How to ensure one-to-one tutoring, coaching, and mentoring arrangements are safe for children.
One-to-one settings like tutoring, music lessons, and coaching create situations where children are alone with adults. While most are perfectly safe, these arrangements require clear boundaries and oversight.
Most one-to-one tutoring is safe, but risk concentrates where boundaries blur. Common patterns include: tutors who message the child directly rather than the parent, sessions that move to private rooms with closed doors, 'extra' free sessions, gifts, or trips that build secrecy, and online tutoring where the camera is off, recording is disabled, or the platform is one the parent cannot see. Risks also rise when no organisation sits behind the tutor — no DBS check, no safeguarding lead, no complaints route, no insurance. Keeping a parent on every channel, an open door, and a regular check-in conversation with the child catches most concerns early.
1. Verify background checks
Ensure all tutors and coaches have appropriate DBS checks (UK) or equivalent background screening.
2. Establish clear boundaries
Define where sessions happen, whether doors stay open, and how communication occurs (always via parents, not direct to child).
3. Regular check-ins
Ask your child about their sessions regularly and observe for any behavioural changes.
Last reviewed: 2026-03-29