This course is preventative and protective in focus, building pupils' understanding of healthy relationships and resistance to manipulation, rather than a response to a disclosed incident, which should always follow your school's safeguarding procedures immediately and separately from this course. It is grounded in Keeping Children Safe in Education (2026), which is statutory for all school staff, and draws on practice principles from the DfE-commissioned Tackling Child Exploitation Support Programme. If anything raised during a session gives cause for concern about a specific pupil's safety, pause the course content and follow your designated safeguarding lead's procedures without delay.
Objective: Pupil can describe at least two features of a healthy relationship and at least two warning signs of an unhealthy one.
Check-in: 1. Open generally: today is about friendships and relationships, nothing specific needed. 2. Do not ask about any particular person or incident. This course is preventative. 3. If a pupil does disclose something, stop the session and follow your safeguarding procedure. 4. Make sure you know that procedure before you start this course. 5. Say what happens to what they tell you: you keep notes, and the plan at the end goes to staff they agree to. If something worries you about their safety you have to pass it on, and you would tell them who to.
Input: 1. Set out what a good relationship looks like: they treat you well, you both get a say, nobody pushes. 2. Ask: 'what would make you trust someone?' Then the other side: telling you what to do, keeping you quiet, only one of you ever giving, and being made to pay it back. 3. Use everyday examples, not frightening ones — fear closes the conversation down. 4. Say you will sort some situations into three piles in a moment: healthy, unhealthy, or not sure. Disagreeing with you is fine.
Activity: 1. Read out a scenario card and ask: 'does that sound healthy, unhealthy, or are you not sure?' 2. Pupil sorts it into one of the three piles. 3. Spend longest on the not-sure pile — that is where the difficult ones live. 4. Ask: 'what would make that one definitely not okay?'
Reflect: 1. Ask: 'what makes a friendship or a relationship feel safe to you?' 2. Say plainly that nothing personal is expected today.
Watch for: Keep language general and non-alarming in this first session, the aim is building a framework for recognising warning signs, not extracting a disclosure.
Parent/carer take-home: No specific task this week, this session is designed to build general understanding, not to prompt disclosure at home.
You're seeing week 1 in full. The remaining 5 sessions, along with the printable resource packs, are available once you have an account.
Schools can start a free three-week pilot with up to 3 mentor seats and 10 pupils. No card required.