Welcome to

TRUST™ in Safeguarding

This course offers a practical, trauma-informed approach to safeguarding that centres how trust and safety are felt in the nervous system — not just how they are intended.

Many people working in care, education, health, community roles, or within families are deeply values-led — and still find themselves asking:

• Why didn’t they tell anyone?
• Why did I miss the signs?
• How did a “safe” environment become harmful?

This learning experience helps you explore those questions without blame, and with clear, relational tools you can use immediately.

Rather than focusing only on policies, procedures, or behaviour, the course invites you to understand how Neuroception — the nervous system’s moment-to-moment scanning for safety and threat — shapes behaviour, disclosure, decision-making, and vulnerability.

You’ll explore how trust can be built, disrupted, confused, or exploited, particularly in contexts involving power imbalance, dependency, fear of consequences, or grooming, while staying grounded in compassion and avoiding pathologising language.

At its heart, this course is about prevention:
creating the conditions where safety can be felt, trust can form, and truth has the best chance of emerging.

What You’ll Learn

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Understand safeguarding and trust through a nervous system lens (Neuroception, regulation, felt safety)
• Recognise early signs of activation, shutdown, or appeasement in yourself and others, and respond without escalating threat
• Identify patterns where trust is overridden, manipulated, or exploited, including grooming dynamics
• Apply the TRUST™ framework
  (Trigger recognition → Reassurance → Understanding → Safety → Truth)
  to everyday safeguarding decisions
• Distinguish supportive reassurance and understanding from control, persuasion, or “niceness” that reduces autonomy
• Create relational conditions that make disclosure more possible, even when truth is fragmented or delayed

Who This Course Is For (and What It Isn’t)

This is a foundational safeguarding course for:

• Parents and carers
• Educators and support workers
• Safeguarding leads and community practitioners
• Healthcare and wellbeing professionals
• Trauma-aware learners seeking deeper understanding

This course is not:

• Therapy
• Diagnosis
• Investigative or interrogation training

It does not teach you to extract disclosure.

Instead, it strengthens prevention by helping you design environments where safety is felt, boundaries are clear, power is understood, and truth can emerge at the pace the nervous system allows.

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Enrolment

Please enrol before attempting to start the course.
Register a free account on the website homepage and sign in to begin.

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Intended Outcomes

Participants completing this course are better equipped to:

• Notice early signs of distress, confusion, or risk
• Respond without escalating fear or shutting communication down
• Preserve dignity and autonomy under pressure
• Support disclosure when — and if — safety allows
• Contribute to cultures of prevention rather than reaction

CPD Learning Outcomes – 10 Hours Continuing Professional Development

On completion of this 10-hour CPD course, learners will be able to:

• Understand safeguarding and trust through a nervous system lens, including Neuroception and felt safety
• Recognise early signs of activation, shutdown, or appeasement without judgement or diagnosis
• Identify relational patterns that disrupt trust, including grooming and coercive dynamics, focusing on conditions rather than individuals
• Apply the TRUST™ framework as a practical, relational safeguarding map
• Use trauma-informed micro-skills (language, tone, pacing, boundaries) that protect autonomy and reduce unintentional coercion
• Support disclosure safely by prioritising regulation, choice, and dignity over urgency or interrogation
• Contribute to preventive safeguarding environments through consistency, repair, predictability, and relational clarity

This learning supports reflective practice, ethical safeguarding, and trauma-informed communication across professional and community settings.

TRUST™ in Safeguarding

Course Integrity Statement

Purpose and positioning

TRUST™ in Safeguarding is a trauma-informed learning programme designed to strengthen prevention, ethical practice, and dignity-based safeguarding responses.

It does not train participants to diagnose, interrogate, or extract disclosure.
Instead, it supports professionals and volunteers to recognise how safety, trust, and truth are shaped in the nervous system — particularly in contexts involving power, dependency, or risk.

The course is grounded in the understanding that safeguarding harm most often occurs not through lack of care, but through misattunement, pressure, or premature action when nervous systems are under strain.

Core Principles

This course is built around the following integrity principles:

Safety is felt, not declared

Learning prioritises how safety is experienced in the body, rather than relying on verbal assurances, policies, or intentions.

