Safeguarding is one way the United Kingdom Government fulfils its commitment to keep children safe in the spirit of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Safeguarding includes a wide range of preventive activities including child protection (Devaney & Spratt, 2008). With primary care health professionals having issues identifying and reporting child protection concerns to social services, plus a paucity of safeguarding research studies (Cowley.et aI, 2013), and the relationship between safeguarding and child protection never being defined (Hall & Williams, 2008), this thesis explores understanding of the term 'safeguarding children' and the safeguarding role of two professions considered vital to safeguarding children: General Practitioners and Health Visitors (HM Government, 2013). With public health approaches increasingly advocated to address child maltreatment (for example, CDC, 2006) the thesis discusses the implications of findings for safeguarding children, policy and practice within a public health approach in Northern Ireland. With a pragmatic worldview the study used a sequential exploratory design. Phase one of the study used the focus group method; phase two used the mixed mode survey method. Overall results illustrate different professional understandings of safeguarding and difficulties identifying a range of safeguarding concerns. While results indicate some support for the promise of a public health approach many requirements remain outstanding if children are to be safeguarded and protected in the way aspired to by Northern Ireland's current safeguarding policy.