A note on language. When we refer to employees in this web page we may be referring to both paid and unpaid colleagues, so both staff and volunteers. When we refer to ‘service users’ we mean anyone who uses your organisations services, or benefits from the work you do, that you have direct contact with – either in person, online or over the phone. Some organisations call these people customers, clients, members, attendees etc.

What is Safeguarding?

Safeguarding is a word for the principle and process of protecting people from harm, using an ‘appropriate measure’. In practice this means taking steps to protect people from harm, abuse, and/or exploitation. For some good explainers of different forms of abuse, harm and exploitation take a look at Safeguarding Resources & Guides – ACT (anncrafttrust.org)

Who do we Safeguard?

Morally, individuals and organisations should take steps to safeguard anyone and everyone, however certain people can be statistically more at risk of harm, abuse and/or exploitation and may also be less able to protect themselves from it or tell someone when it is happening. We are legally required to take additional measures to safeguard two groups of people with this in mind – children and vulnerable adults (now often referred to as ‘adults at risk’).

Defining children is easy, anyone under the age of 18 is a child, but with this in mind it is important organisations know the ages of the people they are working with.

The definition of a ‘vulnerable adult’ is more complex. In the eyes of the law and the professional bodies responsible for adult safeguarding, this is generally understood to be adults with a care or support need, that they cannot meet on their own, whether this is being met currently or not. To be an adult with a support need someone is likely to have an illness, disability and/or be an older person. In recent years there has been a move towards talking about ‘adults at risk’, rather than ‘vulnerable adults’. Currently the Childrens’ Act 2004 and The Care Act 2014 are the legal acts that underpin safeguarding practices in England.

How do we Safeguard?

Legally every single person has a responsibility in safeguarding. In your organisation this means everyone from your newest volunteer to someone you subcontract to deliver a piece of work, to your most senior manager, to your board of trustees, has a responsibility and a role to play.

In practice we may take on different roles and responsibilities for safeguarding in both our personal lives, and our volunteer or work lives. In our volunteering and work lives these roles and responsibilities should be agreed upon with our employer and outlined in a Safeguarding Policy and Procedure.

Safeguarding may involve:

• Writing and implementing a Safeguarding statement, and policies and procedures
• Ensuring staff and volunteers have access to and understand the above, and have appropriate safeguarding training for their roles and responsibilities
• Assigning someone in your organisation’s staff team as designated Safeguarding Lead, and a Deputy Safeguarding Lead (and if you’re a Charity a Trustee with responsibility for Safeguarding)
• Creating an environment where people feel safe to speak up about safeguarding issues
• Being vigilant to warning signs that someone may be being harmed, abused or exploited, either within you organisation or outside of it
• Responding appropriately and quickly to disclosures of harm, abuse or exploitation
• Passing safeguarding concerns onto the relevant safeguarding team within your local authority
• Working as needed with local authority services with a safeguarding responsibility (the police, social services and health services), and your local Safeguarding Board
• Implementing and practicing safer recruitment practices, which may involve obtaining the correct DBS checks for roles where this is legally required, and allowed
• Developing expected behaviours of staff and volunteers, ensuring these are communicated and understood, ensuring adequate supervisions are in place, and addressing with urgency and confidence if someone does not adhere to any expected behaviours
• Careful consideration and risk assessment of any lone working practices
• Working collaboratively with any partners, sub-contractors, hirers where responsibility for safeguarding is shared
• Alerting our Local Authority Designated Safeguarding Officer, the Disclosure and Barring Service, and the Police if we feel a colleague within our organisation poses a risk to children and/or adults at risk.

Writing and Implementing a Safeguarding Policy Statement and Procedure(s)

No matter how informal or small your organisation is if you do any work with children, and/or vulnerable adults, you will need appropriate Safeguarding Policies and Procedures. In addition, if you are seeking funding many funders will require this of you and ask to see them.

Whether an organisation opts to have separate adult safeguarding and child safeguarding statements, policies and procedures, and what is included in them is largely up to organisations themselves and will depend on who they work with, and how. However, all organisations will involve adults as paid employees, volunteers or both – and adult safeguarding can be as much about protecting ourselves and our colleagues as our service users. In addition, we, or our colleagues, may be at some point in our working or volunteering lives ‘an adult at risk’. So, for best practice, organisations should have at least something on adult safeguarding.

For organisations working with both children and adults in a more involved way (such as youth services) it may be necessary, and sensible, to have separate child and adult safeguarding policies and procedures – as both will need to be in quite some depth. An organisation that’s whole purpose is to provide services for vulnerable adults (such as an older people’s charity), and never works with children, may have a stand-alone, and very in depth adult safeguarding policy and procedure. Most organisations working with children will also have contact with adults (as their parents or carers), so it is sensible to include adult safeguarding policies and procedures in addition but organisations who focus on supporting children (such as childcare services) are likely to have very in-depth safeguarding children’s policies and procedures within this.

A Safeguarding Policy Statement is your organisation outlining its awareness of its safeguarding duty, your commitment to this and how you will fulfil this commitment. It tells everyone working or volunteering within or for the organisation, and an organisations’ service users, what to expect.

Safeguarding Procedures outline exactly who does what, and when, in response to a safeguarding concern or disclosure.

For guidance on how to write a Safeguarding Policy and Procedure take a look at guidance online (such as Writing safeguarding policies and procedures | NSPCC Learning) and examples from other organisations.

It is important that your safeguarding policy and procedure is:

• reviewed regularly – we suggest every year or anytime your organisation changes significantly.
• is communicated widely – we suggest making it available on your website if you have one.
• is understood – we suggest discussing it within your safeguarding training for employees and giving space for people to ask questions.
• isn’t the only thing you do – weaving safeguarding awareness into induction, training and supervisions.

Safer Recruitment

Safer recruitment is a set of practices to help make sure your staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children and/or vulnerable adults.

It can involve:

• How you describe the role and responsibilities in a role description
• The questions you ask on an application form
• The questions you ask in an interview
• Who is on the interview panel, and who has final say on recruitment decisions
• The references you ask for, who decide can act as a person’s reference and the questions you ask them

In some instances, depending on the role, it can involve:

• Having an additional Recruitment of Ex-Offenders Policy and Procedure
• Asking people to disclose to you any unspent convictions
• Asking for people to agree to a DBS check*
• Conducting a risk assessment before placing someone into a role
• Refusing someone for a role due to things disclosed by them, or their DBS check

*Working out whether a role you are advertising for is eligible for DBS check, and which of the various checks, can be complicated. To help we have created a (web page or resource once confirmed) explaining more about this and who can help.

If you or your organisation would like help with understanding and enacting your safeguarding responsibilities, you can get in touch with us at info@voscur.org

For further support and useful reading, we suggest looking at:

Safeguarding children and child protection | NSPCC Learning

Keeping children safe in the voluntary and community sector | NSPCC Learning

Disclaimer

We make every effort to ensure that our information is correct at the time of publication. 

This is only intended as a brief summary of relevant issues and information. Legal advice should be sought where appropriate. The inclusion of other organisations in this information does not imply any endorsement of independent bodies, they are just for signposting purposes.

Voscur is unable to accept liability for any loss or damage or inconvenience arising as a consequence of the use of this information.