Why are we worrying about safeguarding children?

Because the welfare of children is important to us all.

And because Ofsted will inspect all schools and evaluate each school’s performance by reference to its procedures for the safeguarding of children and their effectiveness in achieving that safeguarding.

 

Meeting the requirements of the 2006 DfES Guidance:

“Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education”

This document took effect on 1st January 2007.   We should have a copy of it in every school.

The new Guidance runs to 120 pages. It brings together and replaces almost all of the previous guidance, except the hideously-titled “What To Do If You’re Worried A Child Is Being Abused”.  

The new Guidance covers:

• Safeguarding Children in Education
• Recruitment and Selection
• CRB and similar vetting checks
• Dealing with allegations against staff
• Some other related issues such as physical restraint on pupils, domestic violence and forced marriages

 

Safeguarding Children in Education

Safeguarding Children is bigger than just child protection.  It covers:

• Protecting children from maltreatment
• Preventing impairment of children’s health or development
• Ensuring that children are provided with safe and effective care
• Doing all this so that children have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully.

For schools, it also covers pupil health and safety and the prevention of bullying.

Under the new Guidance, heads and school leaders must:

• Ensure that the approved local polices and procedures are actually implemented in school.
• Ensure that staff have time to follow up child protection issues
• Ensure that all staff and volunteers feel able to raise concerns about poor or unsafe practice with regard to children, including as “whistleblowers”.

 

Safeguarding Children
in the Recruitment and Selection of Adults

This applies to:

Teachers
Learning Assistants
Other full-time staff
Part-time staff
Seasonal staff
Office staff
Governors
Volunteers and Helpers and
Contractors

The test is this:  Is this person likely to be someone the children will expect to be able to trust? If so, vet them first.

People who do not need vetting include:

• Visitors and Contractors who will not expect to have unsupervised access to children
• Volunteers and Parents who are just helping with an event like sports day or a concert or an outing not involving overnight accommodation
• Existing trusted staff
• Staff who have worked very recently in another school (where we can presume they were vetted or didn’t need vetting)

Every school needs to have a Recruitment and Selection Policy Statement.

There is a lot of other detailed advice in the Guidance and every school needs to be seen to be taking that on board. The job descriptions, person specifications, job adverts, interview procedures, etc etc all need to put safeguarding high on the agenda. 

Many schools involve the pupils in the selection process, but I think the only real reason for doing that is to test the candidate’s rapport with the children.

The Guidance lists the pre-appointment checks needed before a job is offered to the (otherwise) successful candidate:

Every school needs to have a single Central Record of all staff and all the checks you have done.

Every school needs to have a procedure for dealing with allegations against staff.

 

Individual Children

For issues relating to the safeguarding of individual children see the DfES leaflet with the title: “What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused”.