Key Practitioner Messages Safeguarding supervision was viewed as a child‐focused, helpful activity that has led to practice improvements. Negative comments were in the minority and related to perceptions of its intrusive and punitive nature, the time involved and competing priorities. Improvements advocated were that safeguarding supervision should include discussion about children whose care is problematic but who are not subject to formal child protection proceedings.

This exploratory, qualitative study was designed to be the first stage of an action research project to investigate whether graduates from BSc children's nursing programmes are sufficiently prepared to assess children's emotional health. Early identification of children's and young people's emotional problems is important for timely interventions to be initiated. Data were gathered from a focus group and a series of semi-structured interviews and interpreted using thematic analysis approaches. The findings indicated those interviewed can recognise when a child was emotionally unwell, reporting that assessments were brief, subjective and completed without the use of age-appropriate assessment tools. It is concluded that assessment of a child's emotional health appears to take low priority in comparison to its physical counterpart.

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