National Guidance

The legislation that we looked at in the previous section is important, and we will shortly be looking at the key principles that it outlines. However, the legislation is not written to help us do safeguarding well. That is the role of the guidance. The following guidance is helpful to us. You can click on the titles below and it will take you to the relevant document, but for now, just a simple overview of what these documents are will suffice.

Framework for the assessment of children in need and their families

This simple framework is extremely useful for giving us a structured way of identifying concerns and assessing needs. It provides a series of prompts that we use to consider different aspects of the child’s wellbeing.

Keeping Children Safe in Education

This guidance comes in 2 variants. The full version covers the management of safeguarding within educational establishments and is very useful for managers, safeguarding leads and others responsible for safeguarding arrangements.

Keeping children safe during community activities, after-school clubs and tuition: non-statutory guidance for providers running out-of-school settings – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

This guidance is provided for smaller organisations that provide out-of-school care, tuition, education etc.

Keeping children safe in education part 1 is an essential read for front line staff that contains a wealth of useful information. We recommend that all organisations follow the pattern in schools and early years settings of requiring all staff to read and confirm that they have understood this information.

Working together to Safeguard children

This guidance outlines how different agencies should work together to protect children across the Local Authority area. It outlines processes and practices that contribute to effective safeguarding.

What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused 2015

This document can be a very useful tool to give you a quick reminder of the basics of what we cover in this course.

Early Years Foundation Stage and Teacher’s standards

Both of these address safeguarding in the relevant sectors and contribute to providing health and nurturing environments for children and young people

Ofsted Education Inspection Framework and its related guidance Inspecting safeguarding in early years, education and skills settings

While this is obviously intended for organisations regulated by Ofsted, the principles that it outlines are very useful for managers and leaders across a wide range of organisations

There is also a wealth of themed information including:

Prevent duty guidance – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

FGM: mandatory reporting in healthcare – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Child sexual exploitation: definition and guide for practitioners – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

County lines: criminal exploitation of children and vulnerable adults – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Help young people avoid involvement in Serious and Organised Crime – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Optional additional information

The approach to safeguarding across the UK is slightly different in each country. While the approaches are all based on the same principles, they are slightly different and for those particularly interested in sharpening their skills, a brief overview of the Scotish materials may be beneficial in developing a broader perspective. It is important however that this is used only to deepen our knowledge. We must, of course, work to the English guidance aboove.

More information about this can be found here.