When It Is Used
Use it when serious family safety concerns and adult safety actions affect a child and adults need a clear, agreed explanation that avoids unnecessary detail or minimization.
Words and Pictures Explanation for Child Safety Communication
Words and Pictures Explanation is a child safety communication tool for practitioners, caregivers, and relevant professionals. It helps them create an agreed, developmentally understandable narrative about serious worries, past events, current safety arrangements, and what adults are doing to keep the child safe.
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Tool guide
Learn more about this tool
Use this background section to understand when the tool fits, how practitioners use it, and what to consider before sharing it with clients.
What It Tracks
The tool tracks the narrative, the worries and safety arrangements it connects, participant agreement, section status, unresolved content, and prior agreed versions when the explanation changes.
Relevant Limitations
The tool does not determine truth, severity, blame, or clinical meaning. Exact wording, picture representation, and sharing method remain practitioner-authored.
Does the child complete this tool?
No. The child does not need a data-entry experience. The child-facing experience is receiving the agreed explanation when adults decide it is ready to share.
Can caregivers review the explanation?
Yes. A caregiver or professional review surface may allow invited adults to suggest corrections, identify confusing or unsafe wording, and indicate agreement or concern.
Does the tool write the explanation automatically?
No. The practitioner authors the exact wording and any pictures or child-facing presentation because the supplied specification does not define those details.
What happens if adults disagree?
The explanation remains unresolved and should not be marked agreed until concerns are resolved or clearly tracked as unresolved.