Adults spend a lot of time supporting and encouraging children to talk about their worries but who they choose to tell can be just as important.
Children are often told to speak to someone they trust. However, it can be hard for a child to understand and identify who the trusted adults in their life are.
The idea of a safe adult is clearer. That’s why we have adopted the term ‘safe adult’ when talking to children and young people about who they can turn to for support.
When you describe someone as being ‘trusted’, you’re talking about your own, personal perception of them. It’s an abstract term, which requires you to make a judgement about someone’s trustworthiness. This is a tricky judgement to make, especially if you don’t have a solid understanding of what trust is. One study of 273 children aged 4- to 6-years-old found that the vast majority (82%) of children could not provide a definition of trust.1
Although identifying someone as ‘safe’ still requires a level of judgement, it’s a clearer concept to understand. It puts more emphasis on the behaviour of the person, rather than your perception of them. Most children are taught about topics like fire and road safety from the time they start nursery or school. So, the idea of someone or something being ‘safe’ should be familiar to them.
Because trust is based on personal perception, it can easily be misplaced or exploited.
Research shows that the majority of abuse is perpetrated by someone the child knows well.2 This means that children are often abused or neglected by the very adults they should be able to trust.
The abuse of children often involves an element of grooming. During this process adults actively encourage and then exploit a sense of trust in the children and young people they target. One child practice review described how a man groomed a young girl by, “sharing his own life story... which made her feel grown up and trusted”.3
Grooming can also involve dissuading children from trusting anyone apart from their abuser, alienating them from the safe adults in their lives. In describing their experience of being sexually abused by their foster carer, one young person talked about how “he was always telling us not to trust the professionals”.4
In this context focusing on speaking to a trusted adult can further complicate an already difficult path to sharing experiences of abuse or neglect.
References
Kotaman, H. and Aslan, M. (2024) Young children’s trust and sharing decisions. ICEP 18, 3.Building trust is a key developmental stage, which can be impacted by early experiences of abuse and neglect. Babies who feel safe and loved believe the world is trustworthy. Babies that don’t experience feelings of safety or love can grow up feeling suspicious and anxious. The impact of these experiences can lead to children finding it hard to trust anyone, or putting their trust in people indiscriminately.5 So encouraging a child to speak to an adult they can trust may not be a helpful message.
When Childline created a new, dedicated website for under-12-year-olds the decision was made to talk to children about safe as opposed to trusted adults to make sure the language was as clear and straight forward as possible.
> Find out more about Childline
Our Speak out Stay safe service talks to primary-school-aged children about identifying the safe adults in their life. Informed by feedback from teachers, the service chose to move away from talking about trusted adults to help children understand its key message.
Speak out Stay safe helps children explore what makes someone a safe adult, and makes it clear to children that safe adults:
> Find out more about our Speak out Stay safe service
Since then, the NSPCC has extended this shift in language to the Talk Relationships service which supports secondary schools to deliver inclusive sex and relationships education. This reflects the fact that as children get older, the concept of trust can become an increasingly complex one.
> Find out more about Talk Relationships
Clearly the challenges and barriers children face in speaking out about abuse and neglect go beyond a choice of words.
Research shows that many children delay telling someone; and when they do it’s not always in a direct way. Too often children’s attempts to speak out go unrecognised, unheard or ignored.6
We all need to show the children in our lives - through our behaviour and our actions - that we are safe and can be trusted. We need to understand and address the barriers children face in talking about their worries and be ready to listen whenever they are ready to speak.
Making the shift from talking about ‘trusted’ to ‘safe’ adults is just one small step towards achieving this vital goal.
> Find out more about how you can let children know you’re listening
References
Bernath, M.S. and Feshbach, N.D. (1995) Children's trust: theory, assessment, development, and research directions. Applied and preventive psychology, 4(1): 1-19.Words matter. The language we use affects what we do and what we think. Our experts explore the changes we can all make to help improve outcomes for children.
