ABSTRACT

Safeguarding episodes provide early years practitioners with perhaps the most personally challenging and distressing incidents of their careers. This chapter explores issues of personal communication during safeguarding episodes, and introduces the reader to key concepts through the voices and experiences of early years practitioners and a police trainer. It aims to elucidate to staff and students in early years the importance of both the act of communication and the theory behind communication when involved in a safeguarding episode. Staff have a great deal to consider in terms of their own responsibilities with regard to communication when dealing with a safeguarding episode. Children who are silenced cannot challenge violence and abuse perpetrated against them. One of the most straightforward, widely recognised and useful communication models is that of Shannon and Weaver. Encoding is the process of turning one's thoughts or intentions into a communication medium that can be understood by others.