Updated: Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026

Written by Jennifer Miller2 on 18 March 2026. Posted in ISS News

The UK Government have published an updated statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, setting out how organisations and agencies should work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

This latest update replaces the previous 2018 version and reflects significant changes in safeguarding practice, multi-agency working, and expectations placed on professionals across a wide range of sectors, including health, social care, education, and the voluntary sector.

What is Working Together to Safeguard Children?

Key statutory guidance that outlines:

The responsibilities of organisations working with children
How agencies should collaborate to identify and respond to safeguarding concerns
Expectations for multi-agency safeguarding arrangements
The roles and responsibilities of safeguarding partners

You can access the full updated guidance here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69bb9be99c6ac6540dfd61f1/Working_together_to_safeguard_children_2026.pdf

Summary of Key Changes:

The Government has also published a helpful summary of the main updates, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2/working-together-to-safeguard-children-2026-summary-of-changes

Some of the most notable changes include:

Stronger emphasis on multi-agency working:

There is a renewed focus on how safeguarding partners (local authorities, police, and health) work together effectively, with clearer expectations around accountability and collaboration.

Improved information sharing expectations:

The guidance reinforces the importance of timely and appropriate information sharing between agencies to protect children from harm.

Greater focus on early help and prevention:

There is increased emphasis on early intervention, ensuring children and families receive support before issues escalate.

Clarification of roles and responsibilities:

The updated guidance provides more clarity on the roles of safeguarding partners and relevant agencies.

Child-centred approach strengthened:

The voice and lived experience of the child are further embedded throughout the guidance, ensuring decisions are made in the best interests of children.

At ISS, we will shortly be updating all our policies for members and providing a guide of what this means in practice.

Source: Source: GOV.UK — Department for Education

Medical conditions at school: statutory guidance consultation

Written on 05 March 2026. Posted in ISS News

The Department for Education are seeking views on updates to guidance to strengthen how schools support pupils with medical conditions and allergy.

They are consulting on proposed updates to the statutory guidance Supporting pupils with medical conditions at school. The consultation seeks views on how schools can better support pupils with a wide range of medical conditions, including allergy, and create safe, inclusive environments.

They also want to understand how training, individual healthcare plans, incident reporting and learning from near misses can be strengthened. Your responses will help them finalise revised guidance for schools and inform wider work to improve safety, consistency and inclusion for children with medical needs.

Please click here to share your views.

Government launches consultation on “Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026” statutory guidance

Written on 14 February 2026. Posted in ISS News

The UK Government has launched a public consultation on proposed revisions to Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 — the statutory safeguarding guidance for schools and colleges in England — inviting views on a wide range of updates aimed at ensuring the guidance remains current, clear and relevant.

The consultation, published in February 2026, seeks feedback on changes throughout the draft guidance, which would replace the existing Keeping Children Safe in Education framework and set out the legal duties and best-practice expectations for education settings to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people.

What the consultation covers

The Department for Education (DfE) is asking stakeholders — including school leaders, designated safeguarding leads, parents and sector bodies — to comment on proposed revisions across all parts of the guidance.

According to the consultation documents and the draft guidance, the consultation covers:

Key parts of the draft guidance under review:

Part One – Safeguarding information for all staff: what all school and college staff should know and do to safeguard children.
Part Two – The management of safeguarding: the arrangements schools and colleges should have in place, including leadership responsibilities, multi-agency working and local safeguarding processes.
Part Three – Safer recruitment: vetting, pre-appointment checks and recording requirements for staff and volunteers.
Part Four – Safeguarding concerns or allegations about staff: how schools should respond to concerns or allegations against teachers, leaders, contractors and others.

A summary of the proposed changes is included in Annex D of the draft guidance.

Proposed changes and areas of focus

While much of the statutory guidance reflects existing duties, the consultation highlights a number of areas where updates are being proposed or clarified, including:

Gender-questioning children and safeguarding: new sections have been proposed on how schools approach issues such as toilets, changing rooms, boarding accommodation and single-sex sport in relation to children who are questioning their gender identity. These proposals reflect separate policy work on gender safeguarding and are informed by previous consultation and expert review.
Mental health and safeguarding connections: early indications from the draft suggest that mental health concerns — including self-harm and suicide risk — are being more explicitly linked to safeguarding considerations, alongside other indicators of abuse or neglect.
Online safety and technology use: draft revisions are expected to include updates on online safety expectations, such as annual reviews of filtering and monitoring systems to reduce harmful content exposure.
Additional procedural and technical updates: the draft also includes updates throughout the guidance to ensure consistency with other statutory frameworks such as Working Together to Safeguard Children, and to reflect evolving safeguarding practice.

Why this consultation matters

KCSIE is a statutory guidance document that all schools and colleges must have regard to when carrying out their safeguarding duties. It sets out the legal duties to protect children from harm and defines key expectations for staff training, safer recruitment, risk management and response to abuse.

The DfE has stated that ensuring the guidance remains up to date is crucial to helping education settings protect children effectively as risks evolve and safeguarding practice continues to develop.

How to have your say

The consultation on Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 is open until 22 April 2026, and responses are being invited via the Department for Education’s consultation portal.

