O ver the past 2 years the author has conducted a series of surveys within various sections of the education system to discover more about how schools, local education authorities (LEAs) and teacher training bodies have responded to an increasingly deยฎned responsibility in relation to child protection. This paper sets out to explore some of the implications for training which have emerged from that work
Deยฎning the Role of the School in Protecting Children
It is important to put these implications within the context of how the role of the school in this work has become more clearly deยฎned in recent times. Although there have been a few studies which have examined teachers' attitudes (see, for example, Birchall, 1992), before this research was conducted there had been no attempt to map what was actually happening on the ground. While the responsibility of local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children falls most heavily on Social Services Departments, other agencies are involved in child protection work and, over the years, there has been a deliberate attempt to coordinate action and to encourage and develop inter-agency work and make it more eective. One of the key agencies is the school. This is recognized in the consultation document on the revised Working Together document (Department of Health et al., 1999), as it was in the original version. Not only do teachers have a role in recognizing the signs of abuse or neglect and referring such concerns, they have to be able to provide information for child protection enquiries and be involved in the preparation of inter-agency child protection plans. Although individual accounts and literary ยฎction provide examples of cruel and abusive school experiences, most schools have tried to do their best to maintain and support the welfare of their students. However, until relatively recent