Safeguarding for psychologists in independent practice with Dr Rebekah Eglinton

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today, we're tackling a topic that strikes a chord of pure anxiety for almost every independent practitioner; safeguarding. In institutional settings like the NHS, we're used to having an embedded safeguarding lead, clear-cut multidisciplinary pathways, and a collective safety net. But when you step out into independent practice, that ultimate accountability falls squarely on our shoulders, often leaving us feeling isolated and really anxious when risk comes into the therapy room. So to help us move from a place of paralyzing fear and towards a place where we can feel more kind of realistic, grounded, and confident, I am joined today by the brilliant Dr Rebekah Eglinton. Bekah is a consultant clinical psychologist and the clinical director of Eglinton Consultancy. She has a really deep background in high-stakes safeguarding governance, having previously served as the chief psychologist and head of support, safeguarding, and police referrals at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, where she oversaw thousands of sensitive national-scale referrals. She's also a registrant council member and non-executive director at the Health and Care Professions Council and an associate non-executive director and wellbeing guardian at Devon Partnership NHS Trust. So I have got a brilliant person today to help you deal with your anxiety around safeguarding, and we're going to be talking with Bekah about the things we really need to watch out for in independent practice and also about some training she's developed to help us all feel much more confident as we step into the therapy room, possibly for the first time with clients that might have some risk in their background.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Rebekah:

Eglinton Consultancy: Safeguarding Training for Psychologists & Therapists:

https://www.eglintonconsultancy.com/eventtickets/p/traumainformedtrainingtickets-2cdzs-2adsl

www.eglintonconsultancy.com

Instagram: @dr.rebekaheglinton

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Rebekah tells us what she sees as the most common safeguarding blind spots or oversights in independent practice 03:25
• Rebekah talk about GDPR 10:30
• I ask Rebekah about what ‘defensible documentation’ might actually look like for an independent clinician 19:55
• We discuss templates and AI as ways to help with compliance and note taking 24:16
• Rebakah tells us what motivated her to develop a training for psychologists in independent practice 33:08
• I ask Rebekah how she’s marketed the training 40:23
• Rebakah tells us where we can find out more about the training 44:15

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Speakers:

Rosie Gilderthorp

Rebekah Eglinton

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today, we're tackling a topic that strikes a chord of pure anxiety for almost every independent practitioner; safeguarding. In institutional settings like the NHS, we're used to having an embedded safeguarding lead, clear-cut multidisciplinary pathways, and a collective safety net. But when you step out into independent practice, that ultimate accountability falls squarely on our shoulders, often leaving us feeling isolated and really anxious when risk comes into the therapy room. So to help us move from a place of paralyzing fear and towards a place where we can feel more kind of realistic, grounded, and confident, I am joined today by the brilliant Dr Rebekah Eglinton. Bekah is a consultant clinical psychologist and the clinical director of Eglinton Consultancy. She has a really deep background in high-stakes safeguarding governance, having previously served as the chief psychologist and head of support, safeguarding, and police referrals at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, where she oversaw thousands of sensitive national-scale referrals. She's also a registrant council member and non-executive director at the Health and Care Professions Council and an associate non-executive director and wellbeing guardian at Devon Partnership NHS Trust. So I have got a brilliant person today to help you deal with your anxiety around safeguarding, and we're gonna be talking with Bekah about the things we really need to watch out for in independent practice and also about some training she's developed to help us all feel much more confident as we step into the therapy room, possibly for the first time with clients that might have some risk in their background. So without further ado, I shall introduce Bekah. So welcome to the podcast, Bekah. It's lovely to have you with us.

Thanks, Rosie. Good to be here.

So let's get started with the scary stuff. I think most psychologists that come into independent practice feel really anxious about safeguarding. So let's start with the anxiety, really dig into it, and then we will find our way out of it. So what do you see as the most common safeguarding blind spots or oversights in independent practice?

