Safeguarding

Voluntary and community groups play an important role in providing services and activities for children, young people and adults. In UK law, someone is a child until they are 18 years old. It is essential that the services and activities your group offers are as safe as they can be, and to ensure this, there is a need to have safeguards in place.

Having safeguards in place will help your group protect children, young people and adults from harm and abuse as well as help staff and volunteers know what to do if they are worried or concerned about a child or adult.

Wales Safeguarding Procedures

The new Wales Safeguarding Procedures launched this week provide guidance to practitioners involved in safeguarding on how things should be done. The attached FAQ document provides more background information on the procedures and how to access them.

Wales Safeguarding Procedures Frequently Asked Questions

Safeguarding Duties for Trustees

Protecting people and safeguarding responsibilities should be a governance priority for all charities. The following is a link to guidance which will support trustees to put systems in place that will protect all who come in contact with their organisation.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/safeguarding-duties-for-charity-trustees

Training

CVSC All Wales Basic Safeguarding Training

An introductory level, basic course to raise awareness of what everybody needs to know about safeguarding. It is specifically targeted at voluntary and community groups and is suitable for those with little or no knowledge of safeguarding in the wider sense. The session will equip you with the basic principles and where to go, if you need more information or specialist training. Click here for more info

Internet Safety

The Stop it Now public awareness campaign is aimed at tackling the increased viewing and sharing of illegal images of children.

The campaign website offers a wide range of resources and information to help people stop viewing and sharing sexual images, and to support the families and friends of people who access sexual images of children.

The following links have been provided by Conwy Youth Service to help with internet safety.

Internet safety settings:

Facebook family safety centre – https://www.facebook.com/safety

Information around cyber bullying – http://www.bullying.co.uk/cyberbullying

Google family safety page – http://www.google.co.uk/goodtoknow/familysafety/

Skype Security page – www.skype.com/en/security

Core info: A series of leaflets on aspects of physical and emotional child abuse

The NSPCC has produced a series of leaflets for professionals on physical and emotional child abuse. The NSPCC working in collaboration with the Cochrane Institute of Primary Care and Public Health (situated in the School of Medicine at Cardiff University) have undertaken a series of systematic literature reviews on a series of topics such as physical abuse and neglect. These reviews bring together the best evidence available on a given topic, providing an evidence base for professional decision making.

The findings from these reviews have been concisely summarised in a series of leaflets. These leaflets provide key information for professionals to help inform their assessments and decision making. Currently the NSPCC has information available on the following topics:

North Wales Safeguarding Board

North Wales Safeguarding Children Board

North Wales Safeguarding Adult Board

The Board has the overall responsibility for challenging relevant agencies in the area so that:

There are effective measures in place to PROTECT children
There is effective inter-agency co-operation planning and delivering protection services and in sharing information
Anticipating & Identifying where there may be individuals affected and work with service providers to develop earlier identification and preventative services
Promote effective multi agency support services
Promote inter agency approaches to working with community groups and organisations where there may be populations at risk of harm
Using inter-agency training and dissemination of learning and research to help build a more confident and knowledgeable multi agency workforce

Find more here: Children’s Board

The objectives of a Safeguarding Adults Board are:

To protect adults within its area who have needs for care and support (whether or not a local authority is meeting any of those needs) and are experiencing, or are at risk of, abuse or neglect,
To prevent those adults within its area becoming at risk of abuse or neglect

Find more here: Adults Board