I want to share something important about the challenges we face in delivering grooming-prevention training across the UK.
This is not about criticising any individual funder — it’s about highlighting a recurring pattern that affects prevention work nationally.
We applied for funding for a safeguarding project – and not for the first time.
The funding is to develop:
- interactive training videos
- early intervention
- grooming prevention
- trauma-informed education for adults
This training is designed to stop grooming before it starts.
During the early discussion, the funder asked:
“How will you safeguard the children taking part in the videos?”
A fair question when viewed through the lens of traditional safeguarding practice.
Other safeguarding models, and older, more traditional models, often focus on children being directly taught and shown how to stay safe, or traditionally on identifying signs once grooming is already happening. So from that perspective, asking about “safeguarding the children in the videos” made sense.
While it is important to teach children early, it is not the only thing that needs to happen. We also have to teach the adults around them. Adults are the safeguards — not children.
Programmes like My Body Is My Body (MBIMB) do child safety brilliantly — empowering children in age-appropriate, memorable ways. This is exactly why I’m proud to be an Ambassador for MBIMB. Their work is essential.
But child-focused education alone cannot carry the whole responsibility. When safeguarding efforts focus only on children, it unintentionally places the onus for safety on the child — expecting them to protect themselves from someone they may trust or depend on. We know that over 90% of crimes against children are committed by someone known to the child. Because of this, we have a duty to educate and support parents, caregivers, and communities, so they can recognise grooming long before a child is ever approached.
True prevention begins with adults — long before a child is in harm’s reach.
Our work, follows a modern, trauma-informed prevention model that focuses on adults — because preventing grooming begins long before a child is involved – so I explained that our videos do not involve children, because our programme focuses on adult education, rooted in two core principles:
“All children are vulnerable due to having limited choices.”
“Adults — parents and caregivers — are the first and often only line of defence in protecting a child.”
They replied:
“We were a bit thrown by there not being any children in the films.”
“Why choose video enactments if children aren’t being depicted?”
“We ALL thought the videos might show how predators behave with children.”
They also shared examples of other videos currently used within the sector — videos depicting grooming in progress, involving child actors or child-based scenarios.
These focused on recognising signs after grooming has already begun.
I explained that our ethical and trauma-informed approach is different:
We focus on preventing harm before any child becomes a target, and we do not visually involve children in any grooming-related content.
After further discussion, it was clear that our safeguarding models were not aligned.
So I made the decision to withdraw from the process.
After withdrawing, they shared that the topic felt unfamiliar and that the team felt some nervousness around the sensitivity of the subject. I appreciated the honesty, and it helped me understand something important:
This wasn’t an isolated reaction — it was part of a much wider pattern.
I say “across the UK” because I’ve experienced the same responses in England and now in Scotland:
Uncertainty around prevention, discomfort with the topic, and confusion about why our training focuses on adults rather than involving children.
How you feel matters.
The trauma you carry — whether acknowledged or not — influences:
- how you think,
- how you perceive situations,
- whether you react or respond, and
- the way you react or respond.
This is one of the foundations of STAND:
helping adults understand their internal world so they can make clearer, calmer, safer decisions… not fear-driven or stress-driven ones.
Our emotions, past experiences, and nervous system states all shape the choices we make.
They influence whether we move toward something, move away from it, or freeze in uncertainty.
And the funder’s reply is a perfect example of this in action.
They described the topic as unfamiliar and said the subject made their team feel nervous.
Those feelings shaped their decision-making — not because they didn’t care, but because discomfort often drives avoidance.
This is human.
It’s also exactly why trauma-informed safeguarding matters.
If adults’ internal experiences can influence decisions this strongly, then understanding those experiences becomes part of safeguarding.
This is what STAND teaches:
how our inner world impacts our outer actions — and how awareness leads to safer choices for children.
These repeated experiences raise a crucial question:
How do we bridge this gap in understanding so prevention work can move forward?
It shows that the challenge is not with any one organisation, but with a wider national understanding of what grooming-prevention truly requires.
Another challenge we are seeing across the UK is that many funding panels are only open to older safeguarding frameworks, that focus on responding to signs of harm rather than preventing harm in the first place – so how do we grow and develop ?
When a whole panel has a limited understanding—or no understanding—of early intervention models like ours, it naturally creates a form of gatekeeping, even if unintentional.
It means projects rooted in modern, trauma-informed prevention can be misunderstood, overlooked, or assessed through criteria that were designed for a different approach entirely.
This isn’t about blame; it simply highlights the need for updated national safeguarding literacy so that prevention models aren’t filtered out by old assumptions before they’ve even been considered.
Why Our Approach Will Never Involve Children
Our decision is ethical, trauma-informed, and grounded in lived experience:
- We do not depict grooming using children.
- We do not recreate harmful dynamics.
- We do not use children as learning tools for adults.
Grooming is a psychological process.
Adults can — and must — learn about it without involving children.
Our approach focuses on the adults responsible for safety.
The Vital Role of Survivors in Shaping Early Intervention
Our early-intervention approach has also been shaped by survivors of childhood abuse and grooming, who have generously contributed their insight and lived experience.
They have helped identify:
- the subtle early signs adults often overlook,
- the relational changes that happen long before visible indicators,
- the grooming patterns that were missed in their own cases, and
- the gaps in traditional safeguarding that left them unprotected.
Their insights are not theoretical.
They come from lived reality.
Because of their courage, STAND: Parents as Protectors focuses on the precise points where prevention is possible — long before a child becomes a target.
This is why our programme centres adults.
This is why we do not involve children in our content.
And this is why survivors’ voices must continue to shape national safeguarding practice.
Adult Discomfort and Responsibility
There is something important here for all of us as adults:
If something — anything — makes us feel uncomfortable, it is our responsibility to become curious about that feeling.
To ask why it’s there.
To explore what it is telling us.
Discomfort is an internal experience — it lives within us.
When we externalise it and say something or someone “made us uncomfortable,” we risk:
- shutting down important conversations,
- halting progress, and
- unintentionally affecting other people’s lives —
especially the lives of children who rely on adults to understand grooming early.
Curiosity and responsibility help prevention move forward.
Avoidance holds it back.
The Bigger Safeguarding Question
These experiences raise a crucial question:
How can we protect children effectively if adults struggle to engage with prevention because the topic feels uncomfortable?
Prevention requires adults to understand reality long before a child is approached.
What A Positive Start CIC Provides
Through STAND: Parents as Protectors, we offer:
- trauma-informed early intervention
- grooming-prevention education for adults
- parent and caregiver empowerment
- nationally scalable training
- ethically designed content (no children involved)
This is safeguarding before the crisis — not after.
A Call for Change in UK Safeguarding Funding
For prevention to succeed, the UK needs funding approaches that:
- recognise the difference between reaction and prevention
- are open to adult-centred training
- feel confident supporting sensitive but essential themes
- trust lived experience, including survivor insight
- prioritise early intervention
- support ethical, trauma-informed models
- understand that prevention begins long before any child is involved
This is not about blame.
It is about evolving our national understanding so that prevention work can reach the families who need it most.
If we want to prevent harm, we must support approaches that work before a child is ever targeted.
Because anything that happens after that point
isn’t prevention —
it’s response.