Reviewing your safeguarding policies is vital for ensuring that they are not only up to date with current legislation, but to also ensure all staff and volunteers are aware of how to spot and report the signs of abuse and neglect.
What should be included in a safeguarding policy?
A safeguarding policy is a statement that makes it clear to all staff and volunteers in your organisation, as well as those you provide services to, that you are committed to providing services safely. Your policy should include what your organisation will do to promote the wellbeing and protect the safety and welfare of those in your care, and what all staff and volunteers (including trustees, directors and senior management) should do if they have concerns.
Some headings which you should include in your policy are:
- Introduction - Your introduction should outline the work your organisation does with young children and/or adults at risk. You should make it clear that you are committed to protect the safety and welfare of those you provide a service to.
- Named person within your organisation who is the Safeguarding Lead - This is where you will outline the name of your Designated Safeguarding Officer and their contact details.
- Recognising the signs and symptoms of abuse - It is important that your staff and volunteers understand the different forms of abuse that some children and adults at risk may experience, and the signs of this abuse.
- Responding to a safeguarding issue - It is important that your procedures provide some detail about how you respond when you are worried about a child/adult in your care.
- Responding to allegations of abuse - It is vital that allegations are taken extremely seriously. If you receive information that someone in your care is at risk of or experiencing harm, make sure your staff know how to respond appropriately.
- Safe recruitment - Ensuring you have a clear process for recruiting staff and volunteers should help reduce the risk of onboarding the wrong people. Even if you know someone very well, you must ensure they go through the same recruitment process as everyone else.
- Management and supervision of staff/volunteers - It is important all staff and volunteers have an opportunity to discuss any safeguarding matter giving them concern.
- Allegations against staff - All organisations should have procedures in place to ensure that any allegations made against their staff or volunteers is dealt with appropriately.
- Recording and managing confidential safeguarding information - Your policy should include a summary of the organisation's commitment to manage confidential information and a statement about the rights of those in your care to confidentiality, unless the organisation considers they could be at risk of harm. Records must be held securely with tiered access across the organisation.
- Distributing and reviewing policies - All organisations should have in place a system for distributing, displaying and reviewing their overall policies and procedures
Is your terminology correct and current?
Are all safeguarding contact names and details up to date?
Are any links still relevant and accurate?
Physical
Sexual
Psychological or Emotional
Financial and material
Neglect and acts of omission
Organisational
Discriminatory
Domestic violence
Self neglect
When should safeguarding policy be reviewed?
Your safeguarding policies should be reviewed every year or when changes are mandated by new legislation and/or statutory guidance to make changes and amendments to practise where necessary.
It's also a good idea to revise your safeguarding policy fully every three years to ensure everything is up-to-date and still meets the required guidelines.
6 key areas to review in a safeguarding policy
Reviewing and auditing your safeguarding policies for issues is vitally important for safety and compliance.
Below are 6 key areas to review in your safeguarding policy.
1.Is it current?
As we’ve mentioned, it’s important that your safeguarding policy is up to date with current safeguarding legislation and guidance. Your policy and procedures are only as good as the versions you’re using, which is why it can cause an omission if they are outdated.
Consider the following points when reviewing your safeguarding documents:
2.Avoid jargon and acronyms
The world of safeguarding is filled with jargon and acronyms, which can cause some confusion since it varies between different organisations. The same three letters can mean very different things to different people.
When you’re reviewing or updating your policy, look at what jargon and terminology you’re using. If something needs explaining, tell people what the acronym stands for so everyone can understand it and there should be no reason why something hasn’t been followed. If you can avoid using complicated, jargon heavy descriptions, this will massively benefit the readability of your policies.
3.Be guidance and legislation compliant
Make sure your policies are compliant with current legislation. Although you may review your policy annually, there is the possibility that changes can be made between reviews.
It is not sufficient enough to simply review and change things within your policy every May for example, you need to ensure your policy is updated as and when there are legislation changes.
4.Make your policies accessible
Do your staff and volunteers have easy access to your policies? If not, you will need to find an easy centralised location to store these policies. This can include utilising things such as an online drive, such as Google Drive or Microsoft Teams.
5.Key personal details
When you’re reviewing your safeguarding policies, you should ensure that it has key personnel included in it. This means it should clearly state who your Designated Safeguarding Lead is within your organisation.
If you have a bigger organisation, you should consider whether it is appropriate or not to have all of your safeguarding officers contact details within the documents. If you have safeguarding champions for example, how do your staff know who to contact?
6.Get the categories of harm right
The definitions of the types of harms children and adults at risk can face have increased in numbers, and some language can become outdated.
Categories have also changed, and these categories now, as of September 2023, include:
How do you know if your safeguarding policies are legally compliant?
A good way of knowing if your safeguarding policies are legally compliant is by regularly checking for updates. When you work in specific industries, such as healthcare and education, you may receive regular updates on legislations and policies.
However, if you are a Designated Safeguarding Officer, it will likely be your job to ensure that you are checking for policy changes, as well as updating your current policies.
How do you review a safeguarding policy?
To review your safeguarding policy, you should be looking at the kinds of work you do and ensure that the safety of the people you care for is central to your policy and processes.
You may want to have a one or two page document with basic principles and practical information which you can refer back to whilst you're reviewing the safeguarding policies. This can include different terminology to use, current legislation, key aims of your organisation and so on.
At The Athena Programme, we can review your safeguarding policy for you with bespoke policy and procedure, audits and reviews, as well as independent advice and guidance.
We work closely with a number of different organisations to understand their ability to respond to safeguarding effectively.
Safeguarding audits with The Athena Programme
Our consultancy services offer a wide range of benefits, from ensuring your policies are up to date with current legislation to streamlining your policies and reducing the amount of unnecessary jargon throughout.
If you would like to have a professional audit conducted on your organisation's safeguarding policy, feel free to contact us today to find out more.
At The Athena Programme, we will make sure your policies are fully compliant with legislation, whilst optimising your people and resources.