ABSTRACT
Professional competence All the information in the previous chapter – legislation, guidance and inspection standards – is vital and must be familiar territory for any school seeking to take its child protection duty seriously. There is enormous danger in school staff rushing into action without sufficient thought about the limits to their role, or believing that they alone can resolve the problems of a child alleging abuse. We must always act within the guidance, so we must know what it says. My first advice to a designated teacher who is unsure how to proceed is sometimes to tell them to do nothing – for five minutes – and then to read the procedures and decide what they have to do, having distanced themselves slightly from the situation and thought calmly about it first.
