About Tracey Coop | Coach for Safeguarding Leads & Wellbeing Professional UK

ABOUT TRACEY

Let me tell you something that has absolutely nothing to do with coaching.

I once made a cake. A proper one — effort involved, the lot. Left it on the windowsill to cool. A robin flew in and shat on it.

I feel like that robin is a pretty accurate metaphor for what this work can do to you, if you let it.

Tracey Coop certified coach safeguarding and wellbeing professionals

I know how hard it is to work in these settings with little money, stretched teams, and impossible caseloads. I understand the nuances of looking after everyone else in student support, safeguarding operations, mixed economy institutions, and the emotional cost of doing this work well. This isn't something I read in a textbook, it's something I used to take home with me too...

MY STORY

There was a time I'd cover my emails with my hand.
I wish I could say metaphorically.

I was literally squinting at the screen, palm hovering, navigating to send a message without seeing everything that was waiting for me. I was a safeguarding professional. I held space for students in crisis every single day. And I was completely, not so silently, burning out.

One day a colleague found me at my desk in tears. She didn't fix anything. She just sat with me and said something I've never forgotten: "What would you say to me if you saw me this way?"

She was right to ask. I'd have marched her home myself and made her a brew while she called the GP.

Instead I dried my face, walked straight into a return to study meeting, supported a student through a serious mental health crisis, and helped them feel safe enough to come back to education.

Because that's what people in our roles do. We push through. We pour from an empty cup and make sure everyone else has what they need — then wonder why we're running on fumes.

I went off sick for ten weeks straight after that.

To put that in context: in 2020, when the pandemic hit, our entire team was furloughed. Except me and the Head of Department. We held the whole thing together between us — students in crisis, a world falling apart, just the two of us. I didn't stop to think about whether that was sustainable. That's what you do, isn't it. You just keep going.

In 2023 I was sitting in board meetings negotiating an institutional merger that could have cost me my job, my home — I live at work — and everything I'd spent fifteen years building. At the same time I was receiving an autism diagnosis. At the same time I was going off sick with burnout. Sometimes it all happens at once.

With the support of that friend and my manager, I gave myself something I hadn't in years — permission to put myself first. I sobbed. I rested. I felt lighter than I had in what must have been years.

Through an Access to Work grant, I was awarded ADHD coaching for a year. And it changed my life. Not just how I managed my days and my team — but how I understood myself. It wasn't long after that I also learned I was autistic. Coaching helped me make sense of that too.

That coaching set me on the path I'm on today. After twenty years in roles caring for others, I'm now a qualified coach. And I work with people in exactly the roles I used to hold — because I know what it costs to be the person who holds it all together for far too long.

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WHY I ACTUALLY GET IT

I've been in the room.
The actual room.

Since 2008 I've worked in residential life, student services, and safeguarding in higher and further education. I'm currently the Residential Student Support Manager and Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead at a land-based institution, with Ofsted responsibility under the Social Care Common Inspection Framework for FE college residential provisions. I know exactly what that means — and so do you.

I know the weight of a Friday afternoon disclosure. I know the particular exhaustion of navigating institutional politics while simultaneously trying to do right by vulnerable young people. I know what it's like to hold a team together through redundancy, merger, more redundancy, and a complete redesign of professional services — and keep showing up anyway.

Between 2019 and 2024 I sat on the board of governors for two elected terms. We navigated COVID. We negotiated an unprecedented merger. I advocated for safeguarding and student and staff wellbeing in every single decision. I know what it looks like when the people making the decisions forget about the people those decisions affect.

Since 2012 I've been involved in safeguarding operations across mixed economy HE and FE settings. I've dealt with student death. I've supported staff through sectioning processes. I've sat in Team Around the Family meetings involving child sexual exploitation and serious risk in the community. I've investigated sexual misconduct. I've supported students through end of life attempts, domestic abuse, dependency, and acute mental health crises.

I know what this work actually contains. Not the version that goes in the policy document — the version that keeps you up at night.

I also know how hard it is to do this work in an underfunded, understaffed, specialist institution. I know the impossible maths of being asked to do more with less, year after year, while the students you're supporting get more complex and more in need. I have lived every single thing your job asks of you.