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Systemic change could protect a child for a lifetime. 🧡

My name is Stace Don. Some of you may already know my story, but for those who haven’t come across me before, my story can be found in my book, My Girl, as well as through the podcasts and interviews I’ve taken part in on YouTube.

I think that context is important, because this campaign and petition aren’t something I’ve created from the outside looking in. They come from lived experience. They come from knowing what it feels like to be a child who needed to be heard, and from understanding the impact that failures within safeguarding systems can continue to have long into adulthood.

This campaign has three connected aims:

PROTECT & HEAR THE CHILD.
STRENGTHEN ACCOUNTABILITY & CHANGE.
SUPPORT THE SURVIVOR.

This is not about blaming one profession. It is about strengthening the whole safeguarding system so children are better protected, professionals are properly supported to protect them, organisations are accountable when things go wrong, lessons lead to actual change, and survivors are not forgotten afterwards.

🧡 1. PROTECT & HEAR THE CHILD

HEAR THE CHILD

Strengthen how children’s voices and lived experiences are heard, understood and used to influence safeguarding decisions.

A child’s voice should never become secondary to the voices of the adults around them.

Children do not always communicate harm through words. Fear, behaviour, withdrawal, attendance, presentation and changes in behaviour can all form part of their lived experience.

A child should not have to find the perfect words before adults start asking the right questions.

ASK THE SECOND QUESTION

Strengthen professional curiosity so professionals are supported to check information, consider previous history, recognise contradictions, consider alternative explanations and continue asking questions when something doesn’t add up.

Professional curiosity is already an established safeguarding expectation.

The question this campaign asks is why failures to ask the second question continue to appear so frequently in serious safeguarding reviews — and what needs to change to help professionals consistently put professional curiosity into practice.

FOLLOW THE CHILD

Safeguarding concerns should not effectively reset because a child moves area, changes service or crosses an organisational boundary.

Unresolved significant concerns and relevant safeguarding history should follow that child so the full picture is not lost.

A change of postcode should never mean starting again when significant safeguarding concerns remain unresolved.

CONNECT THE SYSTEM

A child does not live separately inside a social-care file, school record, GP record or police report.

There is one child — and different agencies may each hold part of that child’s story.

We need stronger communication, information sharing, handovers, ownership and accountability across social care, police, health, education and other safeguarding agencies.

Information must not only be shared.

It needs to be joined together, understood and acted upon.

INTERVENE EARLIER AND RECOGNISE PATTERNS

Repeated concerns should not constantly be viewed as isolated incidents.

Previous referrals, injuries, behavioural changes, school concerns, police information, missed appointments and information held by different agencies can collectively reveal a pattern of risk that may not be obvious when each incident is looked at alone.

We need safeguarding systems that recognise cumulative risk and intervene before concerns reach crisis point.

🧡 2. ACCOUNTABILITY & CHANGE

GIVE PROFESSIONALS THE CAPACITY TO PROTECT

Safeguarding professionals need manageable workloads, appropriate staffing, effective supervision, training, specialist support and enough time to work properly with children and families.

This campaign recognises that accountability cannot sit solely with frontline workers.

Organisations, leadership, commissioners and Government also have responsibilities for creating a system in which professionals have the capacity and support to safeguard children effectively.

Accountability without resources is unrealistic — but resources without accountability are not enough.

STRENGTHEN TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT

Safeguarding is complex work carrying enormous responsibility.

Professionals need strong initial and continuous development around recognising abuse and neglect, coercive control, disguised compliance, trauma, children’s communication, cumulative risk, professional curiosity, bias awareness and multi-agency working.

But training alone cannot be the answer every time something goes wrong.

Professionals also need reflective supervision and working cultures where difficult decisions can be questioned, challenged and reviewed.

PROVE LESSONS WERE LEARNED

When a child is seriously harmed or dies and safeguarding reviews identify weaknesses, publishing recommendations cannot be where accountability ends..

We need to prove that learning resulted in change.

ACCOUNTABILITY AT EVERY LEVEL

Accountability must not stop with the frontline professional.

