Safeguarding Adults & Children Awareness

Safeguarding awareness training delivered at your workplace or online. Half a day or a full day. The foundation every member of staff needs to recognise a concern and know what to do next, across both adult and child safeguarding.

Course Overview

Most safeguarding failures don’t start with someone who looked away on purpose. They start with someone who wasn’t sure what they were looking at, or didn’t feel confident enough to say anything about it. A comment that didn’t quite sit right. A change in someone’s behaviour that’s hard to put into words. A situation that felt off but seemed too small to escalate on its own.

This course is built around that gap. It is awareness-level training for staff across health, care, education, and community settings who work with or around vulnerable adults, children, or both, and who need a grounded understanding of what safeguarding looks like in practice, what their own responsibilities are, and how to respond without overstepping into territory that belongs to a designated lead or specialist agency.

Training reflects the Care Act 2014, the Children Act 1989, the Children Act 2004, and Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, the statutory guidance published by the Department for Education in March 2026, which replaced the 2023 edition. For staff who need to go further into one framework specifically, our Mental Capacity Act and DoLS Training covers the adjacent territory of capacity and consent in depth, and our Safeguarding Children Level 2 course builds on this foundation for staff with regular contact with children specifically.

This course is delivered as a combined adults and children awareness programme as standard, but we know that not every organisation needs both. If your setting works exclusively with adults, we can deliver this as a standalone safeguarding adults awareness course. If your setting works exclusively with children, we can deliver it as a standalone safeguarding children awareness. The content, legislation and scenarios are adjusted to reflect whichever population your staff actually work with.

Course Details

  • Duration: Half day or full day
  • Delivery: Face-to-face in-house, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams
  • Certificate: CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Safeguarding Adults and Children Awareness
  • Awarding organisations: CPD-Accredited
  • Validity: Refresher recommended every 1 to 2 years, or sooner where statutory guidance changes or organisational policy requires it
  • Group size: Maximum 12 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is right for any member of staff who works with or around vulnerable adults, children, or both, and needs a solid safeguarding foundation.

  • Care and support workers in residential, domiciliary, and supported living settings
  • Healthcare staff in community, primary, and secondary care
  • Early years practitioners and childcare staff
  • School and education support staff
  • Community and voluntary sector workers
  • Managers and supervisors across health, care, and education
  • Administrative and non-frontline staff who have contact with service users or families

For staff who need to go deeper into child safeguarding specifically, our Safeguarding Children Level 2 training builds directly on this foundation. Not sure which course is right for your team? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you commit.

The Legal Requirement

Safeguarding is a legal and professional responsibility that sits with everyone who works with vulnerable people, not just with designated leads or managers. For adults, the Care Act 2014 established the statutory framework for adult safeguarding in England. Under Section 42, local authorities have a duty to make enquiries where an adult with care and support needs is experiencing or at risk of abuse or neglect and is unable to protect themselves as a result. The Care Act statutory guidance sets out six principles behind all adult safeguarding work: empowerment, prevention, proportionality, protection, partnership, and accountability. Those principles recognise an adult’s right to make decisions about their own safety, while making sure people in greatest need get proper support.

For children, the Children Act 1989 establishes that a child’s welfare is paramount, and the Children Act 2004 strengthened multi-agency cooperation through Section 11, placing a duty on a wide range of organisations to safeguard and promote children’s welfare. Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, published by the Department for Education in March 2026, is the current statutory guidance on how agencies must work together to protect children under 18 in England. It strengthens the focus on anti-discriminatory practice and confirms that safeguarding applies in all circumstances, including before a child is born, where concerns exist.

CQC-regulated providers are expected to show staff can recognise a safeguarding concern, know how to respond, and follow the right procedure. Ofsted expects the same in education and early years settings. When concerns are missed or mishandled, the people affected are the ones who pay for it, and the warning signs are very often visible in hindsight to someone who did not know what they were looking at or did not feel able to act on it.

What the Day Covers

All content reflects the Care Act 2014, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, and current CQC and Ofsted guidance throughout. Topics covered include:

  • The legal framework for safeguarding adults and children in England
  • The six principles of adult safeguarding under the Care Act 2014
  • Types of abuse and neglect applicable to adults and children
  • Recognising early signs, indicators, and patterns of harm
  • Contextual safeguarding: exploitation, online harm, domestic abuse, coercion and control
  • Risk factors and what increases vulnerability in particular contexts
  • Responding to a concern or disclosure: what to do and what to avoid
  • Reporting and escalation procedures within your organisation
  • Key differences between adult and child safeguarding frameworks in practice
  • Information sharing, confidentiality, and the legal basis for sharing concerns
  • Multi-agency safeguarding and where your role fits within it
  • Professional boundaries and accurate, timely record keeping

Every course is also built to include your industry-specific common risks and your organisation’s incident reporting systems as standard.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is available face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Both formats are fully interactive. Online delivery is a live session with the same scenarios, discussion, and trainer engagement as the room-based version, not a pre-recorded module.