I think that's a great place to start, and I do consistently see a couple of issues. So one is I think we have become absolutely terrified of breaking GDPR, but let's come back to that because I've got a lot to say about that. The other one is I think I quite often see people kind of ironically, and maybe because we're being slightly avoidant, just not being sufficiently prepared. So being really clear on the legal frameworks that we're practicing within, being clear on our regulatory standards, and then working to a really clear policy and procedures. And I think some of that is when you're within statutory services, so for most of us as clinicians it's gonna be within health, although of course we might be across a few different spaces. When we're in that kind of machine, we have so much infrastructure, right, around us. We've got policies coming out of our ears. We've got an MDT we can consult with. We've got, probably got a safeguarding team we can call, we've got a designated safeguarding lead. There's all of this safety net around us, and when you step into independent practice, suddenly all of that disappears in a puff of smoke. And I do really see, surprisingly in a way, people not be sufficiently prepared for that and have those policies and procedures in place and the clarity that they need. The other thing I see quite consistently, you know, you said about the anxiety, Rosie, and I think we get really, really worried about breaking confidentiality, and that can really start to get in the way of some of our decision-making. And I, I definitely see a bit of paralysis in decision-making because we don't wanna do the wrong thing. We don't wanna let people down. Actually that, you know, something that comes up as a perennial issue in inquiries, reviews, consistently is when professionals and services haven't communicated with each other enough. So we can inadvertently feed into that when we get that, the paralysis, the worry of the implications for our client of if we make that safeguarding referral.

That's really interesting because I suppose safeguarding, I've always kind of enjoyed safeguarding training, and I think the reason for that is that at its heart it's another type of formulation skill, that actually it is always quite nuanced. There will always be sort of costs and benefits for lots of people involved, and there's a lot of complexity to that. But I think what I'm hearing from you, and I think I see this as well, is that when the anxiety rises, the ability to hold all of that complexity goes down, and we start to look for a simple solution, which sometimes I think in independent practice is, "I just won't see that person," or, "I won't accept even a whiff of risk in my independent practice." And so maybe people don't prepare because they're just gonna put the shutters down immediately. That's the plan. Or sometimes I think it, it can be that kind of knee-jerk, overly simplistic response, which might be to refuse to share information or to, you know, really focus on the confidentiality part of the agreement with the client. And it's funny, isn't it, because we see that in services, but it's never solely on our shoulders, so I think it's sometimes easier to be the psychologist in a service that says, "Hold on, guys, I think that we're being, you know, not as thoughtful as we could be about this." But it's much harder in your independent practice.

Oh, I so agree. I think when we're in services, it's a lot easier for us to outsource decision-making or outsource some of that responsibility, the weight of responsibility that, that we feel when we're part of a team, of course, we have some collective risk-holding. All of that feels so different when you're in private practice. Even if you're in an associate practice, and actually you're really part of a network of clinicians, rather than being a sole practitioner, even then it's so different, isn't it? So I think we are so well-placed to be incredibly reflective in that formulation of risk. But I think the challenge, Rosie, is that when you're in independent practice, you have to be a bit of everybody, you have to be the business manager. You need to be the risk-holder. You need to check your compliance. You also want to have the reflective head space. You're sort of having to do everything, and I think that's the challenge, and that's why I created the safeguarding training I just wish I had had. I've designed what I wish I'd had so many years ago, that pulls it all together specifically for clinicians in private practice because I think we're, we're operating in a different landscape, and we need training that really speaks to that.

