Louis Donald

Principal Safeguarding Partner, EduShield & CST Consultant

Louis is founder and principal safeguarding partner of EduShield and a former executive education (safeguarding) director at a nationwide school trust. He is recognised nationally for expertise in safeguarding, inspection readiness, crisis management, and school improvement across trusts. Louis has advised the Department for Education on safeguarding policy, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and is the first education professional to qualify as a Gold Multi-Agency Strategic Commander. He chairs the Queen Street Group Safeguarding Directors Forum, sits on the NASSA board, and serves on the British Army’s Independent Advisory Group. Trusted for his calm, strategic leadership, Louis supports leaders navigating complex safeguarding challenges.

14:25

1 Main programme

Keynote: Assuring Safeguarding at Scale

The author of an upcoming CST paper, Louis Donald, will address the risk that sits in the gap between reassurance and reality. This session will explore how trust leaders can achieve a clearer understanding of whether existing approaches are truly working and delivering the intended outcomes, or only appearing to do so.

1 Workshop series two

Strengthening trust safeguarding through diversity: The power of multi-disciplinary teams

Safeguarding in education has traditionally been undertaken by teachers specialising in child protection. As trusts grow, and safeguarding practice becomes more complex, trust safeguarding leaders have been thinking differently about the skills and background that a safeguarding team needs to enable it to do more and be more effective. In this workshop, Louis will share his team-building strategy at Creative Education Trust, taking us through the thinking and practice of building a multidisciplinary team from pastoral, clinical and other services and the impact this has had on safeguarding capacity and outcomes in the trust.