Groups are capped at 12 to ensure every learner gets sufficient time for the honest discussion this topic generates. Every session is built around your working environment, your sector’s risks, and your internal reporting procedures. We also design each course to incorporate your safeguarding policies, your escalation and reporting routes, and any specific incidents or CQC or Ofsted findings relevant to your service. If you haven’t reviewed your safeguarding arrangements recently, we can discuss what that might involve during the enquiry process.

Delivery includes:

  • Real safeguarding scenarios drawn from adult and child safeguarding practice
  • Structured discussion around uncertainty, decision-making, and escalation
  • Reflection on individual roles within wider safeguarding systems
  • Application of your own reporting procedures in realistic situations

Awareness or Level 2?

The right starting point depends on how much contact your staff have with children and what their role expects of them when a concern arises.

This Awareness course is right for staff who work with or around vulnerable adults, children, or both, and need a grounded foundation in a single combined session: what safeguarding looks like in practice, the basic legal frameworks, and how to recognise and report a concern.

Our Safeguarding Children Level 2 course is right for staff with regular, ongoing contact with children and young people specifically, who need more depth in recognising categories of abuse, responding to a disclosure, understanding contextual safeguarding, and contributing to multi-agency processes. It builds directly on this Awareness foundation rather than replacing it.

We don’t make that determination for employers; the responsibility sits with you. But we do provide guidance throughout the enquiry process.

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Safeguarding Adults and Children Awareness.

A refresher is recommended every 1 to 2 years, or sooner where statutory guidance changes, as it did with Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, where a safeguarding incident has occurred, or where a staff member’s role brings new contact with vulnerable people.

Our Safeguarding Children Level 2 course is the natural next step for staff with regular contact with children, and our Mental Capacity Act and DoLS Training course is a strong companion for teams who also need to understand capacity and consent alongside safeguarding.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, and the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.

It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

  • 98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
  • All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
  • We advise honestly on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey.

All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors. Groups are capped at 12 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.

Our associate network means we can deliver across England. You can meet the team on our Associates page.

FAQs

What is the difference between safeguarding adults and safeguarding children?

The legal frameworks and the principles behind them differ in important ways. Adult safeguarding under the Care Act 2014 is built around six principles: empowerment, prevention, proportionality, protection, partnership, and accountability. Adults with capacity have the right to make their own decisions, including decisions about their own safety, and the safeguarding response has to respect that. Child safeguarding under the Children Act 1989 and Children Act 2004 works from the principle that a child’s welfare is paramount, and thresholds and intervention powers are generally more prescriptive for children. This course explains both frameworks and how each applies in practice.

Is safeguarding training a legal requirement?

Not in the sense that one law names a specific course, but the duty to safeguard is statutory across both frameworks, and organisations have to be able to show their staff are trained and competent to recognise and respond to concerns. For CQC-regulated providers, inspectors expect evidence of safeguarding competence across the workforce. For schools, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025 sets out clear training expectations. For local authorities and partner agencies, Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 requires organisations to carry out their functions with regard to safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare. Training is how organisations build evidence of competence.

How does this relate to CQC and Ofsted inspection expectations?

Both CQC and Ofsted want to see safeguarding genuinely embedded in practice, not just written into a policy somewhere. Inspectors look at whether staff understand their responsibilities, can recognise a concern, and know how to respond. For CQC-regulated providers, this links to Regulation 13: Safeguarding Service Users from Abuse and Improper Treatment, and to the Safe key question in the Single Assessment Framework. Awareness-level training for all staff is a foundational part of evidencing that standard.

Can this course be delivered remotely as well as face-to-face?

Yes. This course is available face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, with the same content covered either way. We deliver across Manchester, Greater Manchester, the wider North West, and nationally across England, so the choice between face-to-face and remote usually comes down to what suits your team’s schedule and locations rather than any difference in the training itself.

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Book or Enquire

Book your training or request a quote

Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from the Care Quality Commission, Ofsted, and current UK legislation, including Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025, the Care Act 2014, the Children Act 1989, the Children Act 2004, and the Children and Social Work Act 2017.

You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: June 2026 | Next review: June 2027

This course provides guidance on safeguarding adults and children in line with current UK legislation and statutory guidance, including Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 and the Care Act 2014. It does not replace organisational safeguarding policies, designated safeguarding lead responsibilities, or legal obligations. All concerns must be managed in accordance with local safeguarding partnership procedures. This page is for general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice.

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