The safeguarding reforms are no longer new. They are the baseline.

There’s a particular file-checking mood that settles over managers in late June. The leavers’ celebration is nearly sorted, September’s intake list is taking shape, and somewhere in the office a folder marked safeguarding is waiting for its summer audit. This year, that audit matters more than usual.

The EYFS safeguarding reforms landed in September 2025, the biggest overhaul of early years safeguarding in a decade. For the first term or two, inspectors were mostly interested in whether you knew about them. Nearly a year on, the tone has changed. The reforms aren’t the news any more. They’re the baseline, and inspectors expect to see them woven into everyday practice, not sitting in a policy nobody has opened since October.

What the 2025 reforms actually asked of you

The headline change was the Designated Safeguarding Lead. The role is now formalised: a named person, defined responsibilities, and proper deputising arrangements so that a trained lead is always available, including on the days the DSL is on leave or stuck on a training course. The era of “it’s sort of the manager, mostly” is over.

Alongside that came expectations for everyone else. Whole-staff safeguarding training is now the standard, refreshed at least every two years. If a bank staff member or the cook would struggle to say what they’d do with a concern, that’s precisely the gap the reforms were written to close.

The quiet duties that catch settings out

The headline changes get the attention, but the quieter duties are where we see settings slip. Safer recruitment is one: references sought properly, verified, and actually read, with recruitment procedures written down and followed even when you’re desperate to staff a room before September. Desperation hiring is exactly the moment the procedures exist for.

Then there’s attendance. Following up when a child doesn’t arrive is now a firm expectation, because a child who simply stops coming can be a child nobody can see. Holding additional emergency contacts for every child sounds purely administrative, and it is, right up until the afternoon the first number rings out and the second one answers.

None of this is complicated. All of it is checkable, which is exactly why inspectors like it. And embedding is tested in the corridors, not the office. An inspector who wants to know whether the reforms are real will ask the newest apprentice what she’d do with a concern, or ask the cook who the DSL is. If the answer comes back without hesitation, the paperwork barely matters. If it doesn’t, the paperwork won’t save you.

September 2026 is already in view

The reform programme didn’t stop in 2025. Strengthened safer sleep requirements arrive in September 2026, and settings that treat safeguarding as a rolling programme rather than a one-off scramble will absorb them without drama.

September also brings new staff, and induction is where the reforms either take root or wither. An induction pack that reflects the current duties, rather than the pre-2025 world, means your new starters never learn the old habits in the first place. It’s far easier than retraining them out of those habits in January.

If you’d like the whole picture in one place, our course EYFS Safeguarding Changes: What Every Setting Must Do walks practitioners and managers through each duty and what it looks like in practice, from DSL arrangements to absence follow-up.

A practical suggestion for the next few weeks: put one honest hour aside before the summer break. Check the named DSL and deputy arrangements are current. Check every staff member’s safeguarding training date falls within the last two years. Check references are on file for anyone hired since last summer, and that every child’s record holds more than one emergency contact. Whatever you find, September-you will be grateful.

The reforms asked a lot of settings in a short time. But underneath the paperwork sits a simple idea worth holding onto: children are safest when the basics are boringly reliable.