Heather Fowler is the head of safeguarding for the six-school Endeavour Learning Trust, a role she has held since 2022.

She spent 10 years working across both primary and secondary schools in various pastoral, inclusion and safeguarding roles before moving to work at a local authority in Lancashire, where she oversaw safeguarding standards in more than 700 schools.

While she enjoyed the role, she was lured to work for Endeavour by the prospect of more direct day-to-day engagement with a more manageable number of schools.

Here, she speaks with Tes about what the job entails and what she does during a typical week.

Strategic work and school visits

Most of my role is strategic, so I spend a large proportion of the week identifying needs across our schools. This could include training, coaching, working directly with them to boost knowledge, and looking at their practice and systems to help them be more effective.

I will visit every school at least once each half term, but depending on our plans I will have space allocated more regularly to visit certain schools.

For example, there are a couple of schools that, for the first month of the school year, I’ll be in one day a week. That will be very focused time - with training a big part of that to help support them.

Wider strategic work involves working closely with our central team around other nuanced areas of safeguarding, for example working with our director of estates around site security or our head of IT around online safety, filtering and monitoring.

Reactive work

As you can imagine with safeguarding, a lot of my work is reactive. In some weeks that can take over everything else, and you can be working until 8pm - while other weeks, very little happens.

I’ve lost count over the years of the number of times I’ve been late home for birthdays and anniversaries, or missed school plays, etc, because something unpredictable has happened.

It’s tough but you have no choice but to be present and co-ordinate a response from other agencies - it’s not a job you can walk away from and think, “I’ll deal with that tomorrow.”

Meetings

I don’t attend all the safeguarding meetings in our schools. I might in the most complex cases - or if a staff member is very new, I will attend to support them.

In the latter cases, I often step back and let them lead because although they want my presence, it’s about letting them learn, too. It’s a difficult balance to get right but it’s an important one.

We usually have one wider executive trust meeting a fortnight (although that might change as we are in a period of growth).

These meetings are normally really focused with a lot of thought in terms of who needs to be there so they are useful and do not take up too big a portion of my time. We also try and plan other non-urgent meetings for the holidays when there is more available time.

As well as this, some weeks see me attend meetings with other statutory partners - such as in the health service, police and social care - to be the voice of our schools and their experiences, or I might attend networking events or our DSL Academy that I am involved in.

If I have a particularly tough meeting coming up I will often book in 30 minutes after the meeting is scheduled to end to go and do something entirely unrelated. I think you need that time to decompress - it’s something I advise my DSLs to do, too.

It may sound like a luxury and people will say “Oh I’m too busy to do that”, but you aren’t able to do the job if you don’t look after yourself.

Admin work

I will block out time, usually at least an hour a day, for admin such as replying to email, report writing, reporting to trustees, organising meetings - it’s something I have become a lot more effective in doing over the years.

When I’m supporting DSLs and they feel overwhelmed, I suggest they do this - because having time that is set aside (unless there is an absolute crisis) is really helpful.

Calls with DSLs

I’ll call all my designated safeguarding leads once a week to catch up and see how things are going. It’s usually 15 minutes checking in and is mostly ad hoc in terms of when I ring; although with one DSL I do have a set time as that works best for them.

I’ll often do these calls on the commute home or into work - it’s a good time to get it done. Of course, if they need longer to talk we can always arrange that as a separate conversation.

Personal time

I always try to walk for at least an hour a day, or every other day, outside work to help relax and take my mind off things.

I used to be quite naïve and think I could cope with whatever I was dealing with, but actually, that isn’t healthy and you have to have some time away from it all.
 

What would I like to change to do more or less of?

One thing that takes a lot of time and thought is the professional challenge to agencies - when schools have raised concerns with me about safeguarding arrangements not being fulfilled as is outlined in the local and national guidance.

Due to well-documented issues within social care, including staff turnover, ensuring children have the protection they are entitled to is a crucial part of the role and I will usually escalate concerns within management structures after consulting with schools to clarify facts, as per local process.

This is the part of the job which, although very important, I wish I didn’t have to do. It would definitely make my role easier if there wasn’t the need for this, giving me back valuable time to spend on developing the practice in schools and supporting frontline staff directly.

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