Waltham Forest Music Service gives children and young people opportunities to learn, make and enjoy music, from their earliest years through to adulthood. Around 50 instrumental and vocal teachers work across approximately 50 schools in the borough, delivering whole-class teaching, small-group lessons and one-to-one tuition. Beyond the school day, the service runs its own music school, with lessons, bands, an orchestra, choirs, songwriting and music production. Its provision spans ages 0–18, extending to 25 for young people with special educational needs.

For Mary Mycroft, Head of Service, safeguarding is central to that work. With safer recruitment, induction and regular safeguarding conversations already part of the service’s approach, she commissions Independent Safeguarding Service (ISS) to provide annual bespoke training and support with its safeguarding policy.

Music teachers work across different schools and settings, sometimes seeing a child individually or in a small group over a sustained period. For children who find confidence and enjoyment in music, those lessons can become an important part of their lives, with positive working relationships developing between pupils and teachers.

Mary recognises the contribution those relationships can make to safeguarding. A music teacher may notice a change in behaviour or be someone a child feels able to talk to. She wants her team to understand both those opportunities and the professional boundaries and responsibilities that come with their role.

The service’s training complements the safeguarding arrangements of the council and the schools in which its teachers work, while addressing the particular circumstances of visiting teachers and the service’s own out-of-school provision.

Over several years, ISS has worked with Mary and her team to understand how the service operates. They have delivered face-to-face training and helped Mary work on the service’s safeguarding policy. ISS has also developed its understanding of the service through the conversations and the questions teachers bring to the sessions.

That understanding matters when safeguarding guidance changes. Mary describes how ISS considers what those changes mean specifically for a music teacher, making the training relevant to the situations her team encounters. The ongoing dialogue brings together ISS’s safeguarding expertise and the service’s knowledge of music education, so that each year’s training reflects the context in which teachers are working.

Safeguarding training takes place every year and is a priority at the start of the September term. For Mary, it helps establish expectations for the year ahead and reinforces the importance the service places on safeguarding.

Those expectations continue through induction, follow-up conversations and opportunities for teachers to discuss questions with Mary. Staff are encouraged to talk about something they have noticed or are unsure about, including when it is not yet clear whether further action is needed. Where appropriate, that conversation includes liaising with the school.

Mary sees ISS’s involvement as contributing to the culture she has built over time: one in which safeguarding remains an active part of the team’s work, with access to specialist expertise helping them continue to learn and develop their practice.

For Mary, the relationship works because both organisations bring their expertise and remain open to learning from each other. Her teachers have varied professional backgrounds, often combining teaching with performing, writing or producing music, and she values training delivered by people whose knowledge is grounded in practical safeguarding experience.

That experience, combined with the time ISS has taken to understand the service, gives Mary a partner who can make specialist safeguarding knowledge relevant to her team and the children and young people they teach.