We are so lucky here; emotional labour and safeguarding in school

Abstract

This paper was first presented at the Psychology of Education Section conference in 2021. It has resulted from a collection of works under the moniker Family Stories, which investigates lived experiences of, and support for, families with complex social care and health needs. This specific piece of work looked at school responses to those families using reflexive thematic analysis to investigate the perspectives of school leaders and pastoral staff, through an inductive approach leading to the interpretation of data into themes. At focus here are the three themes which relate specifically to the emotional labour of school staff in engaging with safeguarding issues: We are so lucky here; School never closes a case; and Your life, consumed. Amid a very strong finding that participants reflected a strong, mutually supportive environment on which they indicated their co-dependence, there also appears to be a distinct lack of reflective support for headteachers, in particular, in managing safeguarding decisions and supporting staff with the emotional impact of that work.

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