is engaging on the development of guidance around what good dementia care should look like.
This is an important area for adult safeguarding. High-quality dementia care must balance safety with rights, dignity, autonomy, individual circumstances and person-centred decision-making.
Why it matters: Safeguarding adults should never become synonymous with simply removing risk. For people living with dementia, good practice requires professionals to understand capacity, consent, proportionality, individual wishes and the person's wider history and circumstances.
View the CQC engagement on dementia care
What connects these updates?
Although these developments cover very different areas, several familiar safeguarding themes run through them:
See the whole picture. Patterns, histories and contextual information matter.
Remain professionally curious. The person or risk that is least visible can sometimes be the most significant.
Think beyond policy. A safeguarding framework is only effective if it changes people's experiences and outcomes.
Recognise inequality and barriers. Access to safety and support is not experienced equally.
Keep learning. Emerging technology, changing legislation, research and learning from serious incidents continually reshape what good safeguarding practice looks like.
Perhaps most importantly, safeguarding is not simply about responding to harm. It is about recognising risk earlier, sharing information effectively, creating safer environments and continually asking whether our arrangements are actually making a difference.
At RLB, we support organisations across sectors to move beyond compliance and build safeguarding cultures that are confident, curious and effective in practice.
Safeguarding is everyone's responsibility, but effective safeguarding requires more than simply knowing the words.