Most safeguarding policies look fine on paper. They name the right frameworks, reference the right legislation, and cover the categories of harm an inspector or an audit would expect to see. They are also, in many cases, ten years behind the harms they need to address.
That is not a criticism of the people who wrote them. Safeguarding leads, HR Directors, athlete welfare officers — the professionals carrying these responsibilities are doing demanding, often distressing work, with finite time and resource. The policies they have inherited reflect the priorities of the period in which they were written. The problem is that the digital landscape has moved faster than policy refresh cycles can keep up with.
Social Media Resilience® offers safeguarding consultancy and audit services for organisations that want to close the gap between what their current provision says and what their people are actually navigating. Our reports are designed to be used, not filed. We deliver clear, practical assessments and recommendations — designed by specialists, grounded in current evidence, and built around the harms your people are encountering today.
What our consultancy and audits cover
Three core engagements, each scaled to the size and complexity of the organisation.
Digital safeguarding audit
A structured review of your organisation’s current safeguarding provision against the contemporary online harms landscape. We look at your policies, your reporting mechanisms, your staff training, and your culture — not as separate boxes, but as the integrated system they need to be.
Audits typically cover: alignment with current statutory guidance (KCSiE 2025, RSHE 2026, the Online Safety Act, VAWG, sector-specific frameworks for sport and the workplace); the specific online harms your population is most exposed to; your incident reporting and response pathways; staff confidence and capability across the topics that matter most; and the gaps between policy and lived practice.
The output is a written assessment with clear, prioritised recommendations — not a list of everything that could theoretically be improved, but a focused plan covering the actions that will make the most difference for your specific context.
Policy and framework review
Most safeguarding policies were written before the current generation of online harms existed in their current form. AI-generated intimate images, sextortion at scale, the dynamics of group chat coercion, algorithmic radicalisation, deepfake-enabled fraud and harassment — these need to be named, defined, and addressed in your policy framework. If they are not, your safeguarding provision is operating with blind spots.
Policy and framework reviews are smaller, more targeted engagements than full audits. We take your existing policies and frameworks, assess them against current evidence and statutory expectation, and return them with specific, well-evidenced amendments. The output is policy that holds up under scrutiny and reflects the realities your people are navigating.
Strategic consultancy
For senior leaders making decisions about how to invest in safeguarding capability — whether that’s a school MAT, a national governing body, or an employer reviewing their duty-of-care provision — we provide strategic consultancy on the questions that matter most. Where should the investment go? What does good look like in your sector? What are the early indicators of cultural and operational health, and how do you measure them?
This is the work that sits upstream of audit and policy review. It shapes the choices that determine what your safeguarding provision looks like for the next five years.
Who this is for
The framework is consistent. The application differs by sector.
Schools and Multi-Academy Trusts
For school leaders preparing for the September 2026 RSHE statutory framework, KCSiE 2025 implementation, or Ofsted/ISI inspection cycles, our audits give you a defensible, evidence-based picture of where your provision is strong and where the gaps are. For MATs, we work across multiple settings to identify system-wide patterns and bring trust-level provision up to a consistent standard.
Common findings in the schools we audit include: online safety provision that addresses passwords and grooming but not the cultural dimensions of misogynistic content, AI-generated abuse, or coercive control; reporting cultures where students don’t know what to do and don’t trust that disclosure will be handled well; and staff training that is several years out of date relative to the platforms students are using.
→ Online safety training for schools
Employers and HR functions
For employers — particularly those with significant duty-of-care exposure or with workforces that include working parents, public-facing communications teams, or employees experiencing gendered online harassment — our consultancy addresses the gap that EAPs and standard wellbeing programmes do not reach. We assess the cultural dimensions of online harm in your workplace, the adequacy of your harassment and grievance frameworks for AI-generated abuse, and the connection between your EDI strategy and the online culture your employees are navigating.
→ Corporate digital wellbeing programme
Sport organisations and governing bodies
For clubs, academies and national governing bodies, our consultancy addresses the safeguarding obligations specific to sport — athlete welfare, online abuse of officials and women’s sport, the digital dimension of grooming and exploitation in performance pathways, and the cultural conditions that either prevent or enable harm. We work with welfare officers, safeguarding leads and senior governance to bring sport-specific safeguarding provision up to the standard the regulatory direction increasingly demands.
→ Get in touch about sport consultancy
How we work
Every engagement begins with a free 30-minute scoping conversation. We use this to understand your context, the question you’re actually trying to answer, and whether we’re the right partner. If we’re not, we’ll say so — and where possible, point you to someone who is.
If we are the right partner, the engagement is structured around three principles. Evidence-led, not opinion-led: our recommendations are grounded in current research, statutory guidance, and the patterns we observe across the organisations we work with. Practical, not exhaustive: we give you a focused plan you can act on, not a comprehensive list of everything that could theoretically be improved. Confidential by default: nothing about your organisation’s findings is shared externally without your explicit agreement.
Engagements are typically led by Abi Edmunds, our Founder & CEO, working with our Senior Consultant Guy French and a wider team of specialists. Where the engagement requires particular subject-matter depth — in safeguarding law, educational psychology, the VAWG sector, sport welfare — we bring in associate specialists drawn from a network we’ve built specifically for this work.
Where to start
If you’re a school or MAT preparing for RSHE 2026 or reviewing your provision more broadly, the Schools page sets out our schools programme and how to book a scoping conversation.
If you’re an employer or HR leader reviewing duty-of-care provision or the cultural dimensions of online harm in your workplace, the Corporate Digital Wellbeing Programme page covers our approach to employer engagements.
If you’re with a sport organisation or governing body, book a discovery call and we’ll talk through what your team needs.
The first conversation is always free, and there’s no obligation either way. If a full audit isn’t the right answer for where you are, we’ll tell you what is.