Yeah, and I think when you do feel that you've had really good quality safeguarding training, and you know what your policy for your practice is for dealing with, you know, whatever risk might come your way, that gives you so much more confidence that it has an impact on every aspect of the practice. I think we're a better therapist when we know we've got that safety net beneath us, and I think we're, you know, we're better at marketing our businesses too when we're not frightened of risk the whole time. So I think there's real benefits, you know, in so many different ways, to having high-quality safeguarding training. And so I've been really excited to see what you've developed, 'cause I think it's a real gap. 'Cause I did some safeguarding training with you through the BPS a while back and thought it was amazing, but I've also done lots of generic safeguarding trainings over the years in independent practice, and I've never left those feeling particularly confident. I've mostly felt frightened, actually, by the fact, you know, laws have changed, and I'm like, "Oh, goodness, but what does that mean for me?" It's never had that thought all the way through, where I've been able to apply that to the kind of clients I might see and think, "Okay, this is what I will do differently." And that's what I think is so wonderful about your approach. It's actually putting it in context for psychologists in independent practice. Makes it so much easier to think about how we apply these kind of frameworks and policy changes that, that might have happened. But I want to circle back to the point you made about GDPR. What do you have to say on GDPR?

Oh, gosh. It's really funny just how... I mean, I get it. I get anxious about GDPR too, right? We all fear it. It was a huge change several years ago. We sort of rightly fear it, in that absolutely we need to be GDPR compliant. And I think when you're in statutory services, you know a bit about GDPR, obviously. It's not until stepping into the independent space that of course we have to be really, really on it with what GDPR is saying. I think we are so well placed in our work as psychologists, clinicians to hold such respect for people's information. I just feel like that's our bread and butter, isn't it? We really value people's stories. They are the treasure that they are risking sharing with us, and I think we, we hold that with tremendous respect. That's absolutely the right thing. I think where people then can get a bit stuck is when we start to edge into a safeguarding concern, which might be a slow ramp up or it might be a bit of a mic drop moment in a session. We're then navigating, oh gosh, am I going to need to potentially breach confidentiality here, which nobody wants to do. Isn't that just the worst situation to be in? We never want to be in this space. It's so uncomfortable. And I repeatedly hear people get really nervous about GDPR and talk about it as, "Well, I can't share that because of GDPR law." And so to clarify, GDPR is not a barrier to safeguarding. So there are clear guidance within the GDPR framework that say that where there is a safeguarding concern, it is perfectly lawful to share that information. So there are a couple of specific things to pull out, is if this is about preventing or detecting a serious crime, that's one thing. Or if it's about protecting a child who is at risk of significant harm or an adult at risk of significant harm. And the tricky bit comes in the nuance, doesn't it, of what the significant harm bit means. And there's a couple of things to pick through that is the lawful basis for sharing information within GDPR. One is being really clear on statutory frameworks and duties, so what the law says. So that is the legal task element. You've then got the vital interest task, so that would be about protecting someone who might be at risk of serious harm. And then the third bit is the public task, and that is in relation to public services, statutory services asking us for information in the course of their safeguarding duties. That creates a robust framework in which it is absolutely lawful for us to share information within the framework. Something to flag though is that that's not the end of the story. So that's the bit about sharing without consent. If we've got consent to make a safeguarding referral, which hopefully that's where we can get to with our clients, is gaining consent and doing that as collaboratively as possible. But where it does happen where we need to refer without consent, if we've got the clarity thereon, we've met all of those thresholds, we know we can lawfully share this information, the other bit of GDPR law, which is completely consistent with our, our regulatory duties under HCPC, as psychologists, it would also be consistent with BACP for those regulated with BACP, is to think about what it is that we're sharing. And again, this is something where I see people go a little wrong because they- they've got to the point of going, "Okay, I need to make a referral," and then they send reams of information that isn't actually necessary. So the law says we need to be proportionate and necessary in the information that we share. That means we don't need to share all of our session notes. We are identifying the core risk issue for that statutory service, and we are passing responsibility on. It's for them, we've identified the risk, it is for them to make a decision about what to do about it and potentially take any action. So we need to hold that in mind when we're doing our referrals. Don't overshare. We need to be proportionate and share what's necessary. The final bit is thinking about the security of how we share that information and usually there will be a secure channel through which, you can fill out a referral form, for example, online or whatever it might be. There's, there's a few options for sharing securely. And that we must document everything. And I know we might loop back to record keeping 'cause it's so important, but making sure that we've documented our rationale, documented our decision making, we've documented our referral, and that is also part of GDPR law.

