🛡️ Staff meeting brief — Cause for Concern
For whoever is running the meeting. About 15 minutes. Print it and talk from it; do not read it out.
The aim is not that everybody knows where the form is. It is that one person who would have said nothing now says something. Everything below is pointed at that.
Run it at every site. Repeat it for new starters at induction.
1. Start with what has not changed 2 min
So nobody thinks a form has been put between them and a person.
Say this first, before you mention the form at all:
Say
“If you are worried about a child, nothing about that has changed. You come and find me, or the deputy, and you
tell me. Out loud. Today. That is still the whole thing.”
Then introduce the form as the second step, never the first:
Say
“What is new is that afterwards there is somewhere to write it down, with a date on it, in your own words. That
is what the form is. It does not replace telling me. It records that you did.”
Watch for: somebody going quiet and looking relieved. That is the person who has been worrying about
“bothering” you, and who has just heard that there is now a form they could use instead of talking to
you. Say the first line again at the end of the meeting.
2. Who it is for 2 min
The single biggest reason concerns go unrecorded is people deciding they are not senior enough.
- Anyone. Apprentice, bank, student, kitchen, first week. If you are signed in with your JLK code, you can record one.
- You do not have to be sure. You do not need evidence. You do not need to have worked out what it means.
- You do not need permission from your room leader, and you do not have to tell them first.
Say
“It is not your job to decide whether it is serious. That is my job, and it is the job I am trained for. Your job
is to notice and pass it on. If you pass me ten things and nine of them turn out to be nothing, that is the
system working properly, not you wasting my time.”
3. Walk through it on the screen 5 min
Open the form on a tablet and go down it. Do not describe it — show it.
- The red block at the top. Read it aloud as it is written. “Filling this form in is not telling anyone.”
- Your name is on it and it cannot be removed. That is deliberate — the DSL will usually come back to the person who saw it, because they are the one who saw it.
- Date and time. Nearest quarter hour. “I am not sure of the time” is a real option and people should use it. Making a time up is worse than saying you do not know.
- If it happened before today, the form asks why it is being recorded now. Not a telling-off — the delay is itself something the DSL needs to know.
- What you saw or heard — facts, not what you think it means. Opinion at the end, labelled as opinion.
- The child’s own words. Spend the most time on this one. See the next section.
- The body map. Tap where you saw it, describe it. Never photograph a child.
- “Is this about a member of staff?” Answer it honestly, including “it might be”. It changes who sees the record — see section 6.
- Who you told, when, and how. Required. If the honest answer is “nobody yet”, the form stops you and tells you to go and do that first.
4. The child’s own words — the bit that matters most 3 min
This is the part that is most often lost, and the part that is hardest to put right later.
- Write what the child said exactly as they said it. Their words, their grammar, their mistakes.
- Do not tidy it up. Do not turn it into a sentence of your own. “He disclosed that his father had hurt him” is not as useful as “my daddy did it when he was cross with the telly”.
- Do not ask questions to find out more. Listen, let them finish, write it down. Leading questions can make what a child says unusable later on.
Say
“If a child starts telling you something, you do not need to get the full story. You are not interviewing them.
Let them say what they want to say, do not ask them anything that puts words in their mouth, and write down
exactly what came out of their mouth. That is worth more than anything you could get by asking.”
Worth practising. Give the room a sentence — “my mummy’s friend shouts at me in the night” — and ask two
or three people to write it down as they would. Compare. Most people tidy it without noticing they have.
5. What happens after you press the button 2 min
People use a system more when they know it goes somewhere.
- It goes to the DSL and the deputy straight away, with everything you wrote, and your site manager is told too, so the site is never unaware. The DSL leads.
- It appears on their Staff Hub as a high-priority notice — with no child’s name on it, because a notice can pop up on a screen in a busy room.
- The full detail is only ever emailed to JLK mailboxes, never to a personal address.
- It is saved with a reference, your name, and the date and time.
- Discord is told that a concern was recorded and nothing else — no child, no detail. That is deliberate.
- The DSL marks it as seen, and the time they first saw it is recorded and never changes.
Say
“You will not get a reply from the system, and that is not it being ignored. If I need more from you I will come
and find you. If you have not heard anything and it is bothering you, ask me. Always ask me.”
6. What it is not for — and concerns about staff 2 min
- A child who is in danger right now. That is not a form, that is you, now, finding the DSL or the manager, or calling 999.
- An accident or a bump. That goes in the accident record as it always has.
- Worries about how a child is developing — speech, play, not joining in. That is the SEND: something noticed about a child form, which goes to the SENCo.
A concern about a member of staff — something an adult did, or did not do — follows the same rule as everything else: tell someone in person first, then record it.
- Tell the DSL, in person. If it involves the DSL or a deputy DSL, tell a director instead.
- Do not talk to the person involved about it, and do not try to find out more yourself.
- Then record it, and answer “Yes” to “Is this about a member of staff?” That record goes to the DSL and the directors only — not your site manager, not the site inbox, not Discord. If it involves the DSL, it goes to the directors only.
- Say who the directors are, by name, so nobody has to ask.
7. Questions to invite 3 min
Ask these rather than “any questions?” — that gets silence.
- “What would stop you using this?” Wait. The answer is usually about time or about not wanting to make a fuss, and both are worth hearing out loud.
- “If you noticed something at ten past five on a Friday, what would you actually do?”
- “Who do you go to if I am not here?” Everybody should be able to name the deputy. If they cannot, that is today’s most important finding.
- “Has anybody ever not said something because they were not sure it counted?” Expect a pause. Let it sit.
Close with the same line you opened with. “If you are worried about a child, come and find me and say it
out loud. The form comes after.”