Accordion Legislation

Accordion Legislation

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United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child

An international framework that establishes the basic and fundamental rights of children and young people. It provides an internationally recognised set of standards that should be applied to all children.

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The Children Acts

The Children Acts in the UK are the core child protection legislation. They establish the fundamental rights of children and young people (based on the UN convention) and outline how these rights will be upheld. There are numerous Children Acts; the first being the 1889 Act, often referred to as “The Children’s Charter” but the most important ones for us are:

The 1989 Children Act

This act provides the foundation and framework of our current practice and systems and is still in force today.

The 2004 Children Act
Updated the 1989 act in the light if the lessons learned from Lord Lamings inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie

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Education Acts

There are numerous Education Acts, spanning back to 1833. The earlier Acts established compulsory education for all and addressed the age range for the education. In relation to safeguarding, recent Education Acts tend to focus on 2 key areas:
• Outcomes for children and young people
• Best practice for early years settings, schools and colleges

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Sexual Offenses Act (2003)

The Sexual Offences Act outlines different categories of sexual offences in relation to both children
and adults. For younger children (under 13) any sexual contact constitutes sexual abuse due to their age and developmental stage. For young people aged 13-18th birthday, a more nuanced approach that
recognises their developmental levels is applied.

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Safer Recruitment and Background Checking

The requirement to run background checks as part of recruitment of individuals to posts that provide
access to children and young people was established and developed in a series of acts that includes:

Protection of Children Act 1999 gave rise to the Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) Check that has now been
replaced by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Check.

Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 built on the 1999 Act (above) in the light of lessons learned from the deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman at the hands of lan Huntley who was the premises officer at the girls school.

Childcare Disqualification Regulations address the management of those deemed unsuitable to work with
children.

Protection of Freedom Acts 2012 developed background checking by clarifying which roles require checks and which to not. It seeks to balance the need to protect children with the right of the worker to privacy.

The requirement to DBS check is based on the person’s role. It is illegal not to check someone whose role requires a check and it is also illegal to check someone whose role does not qualify.

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Prevent Duty

Part of the Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the Prevent Duty requires a range of bodies including early years settings, schools and colleges to identify and report any concerns that they have about individuals who may be engaged in a process of radicalisation that draws them into violent extremism. The duty aims
address any group that seek to promote and advance a particular ideology using acts of violence
or terror. This would include but is not limited to:

• Religious (including those of no faith)
• Political
• Ethnic
• Cultural
• Other ideological causes (eg animal rights, environmental etc)
• Etc

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Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Duty

The FGM duty requires public bodies including early years settings, schools and colleges to report any case of suspected Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Strictly speaking the Duty requires reporting where:

• The victim is currently a child (ie under the age of 18)
• FGM has already occurred cases of FGM where the victim is now an adult can still be reported as cases of historic abuse.

Children at risk of FGM must still be reported under the duty to prevent significant harm (i.e. the section 47 duty to protect) rather than under the FGM Duty.

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Children and Social Work Act 2017

Billed as the most extensive development of Social Care practice for decades, the Children and Social Work Act (2017) has had significant impact on Social Work training, development and practice.

The most significant aspect of the Act for those outside Social Work roles is the replacement of
Safeguarding Children Boards with new Safeguarding Children Partnerships. It aims to strengthen mutli-agency working at the most senior level.

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Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018)

This multi-agency guidance addresses the responsibility of all local partners across the public, private and third sector to work together to ensure that children and young people are protected from harm and that their wellbeing is being promoted.

Working together to safeguard children is statutory guidance, so it is important for DSL’s to understand this document thoroughly

It is a reference document, so we do not need to be able to quote sections or section numbers, but it is important that we have a sound working knowledge of the guidance, such that we know where to find it and can, using the index, get to the information that we need quickly and confidently.

If we are in the position of thinking, “I wonder whether Working together has anything to say about this?” then we don’t know it well enough. We should be confident of what information it contains, but it is a reference document so we do not need to try to memorize the sections of the guidance.

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Keeping Children Safe in Education (2020)

This guidance is specifically aimed at early years settings, schools and colleges and is an excellent piece of guidance and like working. Although it may not technically be legally binding on all early years settings, dependant upon their legal status, we strongly recommend that all settings make use of the guidance.

The guidance consists of 2 parts;

• Keeping Children Safe in Education
• Keeping Children Safe in Education Part 1

As DSL’s we need to know the full version (not part 1 which is abbreviated version for our staff)

In addition to Keeping Children Safe (often abbreviated to (KCSIE), there is also the guidance from
Ofsted and in particular the document “Inspecting safeguarding in early years, education and skills settings” which is also an extremely helpful guide.