At Talking Therapies UK, we are passionate about equipping professionals with the knowledge, confidence, and compassion to support mental health across diverse settings. With decades of combined experience in clinical practice, public health leadership, and service transformation, our training programmes are rooted in evidence-based approaches and real-world application.
We specialise in delivering high-impact, trauma-informed mental health training tailored to the needs of health, education, social care, and voluntary sector teams. From safeguarding and suicide prevention to emotional resilience and therapeutic communication, our courses are designed to empower practitioners at every level—whether you’re frontline staff, a strategic commissioner, or part of a multi-agency partnership.
Our facilitators bring many years clinical expertise , and a deep understanding of the social determinants of mental health. We prioritise co-production, reflective practice, and inclusive learning environments that foster curiosity, empathy, and professional growth.
Whether you’re looking to upskill your workforce, embed mental health into your organisational culture, or meet statutory training requirements, we offer flexible delivery formats including in-person workshops, webinars, and bespoke consultancy.
Together, we can build psychologically safe, responsive systems that promote wellbeing, reduce inequalities, and improve outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. Let’s shape the future of mental health—one conversation, one training, one transformation at a time..
Professional Practice, Ethics & Supervision · AdvancedPremium · in-depth
Safeguarding Adults and Children in Therapeutic Practice: Law, Recognition and Response
A premium, in-depth programme on safeguarding law, recognition, response and accountability for therapists, current to October 2026
This premium programme is a comprehensive, practice-focused course on safeguarding children and adults for psychological therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists and allied practitioners working in the NHS, the voluntary sector, schools and independent practice in England, with notes throughout on the different framework in Wales. It is written for practitioners who hear, often before anyone else, what is happening in people's lives, and who must decide what to do with what they hear.
The course is current to October 2026. It teaches Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, which replaced the 2023 edition in March 2026, and the information sharing duty in section 16LA of the Children Act 2004, which came into force on 30 September 2026. It explains the duty to report child sex offences in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 in detail and makes clear, wherever it is mentioned, that the duty is not yet in force. It covers the Care Act 2014 and its statutory guidance as updated in 2025, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the inherent jurisdiction, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the FGM reporting duty, the Prevent duty, modern slavery and forced marriage law, and the professional standards of BACP, UKCP and the HCPC, including the date from which the new BACP Ethical Framework becomes mandatory.
Across six modules and thirty lessons you will study the legal and ethical foundations of safeguarding; the recognition of abuse, neglect and exploitation of children and adults, including domestic abuse, coercive control, self-neglect and online harm; receiving disclosures, judging thresholds, making referrals and keeping defensible records; specific harms such as radicalisation, trafficking, forced marriage, so-called honour-based abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, harm in families and abuse by professionals; Making Safeguarding Personal, capacity and coercion, children's voices and Gillick competence, trauma-informed and anti-racist practice, and work with people who may pose a risk; and learning from reviews, professional curiosity, supervision, vicarious trauma and integrated case consultation.
Every lesson contains a worked clinical example, the common pitfalls in practice and a reflective question, together with key points, a practice task for the week, study activities and further reading. The course includes an extended case study, a glossary and a 25-question assessment with a pass mark of 80 per cent. Every reference has been checked against its publisher, legislation.gov.uk, the National Archives or the issuing body.
The course is clear throughout about what the law requires of whom, and about the therapist's own role and its limits. It does not replace your employer's mandatory training or your local safeguarding procedures, and it asks you at each stage to check the current position, because safeguarding law and guidance continue to change.
▶ See inside the digital classroom1 minute 36 seconds · how a course is laid out, how each lesson is taught, and how the tutor helps
Before you start
This is a premium, in-depth programme: 6 modules and 30 lessons written at Advanced level and beyond, with a worked clinical example, a reflective question and the common pitfalls in every lesson. It assumes that you already practise, or are training to practise, in this field; it does not assume a particular course before it, and it covers its foundations itself before going well beyond them.
34.5 study hours34.5 CPD hours certified12 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 80%)
What you will be able to do
✓Explain the statutory frameworks for safeguarding children and adults in England, the main differences in Wales, and the professional and ethical duties of therapists.
✓Recognise the categories and indicators of abuse, neglect and exploitation of children and adults, including domestic abuse, coercive control, self-neglect and online harm.
✓Receive disclosures in ways that support the person and protect any later investigation, and record them accurately in the person's own words.
✓Judge thresholds for children and adults, make clear and specific referrals, and use escalation procedures when a response seems inadequate.
✓State accurately which reporting and information sharing duties apply to you, including the FGM duty, the section 16LA information sharing duty and the pending duty to report child sex offences.
✓Respond proportionately to radicalisation, modern slavery, forced marriage, so-called honour-based abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, harm in families and allegations against professionals.
✓Apply Making Safeguarding Personal, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the inherent jurisdiction to adults with and without capacity.
✓Hear children's voices, assess Gillick competence and explain confidentiality and its limits to children and young people of different ages.
✓Practise in ways that are trauma-informed, anti-racist and inclusive, and work safely with people who may pose a risk to others.
✓Use learning from reviews, professional curiosity, supervision and attention to your own wellbeing to make defensible decisions under uncertainty.
What you will study
Module 1: Foundations: law, principles and the therapist's position
What safeguarding means for children and adults, the statutory frameworks in England and Wales, the professional and ethical duties of therapists, and how safeguarding works across very different practice settings.
What safeguarding means: definitions, values and the evidence on harmSafeguarding is the wider work of promoting welfare and preventing harm, while child and adult protection are its narrower statutory core under section 47 and section 42.
The legal framework for childrenSection 17 of the Children Act 1989 places a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need by providing services.
The legal framework for adultsSection 42 of the Care Act 2014 requires enquiries where there is reasonable cause to suspect an adult with care and support needs cannot protect themselves from abuse or neglect.
Professional duties, confidentiality and information sharingThe duty of confidence is not absolute: disclosure is lawful with consent, where a statute or court order requires it, or where justified in the public interest.
Safeguarding across settings: NHS, schools, third sector and private practiceNHS bodies carry the section 11 Children Act 2004 duty, but consulting an NHS safeguarding team does not transfer a therapist's own professional responsibility.
Module 2: Recognising abuse, neglect and exploitation
The forms of harm to children and adults, how they present in therapy, domestic abuse and coercive control, and the particular challenge of self-neglect.
Child abuse and neglect: categories, indicators and lived experienceStatutory guidance groups child maltreatment into physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and neglect, but children often experience several forms of harm at the same time.
Child sexual abuse, exploitation and online harmRadford et al. (2011) estimated that around one in four young adults aged 18 to 24 had experienced severe maltreatment
