Children, young people, and adults affected by abuse or neglect rarely tell us so directly. There are many reasons for this, they may be frightened or ashamed, and often they do not realise or understand that their lives are different to other peoples.

This makes it difficult for professionals to identify people who are experiencing or at risk of abuse. To do so we need to be 'curious' about their lives, observant of their behaviour and to really listen to what they are saying to us. This is called professional curiosity.

Victoria Climbe, Daniel Pelka, Baby Peter, we remember their names and the terrible abuse they suffered. In the reviews that followed there is a common theme, a lack of professional curiosity aka respectful uncertainty.

The first step in keeping children, young people, and adults safe is to engage with them at the earliest opportunity and be professionally curious before problems and issues escalate into crisis. It is a concept that has been explored more widely when working with children but is equally relevant to work with adults.

In this course we explore what professional curiosity is and how this can be applied in the workplace to identify potential abuse and hard.

Who should do this course? It is aimed to help frontline workers have a better understanding of professional curiosity and simple techniques they can use in their everyday practice. This course is not aimed at social workers or those completing assessments.

Module 1 - What is professional curiosity? This module looks at what is means to be ‘professionally curious’ and who it applies to. How it is recurrent theme in serious case reviews and how professionals need to use healthy challenge and test out your professional assumptions. In addition, we look at barriers to professional curiosity including disguised compliance, the rule of optimism, accumulating risk, normalisation, professional deference, confirmation bias, confidence in managing tension and time constraints.

Module 2 - How to exercise professional curiosity. We explain how looking for signs, listening to what is said (and not said), and questions to ask to encourage a dialogue all help to build a picture of what family life is like for the individual. Why a supportive manager is essential and how they can help practitioners with their case loads and other tools you may wish to learn more about.