At The Athena Programme, we are proud that our consultancy has a unique ability to build in the ‘reality factor’, ensuring products are the least impactful on the day-to-day business but yet maximise existing resources.
What safeguarding consultancy can include
Safeguarding Audits, Reviews and Investigations
Policies and procedures
Advice and Guidance
Safeguarding consultancy is essential for any organisation that feels that their safeguarding procedures require development or inspectors have highlighted gaps or risks that need immediate attention.
What does a safeguarding consultant do?
A safeguarding consultant's acts as a compassionate critical friend which involves helping to develop and embed the best safeguarding practices into organisations, no matter whether you work with children and young people, carers and guardians and adults at risk or all!
At The Athena Programme, our consultancy services offer a vast range of benefits for safeguarding compliance, bespoke policy and procedures, audits and reviews and independent advice and guidance. We work closely with your organisation to understand culture and capacity to respond to safeguarding.
Areas of safeguarding we support you with
We offer a consultancy service that is bespoke, personal and tailored to your specific organisations needs and providing a strategic overview for safer processes.
We offer support in a variety of different of areas, including:
Developing your safeguarding policies and procedures
Creating safer practice toolkits and handbooks for staff and volunteers to use
Completing audits to help optimise your resources and be inspection ready
Training your designated safeguarding leads to keep knowledge updated throughout the process
We also provide train the trainer models that help to facilitate sustainability, durability and safer cultures.
How does safeguarding consultancy work?
Safeguarding consultancy works by having an independent review conducted on your organisation's safeguarding culture, which includes a review of policies and procedures.
This is usually smaller than a full scale audit, and it involves liaising with staff and reviewing all relevant documentation to provide you with a clear understanding of what is and isn’t compliant.
After this, we can help you to build on good practices and identify any areas which need to be improved or amended. Our safeguarding experts will support you to rewrite, refresh or review your organisations safeguarding policies to ensure they’re compliant with all appropriate legislation.
Why do organisations need safeguarding consultancy?
Safeguarding consultancy is vital for organisations to ensure a safer culture, safer processes and safer staff, volunteers and most importantly to ensure the safety of service users.
Enlisting the help of an external expert safeguarding consultant helps you to ensure all of your policies are up-to-date and in line with the most recent changes or amendments in legislation.
An external review provides an independent view of your safeguarding activity and will provide you with an expert forensic unbiased assessment of your current safeguarding culture.