The Weight of Words

Writing Safeguarding Narratives with Care

In social work and across the wider safeguarding sector, language is never neutral.
The words professionals choose shape how people are perceived, how risk is understood, and how individuals experience services.

Language has the power to affirm dignity, build trust, and support healing. It can also stigmatise, diminish, or cause harm. This responsibility sits at the heart of safeguarding practice and at the centre of how professionals hold and record people’s stories.

Language as Power

The poet and author Lemn Sissay, in his memoir My Name Is Why, reflects on his experiences of the UK care system and the impact of professional language used about him. He describes being written about in ways that were clinical, impersonal, and detached from his humanity reports that reduced a child’s life to observations and labels, devoid of care or compassion.

Sissay’s reflections remind us that safeguarding is not only about action and intervention. It is also about how stories are told.

Professionals are entrusted not just with people’s care, but with their narratives their experiences, histories, and identities. Language can either hold those stories with care, or confine individuals within labels that obscure context and harm understanding.

Language Evolves Practice Must Follow

Language is not static. It evolves as societal understanding grows. Yet shifts in language can provoke discomfort or resistance, particularly where familiar terms have been used uncritically for many years.

For example, referring to people as “cases” may feel administratively convenient, but it reduces complex lives to tasks or files. Such language subtly reinforces distance and dehumanisation.

Safeguarding guidance, including the Pan-London Safeguarding Procedures, emphasises the importance of language that respects individuality and avoids reinforcing stigma or bias. This is not about semantics it is about safeguarding effectiveness.

Reframing Language in Practice

Careful language does not dilute concern. It strengthens clarity and accuracy.

Examples of reframing include:

• Instead of: “Non-compliant with services”
  Consider: “Experiencing barriers to engaging with services”

• Instead of: “Failed placement”
  Consider: “Placement breakdown due to unmet needs”

• Instead of: “At risk of exploitation”
  Consider: “Vulnerable to exploitation”

These shifts acknowledge context, responsibility, and need without minimising risk.

Similarly, describing someone’s experiences as “baggage” frames them as burdensome. Referring instead to experiences or journeys recognises the impact of adversity without defining the person by it.

A Closing Reflection

Language shapes narratives.
Narratives shape decisions.
Decisions shape outcomes.

By committing to careful, compassionate and accurate language, professionals create environments where people feel believed, supported and protected — and where safeguarding responses are clearer, stronger and more just.