That's really helpful to understand. And I think whenever I'm doing training with Clare Veal around GDPR, she is always stressing that if you keep in your mind that GDPR wants you to treat someone else's data in the same way you would treat your own, you will not go far wrong. And I think that principle is just so clear, isn't it? Like, if somebody needed to make a safeguarding referral about me or my family, I would really expect them to only include what is pertinent, but I would want them to include what they needed to include. And so I think that principle, it never steers us too far wrong. But it's really helpful to hear you talk about those kind of three frameworks that we have to hold in mind. Our regulatory framework as professionals, the GDPR requirements, and the safeguarding laws. And I think it is common for people to be strongest on one of those, and that's why I think it's so helpful to have somebody like you kind of bringing them all together and showing us how they weave together, 'cause it, it actually fits pretty nicely.

Yes. They're really consistent with each other, which is reassuring.

Lucky. Yeah, it would be terrible, wouldn't it, if one of them was wildly out of step, which I know actually, not to kind of be light-hearted about it because I coach people from lots of different professional backgrounds, and there are trainings and certain types of psychotherapy which do make this harder for people, where they have been taught in their training that they shouldn't be sharing any information, and that's really tricky and just not consistent with the legal requirements that we all have for safeguarding in the UK. So I know that has come up for some of my clients, particularly those trained in other countries. So it is... it can be really tricky for people, and so really valuable to have this kind of up-to-date understanding of our legal requirements, I think.

And on that, Rosie, the law changes, right? You know, it's not static. I mean, yes, some of this legislation is decades old, but we've just this year, in 2026, we've had changes to the law that significantly impact our legal duties. So I'm thinking specifically that, I mean, there's lots of changes in general, but specifically around mandatory reporting. So for anyone working with children, it is an offense now. There is actually a criminal offense around deterring anyone from making a report about child sexual abuse. If as a mandatory reporter, which that essentially means anyone in a regulated activity, for anyone in that position, which would include all of us operating within independent practice, if we are told that a child is experiencing child sexual abuse or we have strong reason to believe or we are told by an adult that they're abusing a, a child, we have to report that information. That is a mandatory requirement. And there are serious sanctions for not fulfilling those duties. So it's so important, I think, that we stay really plugged in and up to date with what's happening in those legal frameworks so that we ensure that we are compliant. And I think that speaks to the anxiety point where we started, is it really alleviates anxiety in this space, where we can feel confidence, "Okay, I know I'm fully trained, I'm up to date with what the law says, with what I need to do, my governance is square, I'm off to a good start." I think that's a, a really important piece of the puzzle.

Absolutely. And I know we said that we would come back to things like record keeping, and I like the term that you used, defensible documentation. Can you say a little bit about what that might actually look like for an independent clinician?

