Keeping children safe – making sure your organisation has the right things in place

Simon Massey, Head of Engagement & Learning at Children in Scotland, reflects on his work around child protection and safeguarding and makes some suggestions on points to consider when organisations are developing their systems and processes to keep children and young people safe.

It feels like child protection has really been on my mind over the past 18 months. That’s not to say we’ve had a sudden increase in concerns at Children in Scotland or we’re making more referrals, far from it, but I’ve definitely seen a bigger proportion of my time spent on child protection and safeguarding over that time.

To be fair, I have been making sure our own internal systems are properly embedded and working well (which, I’m pleased to say, they are), I’m in the final stages of finishing a fantastic piece of consultancy work with CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) and I’ve been in discussions with other organisations about updating some of their resources. But the thing that really focused my mind and motivated me to write this blog was a funding application I recently wrote and submitted.

Inspiration for the funding application came about from a small charity reaching out to us via email asking a few questions about developing their child protection policy. Unfortunately, this isn’t a service we offer but my head was completely immersed in safeguarding, and I was able to answer the questions quickly. This got me thinking about how there isn’t a great deal of support for charities in Scotland trying to make sure they’ve got things in place to be as safe as possible.

For context, I’m a social worker by training and have worked across both voluntary and statutory sectors, and, for a while, was a Child Protection Consultant for the NSPCC before becoming the head of a service called Safe Network providing safeguarding advice and support to the voluntary sector across England. I used this experience and knowledge, plus the evidence of need I’ve gathered recently, to develop what I hope is a strong funding application (please watch this space to find out if the application will be successful and we can launch a new project to support charities in Scotland…).

In the meantime, I thought I’d pull together a few key things about safeguarding and child protection from my perspective and provide you with some links to sources of information and / or support:

• It can feel scary and a massive responsibility, but there is helpful advice and information available – NSPCC (click here for more), Children 1^st/sportscotland (click here for more) and Creative Scotland (click here for more) all provide information covering different sectors. .
• Just take it one step at a time – have a look at what you already do (you’ll have more in place than you think!) and map out what gaps there are and how to fill them. I may be slightly biased because I helped write some of these resources, but the NSPCC’s ‘Getting started with safeguarding and child protection’ (click here for more) really is a good place to start and there is a self-assessment audit tool (click here for more) to help guide you.
• Some of the key things to think about include:
  • Make sure you’ve got an up-to-date policy and set of procedures
  • Safer recruitment
  • Running safer activities and events
  • Recording and storing information
  • Sharing information and working with other agencies
• Scottish Government’s National Guidance (click here for more) is a weighty tome but isn’t anywhere near as intimidating as it first appears! Use the search function within the Guidance to find exactly what you’re looking for, but also make use of the ‘Practice Insights’ (click here for more) which are drafted by frontline practitioners and managers, providing information on a range of topics.
• Don’t feel you have to do it on your own. Make sure all levels of the organisation are involved in developing systems and policies, and then implementing them. Seek support from similar organisations to yours, put out requests through your networks or check out what is happening in your local area via Child Protection Committees Scotland (click here for more). Other organisations will have either gone through reviewing their processes or be thinking about it and it can feel so much easier when you’re talking to others about it.

One of the key things that will help you increase your knowledge and confidence around child protection and safeguarding is looking out for training and development opportunities you can access.

Children in Scotland has got a range of free modules on our eLearning Hub (click here for more) and while they are not specifically about child protection, they do cover related topics such as GIRFEC, UNCRC, trauma-informed practice and building good relationships. While our partnership with the Open University in Scotland provides direct access to a whole range of free learning opportunities via our joint learning portal (click here for more). We have a well-established relationship with Barnardo’s who deliver our Child Protection Lead training (click here for more) – so helpful to make sure designated officers know what their role is. There may well be other learning opportunities in your local area so it’s worth looking around through your TSI Scotland Network (click here for more) or local authority.

It’s great to see so many organisations taking their responsibilities seriously and developing processes that meet their needs. Hopefully some of the information here will be helpful and fingers crossed that later this year, we can announce a new project to provide more advice and support!

Click here to explore Children in Scotland's training options