Safeguarding through Storytelling

Safeguarding Through Storytelling

When Time Is Precious, A Child’s Voice Is the Fastest Protection!

The fastest way to protect a child is to give them a voice.

Across the UK, children continue to be exploited, manipulated, and failed by the very systems designed to protect them. Grooming gangs, abuse, and safeguarding failures have left deep scars.

While inquiries are important, they take years. Meanwhile, children need protection now.

The fastest way to protect a child is to give them a voice.

At The Adventures of Gabriel, we believe safeguarding begins not with surveillance, but with self-expression. Our StoryQuest™ framework gives children the tools to name emotions, process experience, build self-worth, and most critically, be heard

Unlocking imagination, confidence, and resilience along the way.

Children were unheard

The Safeguarding Crisis Demands More Than Reports

Recent inquiries, have revealed what many already knew: children were not believed, their voices dismissed, and institutional silence allowed harm to persist.

Children were unheard — and so they were unsafe.

Now, we must act. Not just with more paperwork, but with prevention that works, in classrooms, in families, in communities. Storytelling offers that.

Why Storytelling Protects

Storytelling isn't just creative , it's protective. Research shows that when children are given safe, structured opportunities to tell stories including fictional ones they develop:

✅ Emotional Awareness: Understanding and articulating feelings is the first step in asking for help.
✅ Identity & Boundaries: Children who know who they are can recognise when someone crosses the line.
✅ Agency & Courage: Telling a story helps a child realise they can shape what happens next — in fiction and in life.
✅ Trust & Belonging: Safe storytelling builds relationships with adults who listen, believe, and care.

“I believed in myself and created things I didn’t even know I could do.”
— Year 6 pupil, Bradford

Download Your Free StoryQuest™ Starter Kit For Schools

This is safeguarding through connection. It is trauma-informed, inclusive, and immediate.

Backed by Leading Research

Pennebaker & Smyth (2016): Expressive writing reduces trauma and boosts mental wellbeing.
McAdams (2018): Narrative identity helps children develop coherence, agency, and resilience.
Children’s Commissioner (2019): Emotional literacy and self-expression are vital in preventing abuse.
Malchiodi (2020): Story-based interventions reduce anxiety and build coping capacity in children.
Lundy (2018): Children’s right to voice must be embedded in safeguarding practice.

⚠️ Inquiries Ask Why. Storytelling Answers "What Now?"

While politicians debate the past, children are still at risk. And yet, for the price of a workbook, a story dice, or a guided adventure, a child can begin to reclaim their voice.

We’ve seen this happen in Bradford schools. Children who once felt silenced wrote stories that revealed bravery, sorrow, humour, and hope. Teachers witnessed transformation, not through therapy, but through trust and creativity.

This is not enrichment. This is early intervention.

Join the Movement

If you believe every child deserves not just safety, but voice, dignity, and agency, we invite you to stand with us.

Having been a counsellor and psychotherapist working with children as well as adults for many years, I know that the most significant story is the one we tell ourselves and the agency we feel over writing our own future.

_ Cat Williams

I read this book with my eight-year-old daughter. We both loved Gabriel and Platys adventures which were fun and exciting. The underlying message from each story shone through with clarity.

____ A Mum

Children will love interacting with the stories and can use them as a springboard for their own adventures. Teachers will have in their hands a powerful teaching resource that they can use in so many ways. More importantly, anything that encourages a love of writing needs to be cherished. As a plus, there is a colouring book to further encourage your child's creativity.

____ Educationist

Who would step off the page if you were free to write your own next chapters and to dream?

____ Cat Williams

I have in my hands this beautiful book created by a 10 year old, a mum and a granddad. I have spent my life working in education. These stories are the result of a much deeper relationship between mum and son. Together they have found a novel way to write about love, feelings, resilience and hardship, always believing in the power to overcome adversity, no matter what.

____ Educationist

A really uplifting book with fun, fantastic adventures and beautiful illustrations.

____ A Mum

Gabriel and Kate perfectly illustrate the power of storytelling to “step off the page” and into your own imaginative world where healing and empowerment can be found, in-spite of, or even because of, your every day circumstances.

____ Cat Williams

The book reinforces beautiful values such as self-belief and trust. It inspires children to be resilient, and not give up, and that goals can be achieved with perseverance.

____ A Mum

Working with Kate was an absolute pleasure. The workshop was incredibly child-friendly. Initially, we were unsure how the children would respond to a ‘less structured’ writing approach, but the experience proved to be motivating, encouraging autonomy and creativity.

The session was well-planned and organised. It encouraged them to think and write like real authors, valuing their own stories as well as each other’s.

We would absolutely recommend this workshop. Thank you again for such a wonderful experience!

__A Head of English

This Is the Frontline of Prevention

Let’s not wait for another inquiry to tell us what we already know.

Let’s give children their voices, and with them, their protection.