Understanding How Schools Work

What the DSL Is

Every school and college in England must have a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) — a statutory requirement under Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025 (KCSIE 2025, para 74). Under KCSIE 2025 (para 74), the DSL should be a member of the senior leadership team (headteacher, deputy head, or equivalent). In statutory guidance, "should" carries near-mandatory weight, and in practice the role is not held by class teachers or non-SLT staff.

The DSL is not simply a point of contact — they hold a specific set of legal responsibilities that cannot be delegated to anyone else in the school without formal designation. Schools must also have a deputy DSL to ensure cover, and both must hold up-to-date training.

What the DSL Is Legally Required to Do

What the DSL Cannot Do

• Investigate. The school must not conduct its own investigation into an allegation of abuse. This is the role of children's services and police. A DSL who attempts to investigate — interviewing the child repeatedly, confronting the alleged abuser — can contaminate evidence and compromise a prosecution.
• Share operational intelligence with parents without careful consideration. Where alerting parents would put a child at increased risk, or compromise a police investigation, the DSL should be advised not to do so. Make this explicit when you contact them.
• Delay a referral pending certainty. The threshold for a MASH referral is reasonable cause to suspect — not certainty, not proof. A DSL who waits for evidence before referring is applying the wrong standard.
• Act as an intermediary in an ABE interview or witness interview. The school can support a child before and after, but must not be present during a police interview.

Why the DSL Is Your Primary Contact — and How to Use That Relationship

When you need to share intelligence about a pupil, receive a welfare update, or request information, the DSL is the correct point of contact — not the headteacher, not the class teacher, not the front office. The DSL has the authority, the records, and the legal framework to respond. Going directly to other staff members wastes time and creates confusion.

How to Request a DSL Meeting

Contact the school's main office and ask specifically for the DSL by name or role. Identify yourself as a warranted officer (or PCSO/DWO-CYP) and state briefly that you want to discuss a safeguarding matter. Most DSLs will make time promptly — it is part of their role.

Framing Intelligence-Sharing Conversations

When sharing police intelligence with a DSL, be clear about classification. If information is provided on the basis that it is not to be disclosed to the child's family, say so explicitly and ask the DSL to record that instruction. A good DSL will document this and follow it; a less experienced one may default to their usual safeguarding process and inadvertently compromise your operation. The instruction to "not inform the family at this stage for operational reasons" is a legitimate request that a DSL can comply with.

Operation Encompass

Operation Encompass is a national scheme under which police notify a school's DSL on the morning following any domestic abuse incident where a child in the household has been affected. The DSL uses this notification to offer pastoral support to the child. If your force operates Operation Encompass, ensure notifications are made before 9am on the day of school, as required by the protocol. The DSL has a duty under KCSIE 2025 to have an Operation Encompass lead.

The Four Categories of Abuse

KCSIE 2025 (Part 1) instructs all school staff to be alert to the four categories of abuse defined in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026:

The School's Duty to Refer

KCSIE 2025 requires that any member of school staff who has a concern about a child must report it to the DSL immediately. The DSL then decides whether to refer to MASH. The threshold for referral is reasonable cause to suspect significant harm — not certainty. Schools are explicitly told they do not need to investigate; they should refer and let the statutory agencies assess.

Where a DSL decides not to refer, they must record that decision and the rationale. This record is disclosable to social care and police in appropriate circumstances.

Recording Requirements

KCSIE 2025 (Annex C) requires schools to keep detailed, chronological, and confidential records of every safeguarding concern. These records must:

• Be kept securely, separate from the pupil's general record
• Include the date, the concern, the action taken, and by whom
• Be transferred to a new school when a child moves — even if the concern was historic
• Be retained for a minimum period after the child leaves school (typically 25 years where the concern involved abuse)

For police: These records can be a significant evidential resource in investigations. A properly maintained KCSIE record may contain dates, observations, and disclosures spanning years. Request access through the MASH or via a formal disclosure request to the DSL, citing the safeguarding exemption under DPA 2018.

