Safeguarding & Child Development

There are important links between safeguarding and a child’s developmental stage. These include:

• Abuse can impact numerous areas of the child’s development
• Abuse may manifest itself differently at different stages of the child’s development
• Children’s vulnerability to abuse may vary depending upon their developmental stage
• Some types of abuse (e.g. Criminal or sexual exploitation) are more likely to occur in some developmental stages

In this section, we will consider typical child development so as to provide a foundation for some of the themes that we will be addressing later.