Prevention programmes underpin every child's right to "feel" safe and to "be" safe from all forms of harm. Delivered in schools across the globe, they aim to equip children with knowledge about safety and the skills to seek help early. By drawing upon international prevalence and impact research, as well as the legal, policy and curriculum context, this short study argues that preventative education should be both a pastoral and academic priority in the early years classroom and that the cost of violence and abuse, in both human and economic terms, is so significant that even marginally effective intervention programmes could be viewed as cost-effective.