It should extend through practitioners, managers, senior leadership, organisations, safeguarding partnerships, commissioners, regulators and Government where appropriate.

When the same serious safeguarding weaknesses repeatedly appear, there should be clear routes for scrutiny, intervention and accountability.

This is not about automatically blaming or prosecuting a professional every time tragedy occurs.

It is about making sure responsibility does not disappear within a complicated system and that repeated failures to improve are acted upon.

🧡 3. SUPPORT THE SURVIVOR — RECOVERY, RESTORATION & RETURN

Safeguarding responsibility should not simply end because a child survived the abuse or reached adulthood.

The impact of childhood abuse can continue long after the immediate danger has ended.

Recovery is not always linear. Support needs can change, disappear and re-emerge at different stages of a survivor’s life.

This campaign calls for Government to consider a clearer National Recovery and Restoration pathway, based on assessed individual need rather than assuming there should be a fixed point at which a survivor is considered “recovered.”

This should include:

• Timely access to appropriate specialist, trauma-informed assessment and support following serious childhood abuse.

• A clear recovery plan that considers the individual needs and circumstances of the child or survivor rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.

• Access to appropriate trauma-informed therapeutic support and survivor advocacy.

• Better continuity between children’s and adult services so reaching adulthood does not automatically create another gap in support.

• A clear route back into appropriate support later in life when trauma-related needs emerge or re-emerge — without survivors having to reach crisis point before they can ask for help.

• Recognition that recovery may involve more than therapy alone, with appropriate advocacy and practical support considered according to individual need.

• Trauma-informed parenting support for survivors who become parents, recognising that someone can be a loving and capable parent while still carrying the effects of their own childhood experiences.

The aim is not to promise lifelong therapy to every survivor.

It is to create a needs-led pathway where survivors can access appropriate support when it is genuinely needed — including the ability to return for help later rather than being expected to simply cope alone.

Because protecting a child from immediate danger is only one part of safeguarding.

That is why this campaign comes from the heart — but it is about far more than my story. It is about protecting children, listening to survivors, strengthening the systems that are supposed to keep people safe, and pushing for meaningful change.”

Growing up, I spent years living in an environment of abuse. Non accidental injuries as a baby , then taken into care for 8 years and then removed and back into harm. Despite coming into contact with services that existed to protect children, I never truly felt heard, and too often I felt the warning signs were missed.

The abuse eventually ended, but the trauma did not.

I carried the impact of my childhood into adulthood, affecting my mental health, relationships, confidence and everyday life. Like many survivors, I discovered that recovery does not have a finish line, yet long-term trauma-informed support can be difficult to access when it is needed most.

Through writing my book, speaking publicly and working alongside survivors, charities and professionals, I have learned that my experience is far from unique.

Too many children still feel unheard, and too many adults continue to live with the lifelong impact of childhood abuse without consistent support.

That is why I am campaigning for meaningful, system-wide reform to strengthen child safeguarding and survivor support.

We should also care about what happens to that child afterwards.

Survival is not the same as recovery..

THE QUESTION WE NEED TO ASK

If serious safeguarding reviews keep identifying recurring weaknesses, what are we doing to make sure the learning actually changes what happens to the next child?

And when a child does survive serious abuse:

What are we doing to make sure that survivor isn’t left carrying its impact alone for the rest of their life?

These aren’t just statistics.

Behind every number is a child, a survivor, a family and a life that matters.

This campaign is not about my story alone.

It is about every child who deserves to be heard.

Every professional who should have the support, resources and confidence to ask one more question.

Every safeguarding agency that has a responsibility to communicate and act.

Every organisation that has a responsibility to learn and change when something goes wrong.

And every survivor who deserves the opportunity to recover — not simply survive.

Protecting children should not end when they become adults.

Every child deserves to be heard.
Every survivor deserves to be supported.

PROTECT THE CHILD.

HEAR THE CHILD.

FIX THE SYSTEM.

SUPPORT THE SURVIVOR.

BREAK THE CYCLE. 🧡

If you believe children deserve a safeguarding system that learns from serious incidents instead of allowing the same weaknesses to keep appearing, and that survivors deserve appropriate support to rebuild their lives,