The Single Central Record (SCR)

Every school must maintain a Single Central Record (SCR) — a register of all pre-employment checks completed for all staff and volunteers, including DBS checks, right to work, and professional qualification verification. The SCR is inspected by Ofsted and must be available for inspection at any time.

Police may have cause to enquire about the SCR in cases where a member of staff is suspected of posing a risk to children. Access requires a formal request; it cannot be accessed informally. Contact the DSL or headteacher and explain the basis for the request.

KCSIE 2025: What Schools Are Now Required to Do About AI

The 2025 edition of KCSIE extended schools' online safety obligations to include generative AI tools. Schools must assess AI tools used with pupils, ensure filtering systems can address AI-generated content, and educate pupils about deepfakes, misinformation, and AI-generated CSAM. Officers investigating AI-facilitated offences involving pupils should be aware that schools now have a statutory basis — and obligation — to address these harms.

What You Can Reasonably Expect a School to Do When You Contact Them

• Respond promptly. A safeguarding referral or intelligence share from a warranted officer should be treated as a priority. If a DSL does not respond within a reasonable timeframe (same day for urgent matters), escalate to the headteacher.
• Share relevant welfare and attendance information. Under the safeguarding exemption in DPA 2018, the DSL can share without parental consent where there is a safeguarding basis.
• Make a MASH referral if your information gives them reasonable cause to suspect significant harm — and you can ask them to do so.
• Not investigate. The school must not interview the child about the alleged abuse, confront the alleged perpetrator, or attempt to resolve the matter internally.
• Not automatically inform parents. Where you advise the DSL that parental notification would increase risk or compromise an investigation, the DSL can — and should — defer notification.

Key Legislation Schools Operate Under

• Education Act 2002, s.175 (safeguarding duty)
• Children Act 1989 and 2004
• Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026
• Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025
• UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018
• Online Safety Act 2023 (platform duties; school filtering obligations)

The Process: Step by Step

Where Police Fit In at Each Stage

Common Friction Points — and How to Resolve Them

The Legal Framework

Schools hold pupil data as data controllers under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). Processing personal data — including sharing it with police — must have a lawful basis. In safeguarding contexts, the relevant basis is:

• DPA 2018, Schedule 2, Part 1, paragraph 2 — the "safeguarding of children and individuals at risk" exemption. This permits processing of personal data (including special category data such as health information) without the data subject's consent where processing is necessary for the protection of an individual from neglect or physical, mental, or emotional harm.
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998, s.115 — authorises disclosure of information to the police, local authorities, probation, and health services where it is necessary or expedient for the purposes of any provision of the Act. This provides a specific gateway for community safety information sharing.
• Children Act 2004, s.10 — places a duty on agencies to cooperate to improve the wellbeing of children in their area.

What Schools Can Share With You — Without Parental Consent

Where there is a safeguarding basis, a school can share any of the following without requiring parental consent or the pupil's consent:

• Attendance records and patterns of unauthorised absence
• Records of welfare concerns raised by staff about the child
• Details of any previous safeguarding referrals and their outcomes
• Disclosures made by the child to school staff
• Information about the child's known associates at school
• Contact details for the child's parents or carers
• Physical observations made by staff (e.g. unexplained injuries, change in behaviour)
• Information about who collects the child from school and any changes to that pattern

The test is necessity and proportionality: is it necessary to share this specific piece of information to protect this child? If yes, share.

What Schools Cannot Share With You

• Information that would identify a source within the school who has not consented to disclosure (e.g. a staff member who raised a concern about a colleague)
• Medical or SEND information that is not relevant to the specific safeguarding concern
• Detailed financial information about the family (e.g. free school meals eligibility) unless directly relevant
• Personal data about third parties — for example, the criminal history of a parent — unless the school holds it and it is directly relevant

Quick-Reference Card for Officers

When a DSL Refuses to Share

A DSL who refuses to share information on safeguarding grounds, citing data protection, is applying UK GDPR incorrectly. The safeguarding exemption exists precisely to enable this sharing. If a DSL refuses:

1. Explain the DPA 2018, Schedule 2, paragraph 2 exemption directly
2. Ask them to contact their local authority's Information Governance team for a real-time decision
3. Make your own MASH referral — once a s.47 enquiry is initiated, the information sharing framework is clearer
4. Document the refusal. Systemic failures to share with police may constitute a safeguarding failure — escalate to the LSCP if it becomes a pattern

What Changed and When

In May 2025, the Metropolitan Police Service announced the transition from the Safer Schools Officer (SSO) model to a new Designated Ward Officer – Children and Young People (DWO-CYP) model. The change represented a fundamental shift in how the Met structures police engagement with schools and young people.

Under the SSO model, officers were assigned to specific schools — typically secondary schools — and developed long-term relationships with individual institutions. The DWO-CYP model replaces this with a ward-based approach: each officer is responsible for children and young people across all settings within their ward — schools, colleges, youth provision, parks, and other community spaces.

The Old Model: Safer Schools Officers

Safer Schools Officers were typically dedicated to one or two secondary schools. The model produced deep, sustained relationships with DSLs and pastoral staff, and was widely credited with improving intelligence flows, reducing exclusions, and enabling early identification of county lines involvement. It was, however, resource-intensive and left many schools — particularly primaries — without any dedicated police liaison.

The New Model: DWO-CYP

The DWO-CYP role covers all schools and youth-relevant locations within a ward. The key differences:

What This Means for School Relationships

For schools, the transition has created a period of uncertainty. DSLs who had an established working relationship with a named SSO now need to identify their DWO-CYP and rebuild that relationship. Some secondary schools have reported a reduction in on-site presence as officers cover wider geographic areas.

For DWO-CYPs, the challenge is establishing credible relationships across multiple schools — from primary to sixth form college — while also maintaining visibility across wider community youth settings. The intelligence value of a ward-wide role is significant, but requires more structured information management than the SSO model demanded.

How to Establish Yourself in the DWO-CYP Role

If you are a newly designated DWO-CYP, or an officer in another force taking up a similar school liaison function, the following steps will accelerate your effectiveness:

1. Meet every DSL in your area within the first month. Introduce yourself by name and mobile, explain your role, and ask for a brief safeguarding handover — what are the current concerns, who are the vulnerable pupils on their radar, and what do they need from you?
2. Attend at least one staff briefing or CPD session at each school in your first term. Being seen by the wider staff — not just the DSL — dramatically increases the quality of intelligence that flows to you.
3. Establish a regular cadence. Even a fortnightly 20-minute call with a DSL generates far more actionable intelligence than an infrequent drop-in. Consistency builds trust.
4. Know the local MASH. Introduce yourself to the MASH coordinator for your area. Ask to receive notifications of referrals involving young people in your ward.
5. Map the community youth provision in your ward — youth clubs, PRUs, pupil referral units, NEET programmes, sport facilities used by young people. These are as important as schools in the DWO-CYP model.

What Other Forces Are Doing

The Met's DWO-CYP transition reflects a wider national debate about how to deploy limited police resource most effectively in relation to schools and young people. Several forces have moved away from dedicated school-specific officers towards broader community-facing models:

• Thames Valley Police uses a Schools and Young People Engagement model with officers covering clusters of schools by locality
• West Midlands Police embeds youth engagement within its Neighbourhood Policing Teams rather than as a separate function
• Greater Manchester Police has experimented with specialist Youth Engagement Hubs co-located with local authority early help services

There is no consensus on the optimal model. The evidence base consistently identifies two factors as critical regardless of structure: named continuity of contact (DSLs knowing who their officer is) and proactive intelligence sharing (not waiting for incidents before engaging).