So defensible documentation is just a helpful way to think about how you can really stress test the veracity of your record keeping. So we've got lots of different sources of advice on record keeping as psychologists. So, we've got the BPS guidance, we've got our HCPC regulations, we've also got, the GDPR element in terms of good documentation. They are all absolutely consistent, again, in saying that the core objectives of our documents, we need to be accurate, we need to be factual. If we've got a bit of opinion or reflection, we should really clearly note that that is some reflection rather than trying to, you know, specifically say, "This is absolutely fact," we can label it as such in our records. We need to make sure of course, that it's legible if we're not doing electronic notekeeping and we're, we're writing. So all of that basic stuff that probably we've got down. I think the bit that sometimes people can miss with safeguarding is remembering that our records would also include the documentation around a safeguarding referral that we need to store securely. That might include also the receipt of having sent a referral. It would also include things like safety plans, risk assessment. If we're using any risk tools, we're also going to want to document all of that. And then a key bit for defensible documentation around our decision-making is capturing the rationale for our action. Now, that might be explaining, articulating what the risks are, what the concerns are, and ultimately saying that we're not going to make a referral at this point. We might be sort of just having a bit of a watching brief, and it might be that if further information emerges, potentially it might cross the threshold and we do need to make a referral. But documenting that process is really good practice. We're charting the process, and it needs to be understandable to anyone who is coming on the outside, another clinician who is perhaps reviewing our notes. It needs to make sense to someone if they were to review it, so that's another thing to, to hold in mind. And a really good bit of advice that's always really helped me was actually given to me by my first supervisor when I ever qualified, so we're going back nearly 20 years. Gosh. I was working in child protection at the time, and parenting capacity assessments. And she encouraged me to do the witness box test, and that is just a way to stress test your decision-making and what you've actually documented, i.e. if there was a court hearing, what would actually go to court in your notes. And that is to put yourself in the witness box, project yourself into the future a little bit, and just imagine being questioned by the judge. I mean, that might sound a little bit scary, but actually this is... it's a really helpful exercise. And you just imagine the judge saying to you, "Dr Gilderthorp, can you just talk me through why you did A? And can you just talk me through your notes here where you reference that?" Now, that feels a little bit scary, but when you do that, it's just a really good test of, right, okay, yes, I'm sufficiently robust in what I've actually recorded, 'cause it's important to remember our notes, they often feel quite personal, 'cause no one generally ever sees them. They're just ours, although, of course, our clients might make a subject access request. They could become evidence. They could end up part of a criminal process or a civil proceedings, so we need to always be keeping that in mind, and just do that stress test with the witness box test.

I think that's really good advice. And just thinking, 'cause I know I'll get questions about the practical side of how people are doing that. The thing that I set up after a safeguarding incident actually in my second year, I think, of private practice, was a notes template for myself. Like, a really simple thing, but just to make sure that I covered all of those areas every time, and I had a comment on every one, even if it was just, "Not relevant today," that way, you know, I knew that I had all of those areas covered. And I think for people that work with, you know, risk a lot, I hear a lot of people talking about having almost two sets of notes. The one that has all the factual stuff in it that you know has the records that you would need to provide in any kind of safeguarding or any trip to court, and then you might keep your process notes separately. So if you're like me and you kind of think by writing, you might be somebody that is always drawing out spider diagrams and stuff like that, which, you know, might not always contain information that you know, I need for my formulation or the client might find useful, but might be a bit too much to include in a safeguarding, for example. You know, it might have names of other people in the family, that kind of thing. And so I keep those separately, so they're both stored, so if I did need to draw on one, I could. But it's separated out so the stuff I think would be useful if the kind of worst-case scenario happened, is all really easy for me to access and share quickly. And I know that people now are using AI tools as well, and you can train something like Heidi to cover those specific areas. So just like with my old-fashioned template, you can put a template into AI which will then prompt you if you haven't covered a certain area that day, to fill it in. I think that there's always pros and cons with that. I think the, the benefit of it is that it will jog your memory if you, if you did forget to record something important, but you would need to be very careful that it wasn't hallucinating responses. That's the thing I would watch out for, using an AI note-taker in that capacity. But have you heard of any sort of practical ways of implementing this that are worth sharing?

The AI point is really interesting. I think that's a good example of how AI can be such a facilitator for us. And when we talk about safeguarding, we tend to think automatically about a bit of a mic drop moment that then is gonna take a huge amount of work and perhaps a big referral. It's not always like that, is it? Actually, sometimes we get a bit of a slow creep of an escalating issue, and I think when you have frameworks and tools and excellent supervision, it can help us not have risk drift, where actually we're, we need to regularly recalibrate, bit sort of boiling pot and frog kind of analogy, so we can properly track that. So, within my associate practice, EC, we have templates that will regularly prompt around risk just to make sure it's on the radar. And within supervision, so I've designed a supervision framework specifically around safeguarding, and that is absolutely about regularly checking in around risk issues so that you've got that routine inquiry to make sure that we're not missing something in the, in the day-to-day. So I think tools like that can be really, really helpful.

