I wasn’t going to say anything. But after reading these comments, I can’t stay silent.
What concerns me isn’t one person’s opinion. It’s the fact that these views are still being expressed by people who work, or have worked, with vulnerable children. When someone presents themselves as having professional experience of secure care, their words carry weight. They shape public understanding, influence attitudes and, whether intended or not, reflect the culture that children encounter when they enter these services.
One comment in particular stopped me in my tracks:
“Again though, there was no risk to her, there were no incidents that involved her and the issue is she didn’t feel safe… Not wasn’t safe.”
For me, that one sentence captures a mindset that countless child protection inquiries have challenged for decades. It creates a distinction between feeling safe and being safe, as though a child’s emotional experience somehow becomes less important because no recorded incident occurred. That is not trauma-informed practice. In fact, it reflects exactly the kind of thinking trauma-informed practice was developed to move away from.
Trauma-informed care begins with understanding that a child’s perception of safety matters. Children who have experienced bereavement, abuse, neglect or other significant trauma often experience the world differently. Their sense of safety cannot simply be measured by whether someone can point to an incident report. When a child says they feel unsafe, the professional response should never be to explain why they shouldn’t feel that way. It should be to understand why they do.
The language used throughout these discussions feels painfully familiar because it echoes the same attitudes that have surfaced repeatedly throughout decades of child protection failures.
“Nothing happened.”
“She just didn’t like it.”
“We’ve always done it this way.”
“The risks were managed.”
These are not simply throwaway remarks. They represent a way of thinking that places systems before children, institutional practice before individual need, and recorded events before lived experience. It is a culture that asks children to prove their fear instead of asking why they are afraid in the first place.
We are now in 2026. After decades of public inquiries, independent reviews, inspection reports and recommendations, I genuinely struggle to understand how professionals can still believe safeguarding begins only after harm has occurred.
Safeguarding has never been about waiting for something terrible to happen. It is about recognising vulnerability, preventing harm wherever possible and responding when a child tells us something doesn’t feel right. Feeling unsafe is not an inconvenience to be explained away. It is safeguarding information.
The child at the centre of this discussion was a 13-year-old girl who had recently been orphaned, separated from her home country and placed hundreds of miles away in Scotland for welfare reasons because suitable provision could not be found closer to home. She was placed in secure care alongside older boys aged between 15 and 17 who were detained through the justice system. She told the adults responsible for her care that she did not feel safe and asked to move or move to another house block.
The response should never have begun with, “Did anything happen?”
It should have begun with, “Why does this child feel unsafe?”
Those are fundamentally different questions. One seeks to defend the placement. The other seeks to understand the child.
Instead, much of the discussion has focused on reassuring everyone that “nothing happened.” Children do not need to experience physical harm before their concerns deserve to be taken seriously. The absence of an incident is not evidence that a placement was appropriate. It simply means that no harm was formally recorded. Safeguarding is about recognising risk before harm occurs, not congratulating ourselves afterwards because the worst-case scenario did not materialise.
Some have argued that this secure unit had managed mixed-sex placements successfully for many years and that robust risk assessments were in place. That may well be true. However, safeguarding has never been about defending a service because it has always operated in a particular way. Every placement should be assessed according to the needs, vulnerabilities and experiences of the individual child in front of you. Good safeguarding relies on professional curiosity, not institutional reassurance. History is not a safeguarding strategy, and neither is confidence in established practice.
The wider context is also impossible to ignore. This same secure unit has since been subject to serious regulatory action since 2024 with the Care Inspectorate identifying significant concerns about the safety and wellbeing of young people and serious failings in practice. There were also wider allegations and concerns relating to sexual abuse connected to the service that required investigation and unlawful use of restraint. That does not prove that this particular child was unsafe, nor should anyone make claims that have not been established. However, it should remind us why dismissing a child’s fears simply because “nothing happened” is such a dangerous approach. It reinforces why children’s voices must be listened to rather than explained away.
There is another aspect of these discussions that I find deeply concerning. The individual making many of these comments states that they have supported children within this secure unit for around twenty years and refers to having first-hand knowledge of the service. At other points, they appear to distinguish that they are not a residential care worker but work with these young people in another capacity. Whatever that role may be, they are clearly relying on their claimed professional experience to add authority to their public comments.
That raises important questions about professional boundaries and confidentiality.
Statements such as “absolutely nothing happened to her”, “she just didn’t want to be there” and “there was no risk to her” are not presented as personal opinions. They are presented as factual accounts of a vulnerable child’s experiences. If someone is drawing on their professional involvement with children to make those assertions publicly, it is entirely reasonable to ask who has authorised that discussion and on what basis it is considered appropriate.
I am not suggesting that data protection legislation has necessarily been breached. That is a matter for the relevant organisations and regulators if concerns were ever raised. However, safeguarding is about much more than legal compliance. Professionals working with vulnerable children are trusted with deeply personal information. They have ethical responsibilities around confidentiality, professional judgement and protecting children’s privacy, even when discussing cases in general terms.
Even where a child is not named directly, publicly commenting on their circumstances while relying on claimed professional knowledge raises legitimate questions about confidentiality, professional conduct and whether this is consistent with the values that trauma-informed services are expected to uphold. Children deserve to know that the professionals involved in their lives will protect not only their physical safety but also their dignity, privacy and trust.
Perhaps what troubles me most is that these comments do not simply dismiss one child’s experience. They reveal a way of thinking that still exists within parts of the system. A way of thinking that continues to ask whether harm can be proved before it is willing to validate a child’s fears. A way of thinking that instinctively defends systems before it seeks to understand children.
Culture does not change because organisations introduce new policies or describe themselves as trauma-informed. It changes when the people entrusted with children’s lives genuinely change the way they think, the questions they ask and the way they respond when a child tells them they are frightened.
The question should never be, “Did anything happen?”
The question should always be, “What is this child trying to tell us?”
If, after decades of inquiries, reviews and promises of reform, we are still responding to vulnerable children by explaining why they shouldn’t have felt unsafe rather than asking why they did, then we have not learned the lessons that so many children have already paid the price to teach us.
That should concern every single one of us.