Why It Is Important To Safeguard Children And Young People

It emphasises the important principles to be followed when working with children and young people: settings must provide a safe and secure environment, if any children are identified as suffering from abuse or likely to suffer the appropriate action must be taken.

Victoria Climbie’s tragic death highlighted how children are at the risk of being maltreated or abused. Lord Laming’s report covered the possibilities of what can propose danger towards children. It is not enough just keeping children safe from harm/danger or being bullied, but at the same time they should be able to enjoy their childhood, gain life skills, accept challenges and achieve to make their adulthood successful.

Identify the current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedures for safeguarding the welfare of children and young people.

It is everybody’s responsibility to safeguard children – This means every single staff member within a setting; irrelevant of what role they may have there. This also includes non-staff members, such as volunteers, student’s third-party companies (visitors, service providers etc). Each setting should therefore adopt their own safeguarding policy, of which has to be kept up to date and followed at all times.

- carry out medical examinations/observations of a child thought to be at risk of abuse.

Ensuring children and young people’s safety and welfare in the work setting is an essential part of safeguarding. While children are at school, practitioners act in ‘loco parentis’ while their parents are away. As part of their legal and professional obligations, practitioners hold positions of trust and a duty of care to the children in their school, and therefore should always act in their best interests and ensure their safety – the welfare of the child is paramount (Children Act 1989). The Children Act 2004 came in with the Every Child Matters (ECM) guidelines and greatly impacted the way schools look at the care and welfare of pupils. Children and young people should be helped to learn and thrive and be given the opportunity to

Safeguarding is for everyone and every organisation responsibility to protect children from any harm and promote their welfare (Children Act, 2004). However, the Department of Children, School

Today we use the term safeguarding instead of child protection because it covers a much broader range. These changes were influenced by the first Joint Chief Inspectors’ safeguarding report 2002 and formalised in the Every Child Matters legislation outlined in the Children Act 2004. By safeguarding a child or young person we ensure they get the very best of the opportunities available to them for them to achieve the best of their potential while keeping them safe from bullying, crime, accidents, neglect and abuse.

Child Protection aims at prevention and reactions in relation to exploitation, violence, and abuse against children. Children obtain protection against activities such as sexual exploitation, labor, trafficking, and harmful traditional practices. Most children are vulnerable to these abuses hence require much protection for full growth and development.

Unit 516 Understand Safeguarding of children and young people (for those working in the adult sector) P5

Decision made by an agency with Statutory Child Protection Powers (Police, LA or NSPCC) that emergency action may be necessary to safeguard child

9. Describe the role and responsibilities of the different organisations that may be involved when a child or young person has been abused or harmed.

Working together to safeguard children 2006 was a revised document which provided an update on safeguarding and the national framework to help services for children and agencies to work individually and also together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. It was also further revised in 2010 and also applies to those working in education, health and social services as well as the police and the probation service. It is relevant to those working with children and their families in the statutory, independent and voluntary sectors. It is not necessary for all practitioners to read every part of Working Together to Safeguard Children in order to understand the principles and to perform their roles effectively. However, those who work regularly with children and young people and who may be asked to contribute to assessments of children and young people in need and should know the relevant sections of this document. The vetting and barring scheme was introduced in October 2009 with the aim of preventing unsuitable people from working with children and young people. It assured anybody working or volunteering with children would have to register with the independent safeguarding authority (ISA). The ISA will make the decision whether someone is suitable or not to work with children and young people, they base their decisions on information sources like a criminal record bureau checks which gives full record of the individual’s criminal record,

Safeguarding children and young people refers to everything that we do to keep the children and young people healthy, safe and free from harm, always thinking about their welfare. The Every Child Matters policy and the five principles can help us to keep this in mind. These are:

Regarding developments to my professional practice; to improve my role and responsibility, I must continue to strive for further investigation into students and continue to follow my instincts, regarding an incident. It is my responsibility to ensure that students are safe and I must be able to adequately identify concerning behaviour exhibited by a child. The significant role of safeguarding as shown by Stanley (2009) displays the effect that can occur by disregarding certain behaviours. This could have long term impacts and could help facilitate neglect that may be experienced outside of the educational environment, if concerns are not raised by staff. Concerning student A, who has fallen through the safeguarding system an abundance of