For full details on the proposed revisions — including the draft guidance and Annex D summary of changes — visit the consultation page here:
https://consult.education.gov.uk/independent-education-and-school-safeguarding-division/keeping-children-safe-in-education-2026-revisions/

Youth Warnings, Reprimands and Cautions no Longer Automatically Disclosed to Employers

Written by Jennifer Miller2 on 30 November 2020. Posted in ISS News

Youth warnings, reprimands and cautions will no longer be automatically disclosed to employers who require Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificates from 28 November.

The changes, which come as a result of a Supreme Court judgment that found some elements of the existing filtering rules for Standard and Enhanced DBS checks were disproportionate, are intended to make it easier for people with certain convictions to find employment.

The multiple conviction rule will also be removed, meaning that if an individual has more than one conviction, regardless of offence type or time passed, each conviction will be considered against the remaining rules individually, rather than all being automatically disclosed on the certificate.

Christopher Stacey, co-director of Unlock – a group that campaigns for people with convictions – welcomed the changes, but said they did not go far enough to improve access to work for some people with childhood convictions.

“The changes coming in on 28 November are a crucial first step towards achieving a fair system that takes a more balanced approach towards disclosing criminal records,” he said. “However, we are still left with a criminal records system where many people with old and minor criminal records are shut out of jobs that they are qualified to do.

“We found that over a five-year period, 380,000 checks contained childhood convictions, with 2,795 checks including convictions from children aged just ten. Many of these childhood convictions will continue to be disclosed despite these changes.

“Reviews by the Law Commission, Justice Select Committee, former Chair of the Youth Justice Board Charlie Taylor and David Lammy MP have all stressed the need to look at the wider disclosure system. The government’s plan for jobs should include a wider review of the criminal records disclosure system to ensure all law-abiding people with criminal records are able to move on into employment and contribute to our economic recovery.”

New DBS guidance advises organisations to update their recruitment processes in light of the changes and check the Ministry of Justice website for which convictions or cautions should be disclosed by job candidates.

It suggests that employers ask job candidates: “Do you have any convictions or cautions (excluding youth cautions, reprimands or warnings) that are not ‘protected’ as defined by the Ministry of Justice?”

It also urged employers to include the following paragraph in their standard job application forms: “The amendments to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (2013 and 2020) provides that when applying for certain jobs and activities, certain convictions and cautions are considered ‘protected’. This means that they do not need to be disclosed to employers, and if they are disclosed, employers cannot take them into account.”

The guidance says: “Employers can only ask an individual to provide details of convictions and cautions that they are legally entitled to know about.

“If an employer takes into account a conviction or caution that would not have been disclosed, they are acting unlawfully under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

“Employers should conduct a case-by-case analysis of any convictions and cautions disclosed and consider how, if at all, they are relevant to the position sought. It would be advisable for the employer to keep records of the reasons for any employment decision (and in particular rejections), including whether any convictions or cautions were taken into account and, if so, why.”

Cedit: Ashley Webber - Personnel Today

Forty children as young as 14 recruited to deal drugs inside school

Written on 26 August 2019. Posted in ISS News

A county lines drug gang forced 40 children to deal cannabis and cocaine at a single school.

The teens, some as young as 14, had been supplied with drugs and dealing kits including deal bags and scales.

Police say grown-up dealers had a network of 40 pupils dealing at the school which has just over 1,200 pupils - meaning one in thirty was possibly selling drugs.

It is suspected that girls as young as 14 at Kingsdown School in Swindon, Wiltshire, have been pestered for sex in exchange for cocaine.

And the dawn police raid yesterday - on the eve of GCSE results - revealed the extent of the teens coerced into the operation.

Wiltshire Police arrested a 27-year-old man during the raid. He has since been released under investigation.

Sgt Nathan Perry, who planned the 7am raid, said: "We found the person we're looking for, we've managed to safeguard the children who were at risk and we've found drugs.

"We all know about county lines and the risks associated with that.

"The difficulty with this type of drugs operation is that it's specifically targeting very young children in order to get them to deal drugs.

"Some of the information we've been passed is that children are not only being coerced into this activity, but they're also being physically threatened.

"If they go to police or teachers they'll be harmed," he added.

Police were said to have been alerted to the gang at Kingsdown School.

A pair of older teen boys, both 16, are believed to have been supplying a network of up to 40 children in their mid-teens at the Swindon school.

The 27-year-old was arrested during the morning raid on suspicion of possession of class B drugs with intent to supply and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

The raid came as Swindon police focused their sights on modern slavery.

Nationally, police have increasingly turned to modern slavery laws to target drug dealers who force children and vulnerable adults to peddle their product.

Sgt Perry said those convicted could expect sentences of up to 15 years imprisonment.

"You've got children being exploited and young kids being forced to run the drugs. We will take it seriously," he said.

"The sheer nature of the exploitation of these young people is unacceptable.

"If we don't do something to stop that they're potentially going to be at risk for the rest of their lives.

"Unfortunately, those children that are at risk now become the suspects of tomorrow and we lose them completely," he added.

"They need that positive engagement and we're not going to be able to do that until we remove their handlers, for want of a better word."

If children start becoming more withdrawn, secretive about their possessions and start acquiring cash and expensive clothes without explanation, it could be a sign they are being exploited by the gangs.

Article reported by Tom Seaward for the Mirror.