Yeah, it's just that kind of prompt because we all have natural human tendencies. Like we were talking earlier about our tendency to avoid, and that's just part of human programming, isn't it? And sometimes whether it's an AI or a simple old-fashioned template, having that thing that forces you to shine a light on something that your mind might prefer to avoid I think can be super, super helpful.

Yeah, I think that's so true, and that just makes me think a little about just reflecting on my work with the independent inquiry to child sexual abuse. So I was there for several years as chief psychologist and part of my portfolio was also as head of safeguarding, and I learnt a huge amount in that space, both in terms of live referrals, I mean, thousands of referrals in relation to both child abuse but also adults at current risk of harm, that we were sending across the UK. But also thinking about non-recent child sexual abuse and really thinking about why it is that so repeatedly across each case study that we were hearing as the public hearings were going on across different institutions across society, some of the same themes were coming through around safeguarding failures. And something that really struck me in all of that is how often you had people who were part of those organizations who were going about their day-to-day lives, who were missing safeguarding issues, who were not reporting when they should have reported, who were looking the other way when they should have whistle-blown, you could say almost were groomed by perpetrators who were so artful and clever about grooming not just individual victims, but a whole organization, and I think when we look at evidence like that, it's easy to say, "Ah, these people must have just, you know, terrible decisions, terrible people, bad and evil people." But of course, when we really sit with it and grapple with it in a reflective, psychological way, we see that all of us have the potential to look the other way. We all have our own defense mechanisms, and there's nothing like a safeguarding issue to get our defenses up. We know that this is gonna be anxiety-provoking. We know that if we go there, it's gonna be really tricky, both with our client and potentially making that referral. So I think staying reflective and really tuned into the psychological journey of this is a really important way to actually increase the safety of our practice, because of course, ultimately, we want safe practice. That's absolutely what we would probably all say that, that we want. We want to be compliant, absolutely, but we want to be beyond that, a culture of safe practice and of reducing the risk of safeguarding failures, which of course we all have the potential to miss something. So we, we need to utilize those tools, utilize the training that just helps us stay confident and bringing all of that into our awareness.

And I think it's helpful there that you've kind of normalized what I've seen with safeguarding over the years, is that often people already feel guilty when they realize that they need to make a safeguarding. They're already beating themselves up for not having seen it sooner, and that it's a real emotional cauldron actually, 'cause you're, you know, you're, you're becoming introspective about yourself and what you might have done differently and could you have spotted this, you know, further down the track. You're going back over all your old notes and feeling really critical of yourself, often. And at the same time, I don't think it's in my head, you might get some of that back from other people in the organization as well. Often, I think especially I hear this from more junior people, when they do raise a safeguarding, often the first question is, "Why didn't you come sooner?" And that blame culture can, you know, be genuinely very frightening. So I think it's great to acknowledge that, that it is actually an emotional challenge to be that whistleblower, to raise a safeguarding, because you'll never do it in this way we're talking about it now where it seems like, oh, okay, I have noticed a safeguarding today, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that. It's never gonna feel like that. You're in relationship with somebody involved with this, so it's always going to feel messy. It's always going to feel like it could have happened yesterday. And that's the, the way that we're gonna be feeling when we're doing these things.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So agree.

So I mean, you've done such incredible work in this field. What is it that motivated you to develop a training for psychologists in independent practice specifically?

