Leadership Briefing: Safeguarding Culture, Learning and Multi‑Agency Practice

Based on a recording of Fiona Roe and Veran Patel with Peter Stride, Associate Director, Safeguarding and Organisational Culture

This briefing summarises key insights from a conversation with safeguarding specialist Peter Stride, drawing on his experience chairing Domestic Abuse‑Related Death Reviews, Safeguarding Adult Reviews and Children’s Reviews. It highlights the cultural, organisational and multi‑agency factors that drive safeguarding success — and failure — across health, social care, local government and emergency services.

What cultural and organisational factors most commonly contribute to serious safeguarding failures?

Peter: The dominant theme is culture. Failures arise when staff work in silos, feel intimidated about raising concerns, or lack confidence to act on instinct (“something doesn’t feel right”). Policies and procedures exist, but they are meaningless without a culture that encourages staff to speak up early.

Key failure patterns include:

  • Staff doing only the minimum required to “stay out of trouble”
  • Lack of professional curiosity
  • Over‑reliance on victims to protect themselves
  • Normalising risk (“they’re just hoarders”, “they never go out”)
  • Closing cases because a letter wasn’t returned or a victim declined police involvement
  • Weak supervision and leadership that leaves staff isolated

Strong safeguarding requires leadership, supervision, curiosity and psychological safety.

What distinguishes organisations that learn and improve from those that repeatedly struggle?

Peter: Improving organisations have leadership commitment from the top. They proactively identify issues, bring them to reviews, update policies, and invest in relevant training. They use modern learning methods (short modules, podcasts, scenario‑based content) rather than generic, irrelevant training.

They embrace a no‑blame, black‑box‑thinking culture:

  • Learning from failure
  • Owning risk
  • Encouraging staff to challenge and escalate

Struggling organisations show the opposite behaviours:

  • Defensiveness
  • Passing responsibility to others
  • Doing the minimum
  • Repeating the same recommendations across multiple reviews (“Groundhog Day”)
  • Generic training that doesn’t change practice
What practical steps help frontline teams overcome barriers to professional curiosity and risk recognition?

Peter: Frontline teams must be supported to look beyond checklists. Tools like DASH can encourage lazy, tick‑box practice if not used thoughtfully.

Practical steps include:

  • Training staff to recognise coercive control and long‑term patterns
  • Encouraging practitioners to widen their lens during visits
  • Reviewing long‑standing cases for drift or normalisation
  • Supervisors reinforcing reflective practice
  • Ensuring risk assessments are dynamic, not static
  • Strengthening two‑way information sharing

Frontline staff are the first to see warning signs — they need confidence, support and time to act on them.

How can organisations align culture with operational pressures and regulatory demands?

Peter: Resourcing pressures are real, but culture is still decisive. The key is shared responsibility. Safeguarding fails when agencies try to offload cases onto others. It succeeds when partners agree to share risk and each take a manageable part of the work.

Leaders must create a culture where:

  • Agencies own risk collectively
  • No one leaves a meeting relieved they “got no actions”
  • Everyone contributes something
  • Multi‑agency working is the norm, not the exception

This reduces pressure on any single service and improves outcomes for vulnerable people.

What does effective multi‑agency collaboration look like in practice?

Peter: There are plenty of statutory meetings, but effectiveness depends on culture, not structure.

Good collaboration looks like:

  • Meetings that are concise, purposeful and action‑focused
  • Agencies taking responsibility rather than avoiding it
  • Real‑time information sharing
  • Avoiding unnecessary administration
  • Recognising the limits of resources and focusing on what matters

Poor collaboration is characterised by agencies attending meetings only to avoid actions.

What unique safeguarding challenges do police, fire and ambulance services face?

Peter: Emergency services operate in high‑volume, high‑risk, time‑pressured environments. Their focus is often on the immediate incident, not the wider safeguarding context.

Challenges include:

  • Limited time to reflect or record detailed information
  • Responders acting as “initial investigators” without recognising it
  • Missing environmental cues (e.g., signs of coercive control, neglect)
  • Historically weak safeguarding contributions from ambulance services (though improving)

However, emergency services can provide critical early intelligence if supported and trained.

Where have emergency services made a significant safeguarding difference, and what can others learn?

Peter: Examples include:

  • Neighbourhood policing spotting early signs of coercive control in families who appeared “low risk”
  • Fire services gaining access to homes where others cannot, identifying hoarding, isolation and risk
  • Ambulance services improving safeguarding referrals and situational awareness
  • Control rooms providing responders with background intelligence en route

The lesson: early, low‑level concerns often reveal deeper patterns when viewed collectively.

What does good information sharing look like, and what barriers must be addressed?

Peter: Good information sharing is fast, accurate and confident. It requires leadership that empowers staff to share information lawfully without hiding behind GDPR.

Barriers include:

  • Fear of breaching data protection
  • Over‑complex information‑sharing agreements
  • Cultural reluctance to share risk
  • One‑way referrals that “pass the problem”

Good practice is two‑way, timely and focused on safeguarding, not bureaucracy.

The full Podcast can be accessed here –

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