When Concerns Keep Rumbling: Neglect, Thresholds and Professional Challenge

What do you do when your professional judgement around neglect tells you something isn't right, but the threshold hasn't been met?

Around one in ten children in the UK have experienced neglect (NSPCC). Yet for Designated Safeguarding Leads, neglect is rarely identified through a single incident. Instead, it emerges over time through a pattern of low-level concerns across attendance, wellbeing, behaviour, health and family circumstances.

The challenge is knowing when those individual concerns become a bigger picture, and how to respond when the evidence feels incomplete, information sits across different systems, or concerns remain below statutory intervention thresholds.

Building an accurate understanding of a child’s lived experience requires professional curiosity, effective recording and a willingness to recognise when “something doesn’t feel right” requires further exploration. But with competing pressures, inconsistent engagement and complex family circumstances, identifying and responding to neglect can be challenging.

Join us as we explore how schools and trusts can recognise neglect earlier, strengthen professional judgement and make confident safeguarding decisions.

During this session, you'll learn how to:

• • Recognise different forms of neglect, how it can present within children’s day-to-day lives, and the impact of neglect on children’s development
  • Understand how persistent, low-level concerns build over time, and the role of professional curiosity, recording and information-sharing in reaching informed decisions
  • Identify the barriers that can delay progress, including engagement, normalisation and multi-agency response
  • Develop confidence in escalation, maintaining appropriate challenge and ensuring focus remains on the child’s lived experience

Let us introduce you to this week's professional speaker

Pippa Kober

Pippa has over 13 years’ experience in primary education, including 9 years in senior leadership roles and extensive practice as a Designated Safeguarding Lead. Alongside this, she has served as an Assistant Headteacher, SENDCo, and Designated Teacher, and has led on attendance and inclusion across a busy school community. She recently joined Judicium as a Safeguarding Consultant.

With a strong interest in trauma‑informed practice, supporting care‑experienced children and their families, and understanding emotional‑based school avoidance, she is experienced in developing effective safeguarding systems, strengthening professional curiosity, and helping schools build supportive cultures where children feel safe and understood. 

Rik Chilvers

Rik is a Safeguarding Consultant and the SEND Lead at Judicium. With experience of primary and secondary education, he brings to the team a detailed understanding of the cross-cutting nature of SEND and safeguarding, effective partnership working and management of resources.

While working as a primary school teacher, Rik completed a master’s degree in psychology of education. He then moved into secondary schools where he worked as a SENDCO, Senior Mental Health Lead and an Assistant Principal. Rik has played a central role in safeguarding and pastoral teams, championing a holistic approach to supporting children and their families. He developed whole-school policies and systems, led on best practice and has overseen systemic change including establishing a SEND department in a new secondary academy.