I think really what happened is I just increasingly felt so frustrated at the lack of good training out there. You know, I'm really not knocking e-learning and generic e-learning, it can be really helpful for sort of specific bits, but I just increasingly felt like I was confused. I was confused about how even when we talk about adult safeguarding, we're talking about people with, care and support needs, people who might have a learning disability, we're also thinking about capacity. But I was confused about, well, where does adult mental health fit into all of that? Where does risk to self fit in? Risk of suicide? How do we hold all of that as practitioners? And I, I've always worked in spaces that have been relatively high risk, but generally always within structures where there was a lot of governance and a lot of wraparound. And then when I stepped into the public inquiry space, which was about 10 years ago, having that bird's-eye view of making these referrals, from my team, you know, nationally across the country, seeing very different responses in different spaces to some of that, and thinking about some of those patterns where safeguarding failings have happened in the past, I was really struck by the need to just really pull everything together. And when I stepped into independent practice a few years ago, even more so, I thought, "Gosh, there just isn't anything that really speaks to how we work," the complexity, the acuity, the lack of infrastructure, and I felt a bit like I was sort of in Wild, Wild West really, and so I just really wanted to create the training that I wish I had had years ago that pulls all of that clarity together, that's really clear on, look, this is what our regulator says we need to do. This is the framework we need to be consistent with. This is what the law says. This is how we can sort of semi-compensate for the fact that we haven't got that infrastructure around us. Instead, we can think about how we ensure our supervision is sufficiently grappling with risk issues, that is really exploring that. We might need to have extra consultation and supervision. So that's what we started offering at EC. So alongside the training, which I hope really just leaves people feeling equipped and much more confident, sometimes they leave with a long list of things they need to do, like a safeguarding policy and procedures and so on, but that's no bad thing. That's about becoming more compliant. Feeling that confidence, understanding and sort of demystifying what happens when you make a referral, and how to respond if the referral isn't acted on as well, if you get an NFA, how to respond to that as a clinician, how to document it. I think all of that is important as well. But we also offer supervision, but also one-off pieces of consultation because I think it just really strikes me that in independent practice, whilst it offers tremendous advantages, and a totally different landscape to, to operate in, there can be a danger of us becoming really isolated. And I think good safeguarding practice is always in connection and discussion with other people. It's utilizing supervision. It's talking to colleagues. It's getting specialist advice. It's talking with services. We can't hold all of that alone, and I feel really passionate about enabling people to not be stuck in isolation, to not be feeling like they're carrying all of that risk alone, but instead empowered to make some clear decisions about the frameworks they're operating in, the risk level they want to work in within their practice, and then being prepared so that if and when a safeguarding issue does come up, which is anxiety-provoking for all of us, it doesn't matter how long you've been doing it, it is really scary. There's a lot we need to think about and a lot of I's to dot and T's to cross. The last thing you want to do in that moment is to be scrabbling around trying to remember what you need to do. You need to already have that in your mind, and so what you're focusing on is the risk and the person in front of you and what they need. So I wanted to really just fill the gap that felt like it was sort of gaping really, and to really encourage and people.

I think that's so important because I don't think it's realistic to say you're never gonna see any risk in your private practice, and I've seen many people with that game plan. But I think especially for psychologists, it never works that way. The thing I was really struck by is when I went into independent practice, everybody was saying to me, "Oh, you'll be really bored. It's just going to be..." And they use that horrible term, which I do not condone, but you'll have heard it, you know, "worried well". And that has not been my experience remotely, and I think increasingly what I'm hearing from people I coach and people starting out now, is that from day one, they tend to be working with quite a lot of complexity, and that's because we are often plugging the gaps in the NHS system. And unfortunately, the gaps are not necessarily in primary care. So although you might see people in your independent practice who, you know, don't have a lot of risk, I don't think you can bank on it. And I think you should always be prepared that you, you might get somebody, even if they just come for a free consultation, and you're gonna say, "Actually, this isn't the right fit for me, for my practice," you're still gonna need to act on that. So, you know, a lot of what I talk about in our legal essentials training is make sure you have the information you would need to enact a safeguarding from that initial contact you have with somebody. Because you don't know, you know, when you might see somebody pop up on a Zoom call for 10 minutes and need to act on it, and if you don't have the information you need to follow up, I don't think that fits with our regulatory framework. So yeah, I'm so glad that your training exists, and I think it obviously meets a need, and everybody that we've spoken to about it, you know, you came on the retreat and talked to loads of other people about it. We've talked about it in our mastermind. Everybody has said the same thing. So in, in a way, marketing it doesn't seem to be too difficult because everybody agrees we really need it. But I know it was something that gave you a bit of anxiety at the beginning. So how have you gone out there and told people about this training?

