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Health and Wellbeing

Enable Children to Feel Safe so They Can Flourish

Help a child who is safe with you actually feel safe, so they have room to play, learn and try new things.

  • 25 minutes
  • 6 modules
  • Certificate

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What you'll learn

  • Reassure a child who has known danger that they are safe with you now
  • Use role play and social stories to make social expectations clear
  • Give a child words for their feelings and simple ways to calm down
  • Stay with a child's distress rather than stepping away from it
  • Model trying, failing and trying again so mistakes feel less risky

About this course

Risk assessments and safety checks keep a child safe. Feeling safe is something else, and for a child who has lived through trauma, or who finds social rules baffling, it can take much longer to arrive.

Safety here means four things: physical, social, emotional and cognitive. For each there are small, practical steps you can take, at home or in a classroom. Rehearse a new situation with role play or a social story so a child knows what's coming. Give them words, pictures or a scale for how they feel, and a breathing trick for when it all gets too much. And let them watch you get something wrong and have another go, so mistakes stop feeling dangerous.

You don't need any specialist knowledge, and there are summary notes to download and keep.

6 modules

Open in order

  1. Introduction

    2 min

  2. Wrap up & further reading

    4 min

  3. Physical Safety

    3 min

  4. Social safety

    5 min

  5. Emotional safety

    6 min

  6. Cognitive safety

    1 question

    8 min