Professional Curiosity
Learning from safeguarding audits and reviews has told us we need to better embed:
- What it means to be professionally curious and challenging in Kirklees
- Why it is important
- What to listen and look out for
- How to check what is being said
- What resources can be used to support you in your role
What is Professional Curiosity?
Professional curiosity involves looking, listening, asking direct questions, checking out and reflecting on what you are seeing and hearing. It needs you to:
– test out your professional feeling by not making assumptions
– checking out information from different places (known as triangulating) to gain a better understanding of children and family functioning
– getting an understanding of children’s and family’s past history which may help you think about what may happen in the future
– not accepting a single set of details that you are given at face value
– being mindful of your own personal bias and how this affects what you are seeing and hearing
– being respectively nosey
– recognise when there is disguised compliance
Why do we need to be Professionally Curious?
Not being professionally curious or challenging can lead to:
– less obvious indicators of abuse, neglect, significant harm and vulnerability being missed
– making inaccurate assumptions when assessing needs and the risk a child and family may be missing
– wrong intervention for a child and family being delivered
Wakefield Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP) have created a Professional Curiosity and Learning Briefing. The information can be used in Kirklees too.
For further information, please see the Professional Curiosity page on WSCP website, Professional Curiosity – Wakefield Safeguarding Children (wakefieldscp.org.uk)
Useful documents: