This course goes LIVE on the 2nd October 2026. 


For the first time, the UK has passed a law creating a duty to report child sexual abuse. It's on the statute books now, and coming into force soon. When it does, a lot of counsellors will discover, too late, that they never really understood their safeguarding responsibilities in the first place. This is your chance to walk in already knowing where you stand.

Written for counsellors - not adapted for them.

This isn't generic safeguarding training with the word "counsellor" dropped in. Every module is built for the therapy room, for the particular position you're in, where disclosure arrives inside a relationship you've spent months building, and where acting on it feels like breaking the very thing that made it possible.

We cover the law properly, children and adults, across all four nations, because there's no such thing as UK safeguarding law, and if you work online your client may be sitting in a different legal system from you. But we do it in plain language, written the way I'd actually explain it to you, not the way the official documents bury it.

Real situations. Real decisions.

You don't learn safeguarding from definitions. You learn it from the moment in the room when something moves in you and you're not sure what to do with it.

So this course is built around case studies, the kind that genuinely turn up in a counselling room. The fifteen-year-old who mentions, almost in passing, that he owes money to an older lad. The client who says her son is taking her money. The woman being controlled by her partner who, it turns out, doesn't fit the law the way you'd expect. We work each one through together, so you feel where the threshold sits, rather than just being told where it is.

What you'll learn by the end

Recognise a safeguarding concern when it's still quiet, before it becomes a crisis. Know which system you're in, children or adults, because they run on opposite logic. Understand the new reporting duty and whether it actually applies to you. Make a referral that gets a real response instead of sitting in a queue. Write records that protect you and your client. And, if you're in private practice, be your own designated lead with a policy you'll actually use.

Most of all, you'll be able to act while uncertain, which is the entire skill, and the one no flowchart ever gave you.

Curriculum Modules

Here's what's covered:

The twelve modules:

Mod 1 - What Safeguarding Is, and What It Is Not. Clearing the ground. The two systems, the three things safeguarding isn't, and the frame that makes everything else possible. 

Mod 2 - Children. The Children Acts, significant harm, and the thresholds that decide what happens when you pick up the phone.

Mod 3 - Adults at Risk. The great reversal, where autonomy comes first, the Care Act's three tests, and the capable adult who chooses to stay.

Mod 4 - Mental Capacity. The hinge the whole adult system turns on, and how to think clearly about capacity, consent, and best interests.

Mod 5 - The Duty to Report. The new law, what it actually says, and the question that matters most, are you caught by it?

Mod 6 - The Four Nations. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and why the differences genuinely change what you do.

Mod 7 -  Confidentiality and Its Limits. What you actually promised, what the law lets you share, and how to get your contract right from the start.

Mod 8 - Disclosure in the Room. How to receive something without contaminating it, what not to ask, and how to hold the relationship while you act.

Mod 9 -  Recognising the Presentations. Coercive control, exploitation, county lines, financial abuse, self-neglect, because you can only notice what you have a name for.

Mod 10 -  Children and Young People. Gillick, Fraser, parental responsibility, and confidentiality with a young person.

Mod 11 -  Making the Referral. Who to call, what happens next, how to write it up, and what to do when you disagree.

Mod 12 -  Safeguarding in Private Practice. Being your own designated lead, writing a policy you'll actually use, and looking after yourself.

Every module includes

Narrated video Powerpoint lessons in plain English with subtitles. Real case studies worked through in full. Downloadable handouts, reference sheets and reflective worksheets to keep. And a certificate on completion for your CPD record.

Awarded 10 CPD hours. A full day of continuing professional development, done at your own pace, in your own time.

Fully online. Work at your own pace. Yours to keep.

No travel, no time off, no two days blocked out of a diary you don't have to spare. Work through it in your own time, and come back to it whenever the law, or a client, reminds you that you need it.

Every Counsellor needs to update their Safeguarding training! 


The complete course, all twelve modules, awarded 10 CPD hours, every case study, and every downloadable handout and worksheet, yours to keep, with a certificate on completion.


Get ahead of the law before it lands.

The duty is coming. The counsellors who understand it first will be the ones their clients, and their colleagues, turn to. 

Buy Now

Course goes live on 2nd October 2026.

Instructor(s)

Associate Tutor Frances Waldle

Frances Wardle, spent twenty-five years as a social worker and Designated Safeguarding Lead before retraining as a counsellor in later life. She's worked both sides of the referral, the statutory system that receives it, and the therapy room it comes from. She's sat in the strategy meetings and made the difficult calls, and she's also felt what it's like when a disclosure arrives across the chair, in a room built on trust. This course brings those two worlds together, written plainly for counsellors, by someone who's lived it. This course was written by Frances Wardle. As recording the audio herself wasn't something she had time for, it's narrated in Esjai Mason's voice.