The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned this high-level research in December 2024 to understand, through analysis of the 2023-24 yearly reports, how safeguarding partnerships have developed their approaches in the past year. Yearly reports must be published in accordance with the requirements set out in the Children Act 20041 and Working…

The "UN Convention on the Rights of the Child" is one of the most widely-ratified human rights treaties, yet the visibility of children in the early years, in the mandatory government reports to the "UN Committee on the Rights of the Child" and in the Committee's concluding observations to States Parties, is relatively low…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, questions abounded about how best to support children during the 'new normal' where homes, often instead of schools, were identified as the usual sites of learning. Educational research has explored the impact of COVID-19 on schools, education and learning, and childhood studies research has shown the impact on…

Professional curiosity is vital in early intervention and in keeping children safe from abuse and neglect, its significance has been a recurrent theme in inquiries into child abuse and neglect in the UK over the last decade. However, there is a notable lack of research into the lived experience of practitioners in being professionally curious with…

The objective of the research was to analyze the scientific production regarding accident prevention in early child rearing institutions. An integrative literature review, referring to the years between 2011 and 2021, whose research was carried out in May 2021 in seven information resources, raised the following issue: it was found that not all…

This paper wants to study in deep one of the existing services to help and to improve the parent-son's relation: the "child contact centre". This centre is a place where children can meet their parents after different family problems, from parental conflicts until violence and abuses. It's very important that each child could have the…

Children's experience of harm and abuse has a profound impact on their health and well-being. In response, school-based prevention programmes have been developed and delivered by external organisations with the aim of improving children's awareness and understanding of forms of harm and abuse which may affect them, encouraging them to seek help if…

The paper presents findings from an explorative qualitative study on the experiences of students of early childhood studies and primary initial teacher training programmes in England during professional practice placements. The research examined how students' developing advocacy skills to safeguard and protect children were enabled in response to…

Since 2020, changes to the school curriculum in England and Wales have made elements of Personal, Social, and Health Education (PSHE) statutory. As schools grapple with these changes, alongside the psychosocial impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, it is important to consider effective ways of helping children make safe decisions and improve their…

Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) remains a significant concern in the English context with a broad professional research base expanding at pace in response to serious case reviews and government inquiries into historical sexual abuse. Whilst educational psychologists (EPs) have an established role in child protection and safeguarding, the work they…

This paper is part of a wider research project, exploring the possibilities to protect and extend Froebelian principles in practice and analyses interview data from thirty-three early years practitioners to investigate their understanding and enactment of learning through play in relation to the theories of Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852). Analysis…

This article draws upon legislation, policy, guidance and recently published research in order to explore why illegal exclusion, sometimes known as off rolling, is an under-researched area of education, and what the most significant barriers are to gaining a clearer understanding of the scale of, and reasons behind, the practice. In doing so, the…

This article considers children's agency within the framework of children's rights education. It starts by considering the ways in which agency is conceptualised within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the implications for education. The main part of the article offers 10 propositions that offer teachers a variety of tools…

This article brings together two distinct but interrelated fields: human rights education (HRE) and safeguarding. It endeavours to show that the former can be beneficial for the efficacy of the latter. By extending an argument put forward recently that for HRE to be effective it must enable children to recognise and respond to lived human rights…

This article sheds light on how chronic health conditions impact upon concepts of inclusion in children's early childhood education and care in England; it draws upon findings from a small-scale research project which highlights the need to consider health, in particular, the impact of chronic health conditions on early childhood education and…