Protection precedes disclosure

The course avoids encouraging early or forced disclosure. Truth is understood as something that emerges when safety stabilises — not something to be extracted.

Conditions over character

Focus remains on environments, dynamics, and patterns rather than labelling individuals as good or bad, compliant or resistant.

Power is acknowledged, not denied

The course names how authority, dependency, and consequence shape behaviour — even in well-intentioned systems.

Dignity is non-negotiable

Even when action is required without full consent, transparency, autonomy, and respect remain central.

Nervous-System-Informed Pacing

The course is intentionally sequenced to protect learner safety and reduce retraumatisation risk:

1. Establishing felt safety and Neuroception
2. Exploring power, dependency, and confusion of safety
3. Recognising protective nervous system responses
4. Slowing interactions and noticing early signals
5. Understanding cumulative erosion of trust
6. Naming grooming and coercive dynamics as processes
7. Introducing the TRUST™ framework as a relational map
8. Applying TRUST through micro-skills and boundaries
9. Differentiating support from override
10. Practising ethical influence and choice points
11. Understanding disclosure as a gradual process
12. Embedding prevention as culture and consistency

At no point are learners required to disclose personal experiences or demonstrate competence under pressure.

Use of the TRUST™ Framework

TRUST™
(Trigger recognition, Reassurance, Understanding, Safety, Truth)
is presented as a relational compass, not a checklist or performance tool.

The framework:

• Prioritises regulation before information
• Places truth last to protect nervous system readiness
• Supports prevention without escalation
• Can be returned to whenever uncertainty arises

This prevents the misuse of safeguarding language to coerce, rush, or control.

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Research & Ethics

TRUST™ in Safeguarding

Evidence-informed and ethically grounded

TRUST™ in Safeguarding is grounded in well-established research from trauma studies, safeguarding practice, and nervous system science. It draws on consistent findings showing that:

• The nervous system detects safety and threat before conscious thought
• Stress and fear affect memory, communication, behaviour, and disclosure
• Power, dependency, and fear of consequences strongly shape silence and compliance
• Disclosure is often delayed, partial, indirect, or fragmented — and this is protective, not deceptive

These principles are widely reflected in safeguarding reviews, domestic abuse and sexual harm research, and statutory guidance.

Ethical Safeguarding Stance

Ethical safeguarding stance

This course is intentionally designed to reduce harm and prevent misuse of safeguarding power. It:

• Does not train learners to diagnose, interrogate, or extract disclosure
• Does not replace statutory safeguarding duties, organisational policy, or professional judgement
• Avoids pathologising language and focuses on conditions rather than character
• Prioritises dignity, autonomy, transparency, and prevention

The TRUST™ framework is presented as a relational compass, not a checklist or investigative tool.
Truth is understood as something that can only emerge when safety is stable enough to hold it.

The course explicitly distinguishes:

• Support from pressure
• Reassurance from control
• Influence from coercion

It recognises that safeguarding sometimes requires action without full consent — and provides guidance for doing so without secrecy, threat, or bargaining for disclosure.

Integrity Assurance

TRUST™ in Safeguarding is a trauma-informed, educational programme designed to complement existing safeguarding responsibilities by improving awareness, timing, and relational safety — not by accelerating disclosure or assigning blame.

TRUST™ in Safeguarding is not a diagnostic tool, interrogation framework, or investigative method.

It is a prevention-focused, trauma-informed educational programme designed to complement — not replace — statutory safeguarding duties, organisational policies, or reporting requirements.

Its integrity lies in how it slows systems down enough for safety, clarity, and ethical action to become possible.

Safeguarding Disclaimer

This course provides trauma-informed educational guidance to support awareness, prevention, and relational safety.

It does not replace statutory safeguarding training, organisational policies, professional supervision, or legal reporting duties.

If you have concerns about immediate risk or harm, follow your organisation’s safeguarding procedures and local safeguarding guidance.

This course does not offer therapy, diagnosis, or investigative instruction. Learners are encouraged to engage at their own pace and seek appropriate support if needed.

TRUST™ is a registered framework of A Positive Start CIC.