Tracking & Managing Safeguarding Concerns

Sara Spinks 5 min read
Tracking & Managing Safeguarding Concerns feature image

Having spent many years as a headteacher, I know that safeguarding does not fail because people do not care. It fails when systems are clumsy, fragmented, overly complex, or simply not fit for the reality of school life.

In every school I led, safeguarding was a constant, yet rarely neat, and often emotionally demanding task. Concerns arrived unpredictably, sometimes small, sometimes urgent, often layered over time. What made the difference was not just good professional judgement, but having a system that allowed us to see the whole picture clearly, quickly, and safely.

Effective safeguarding is not about compliance for the sake of compliance. It is about ensuring that concerns about children are noticed early, patterns are recognised, actions are followed through, and that leaders and governors have confidence that nothing is being missed.

So, what does managing safeguarding concerns really look like in practice? From a leadership perspective, managing safeguarding concerns means far more than logging an incident. It means:

  • Recognising and recording observations or disclosures as they happen
  • Responding promptly, proportionately, and in line with thresholds
  • Communicating securely with staff, families and external agencies
  • Tracking actions, decisions and outcomes over time
  • Reviewing concerns collectively to identify patterns, drift or escalation

In reality, safeguarding is cumulative. Rarely does risk present itself in a single, clear event. It builds quietly through attendance issues, behaviour changes, low-level concerns, repeated small indicators, identified through professional curiosity. Without robust recording and tracking, those patterns are easily lost.

This is why keeping safeguarding records should never be viewed as an administrative burden. In schools it is, quite literally, a protective tool; and under Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), it is also a statutory requirement.

KCSIE 2025 is explicit about expectations for recording and managing safeguarding concerns. From a leadership standpoint, these expectations also matter because they are often scrutinised during inspections, audits, serious incidents and complaints.

The legislative expectations of KCSIE require schools to:

Record All Safeguarding Information Promptly and Accurately

KCSIE 2025 makes clear that all safeguarding concerns must be recorded, including those relating to children, staff or other adults. Records should include:

  • What happened and when
  • Who was involved
  • The child’s words, recorded verbatim where possible
  • Factual observations (not assumptions)
  • Actions taken, decisions made, and referrals initiated
  • Any professional conversations or communications

In practice, this requires a system that supports staff to report concerns easily, DSLs and deputies to record and manage actions clearly and consistently, without creating barriers or unnecessary duplication.

Keep Records Secure, Complete and Confidential

Safeguarding information must be:

  • Securely stored
  • Accessed only by those with legitimate safeguarding roles
  • Shared on a clear need-to-know basis
  • Reviewed regularly

This is not solely about data protection; it is about confidence. Confidence that leaders can stand behind decisions made months or years earlier, and that records will withstand external scrutiny.

Record and Monitor Low-Level Concerns

KCSIE 2025 reinforces the importance of recording low-level concerns about adult behaviour, even where thresholds for formal action are not met.

As a headteacher, I found this one of the most challenging but essential aspects of safeguarding. Patterns only become visible when low-level concerns are captured consistently and reviewed over time. A tracker that enables this to be done proportionately, without inflating or minimising risk, is critical.

Escalate and Share Information Appropriately

Schools must be able to evidence when and why information was escalated to children’s social care, the police or other agencies, and equally, when decisions were made not to escalate. A clear chronology is vital.

Designated Safeguarding Leads are not just responding to single incidents. They are holding multiple, overlapping safeguarding narratives at the same time. On any given day, a DSL may be managing historical concerns that require monitoring, new disclosures that demand immediate action, low-level concerns that need professional curiosity, and complex multi-agency involvement that unfolds over months or even years.

This work is cumulative and mentally demanding. Safeguarding rarely resolves neatly. Concerns re-emerge, contexts change, families disengage or re-engage, and thresholds shift. Without a robust tracking system, DSLs are expected to carry much of this complexity in their heads, relying on memory, fragmented notes, or multiple disconnected documents.

A well-designed safeguarding tracker acts as a professional support in this process. It allows DSLs to step back from individual incidents and see the wider picture, to track actions over time, to revisit decisions with clarity, and to ensure that no concern drifts simply because it was not the loudest or most recent. Rather than replacing professional judgement, the tracker strengthens it by reducing cognitive load, improving oversight, and providing a clear, accessible safeguarding chronology that supports confident, defensible decision-making.

Choosing the right safeguarding tracker matters. Sadly, some safeguarding tracking systems unintentionally add to the burden placed on Designated Safeguarding Leads. Overly complex platforms, rigid workflows, excessive data fields, and systems designed more for audit than practice can turn safeguarding into a task-focused exercise rather than a child-centred one. DSLs often find themselves duplicating information, navigating features they never use, or struggling to extract meaningful oversight from systems that prioritise volume over clarity.

Some systems record information but do not help DSLs plan. Others capture data effectively but make it difficult to track actions over time, spot patterns, or produce clear, purposeful reports for senior leaders and governors. Instead of reducing risk, poorly designed systems can increase it by obscuring the bigger picture and adding unnecessary cognitive load.

This is where trackers such as the SSS Learning Safeguarding Concern Tracker comes into its own. Instead of being designed by software designers unfamiliar with safeguarding realities, Safeguarding Concern Tracker has been designed by safeguarding experts and experienced Designated Safeguarding Leads, people who understand the daily complexity of managing new concerns while holding oversight of existing ones.

They understand that safeguarding is not linear, and that DSLs are constantly balancing immediate risk, ongoing monitoring, professional judgement and accountability to senior leaders and governors.

From a leadership perspective, the strength of this tracker lies in its purposeful design:

  • All concerns in one place, creating a clear, accessible safeguarding narrative
  • Chronological tracking, supporting audits, referrals and reviews
  • Action accountability, so nothing drifts or remains unresolved
  • Trend analysis, enabling reporting to senior leaders and governors
  • Secure information sharing, aligned with statutory guidance
  • Customisable, to reflect the bespoke contextual safeguarding picture of each individual setting.

Additionally, with the current budget pressures schools face, investment in a tracking system needs to be carefully considered. As SSS Safeguarding Director Sam Preston highlighted:

"Often schools are paying significant sums for safeguarding tracking systems that include features never used in practice. Leaders should be asking:

  • Can our safeguarding system be tailored to our school’s risks, priorities and community context?
  • Can we adapt categories, thresholds and reporting fields as safeguarding evolves?
  • Does it genuinely support the DSL workload, or does it add to it?

We designed our tracker with flexibility in mind, recognising that safeguarding in a small rural primary school looks different to safeguarding in a large urban secondary. In essence, the tracker needs to adapt to context, not the other way around. No system replaces professional judgement, but the best ones strengthen it.”

Safeguarding is a shared responsibility, but leadership carries an even greater duty of care. As a former headteacher, I know how vital it is to be able to say, with confidence, we know our children, we know our risks, and we can evidence our decisions.

A robust safeguarding tracker is not about ticking boxes. It is about creating clarity in complexity, protecting children effectively, supporting staff confidently, and ensuring that safeguarding practice stands up to scrutiny when it matters most.

Sara Spinks

SSS Author & Former Headteacher

12 January 2026