So thus far it's mainly been word of mouth. I haven't been running it for too long, it's just been a year or so and a very small number of people came to the first training, loved it, told people about it. Everyone who then signed up to following trainings were saying, "I heard about it from a supervisor or from a colleague." So it's very much from people who'd been on the training, which of course was so reassuring. Like, you know, that's when you're offering something, it's really scary. You know, you don't know is this gonna be good enough? Is it gonna meet people need? Have I got the right pitch? But it absolutely was resonating with people. And of course, the joy of having feedback from people to really understand what's at the heart of what people worry about, and so what they want addressed on the training. And then more recently I've stepped more into kind of the Facebook groups, sort of just trying to plug it in those kind of spaces that are very informal, but are spaces where people share such helpful networking information. I think one of the, the tensions I would say, in the work is that I don't like marketing that runs off fear, that pokes people's anxieties. I just don't like that vibe. I mean, I know that sells and I'm sure I've been victim of that sort of marketing before. But I want to sell confidence and compliance and empowerment to people. I don't want to prey on the fact that people are probably nervous about it or anxious about it. I want more to sell, like this is really going to equip you with, yes, a long list of things to do, but also with some great clarity around the frameworks we're operating in so that you are fully equipped and prepared for when that safeguarding issue comes along. And because I run the training very much in step with other disciplines, so I have social work advice, I have police advice, it means that I'm offering a much more multidisciplinary sort of holistic view, so that I'm also trying to, I guess, sell to people, demystify the process. I think when you're within statutory services and you're stepping outside into independent practice and making referrals, it's like suddenly becoming a very little fish, and being on the outside trying to get in, and if you're really worried about something and you really think, you know, this referral, you're not just ticking a box, you're really concerned maybe about a child at risk or an adult, you want services to respond. So we really talk about the best way to do that. The kind of pathways and channels to go down, and hear from statutory services explaining how that process works. So I think sharing that in the marketing enables people to see, oh, this is not a generic safeguarding course, and it can really plug the gaps that, that an e-learning kind of program just can't speak to.

Absolutely. And I think you've done a brilliant job here today at acknowledging the fear and anxiety that people have. But, you know, whereas some marketing that tends to do very well on social media really wallows in that, you're not doing that. You're kind of taking people to the, the hopeful future where they can feel confident and calm about safeguarding. So I think you do that really well, and I'm sure everybody that's heard you describe it today is now feeling like they really want to come on your training. So where can people go to find out about the next training dates you've got coming up?

So we regularly run training. It's about roughly once a quarter, we have a training day. So people can go to my website, which is eglintonconsultancy.com. I'm sure there'll be links available linked with the pod, and on the training page it's got some, some booking options, tells you a little bit more about what's on offer, who's gonna be there, sort of frequently asked questions, that kind of thing. And then people can book and, and come along. And what I like to do with the training is to offer people a little bit of onboarding info to just kind of set the scene a little bit, get people thinking about those regulatory frameworks, and we use case studies throughout the training to really put things into practice, because I think it's that application piece that is so, so important. So yes, I'd welcome people to sign up for our updates as well, get on our mailing list, and come along. It'll be great to meet you.

Brilliant. And I am coming to the September one, so I'm really excited about that. Because genuinely I think that the way that you teach this through the case studies and the multidisciplinary input really does make this very interesting as well as something which I think really enhances any independent practice, actually essential for all of us, I think. So thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. It's been fascinating today.

Thank you, Rosie