Safeguarding concerns children, young people, and adults at risk, and involves protecting them from harm, making sure that they are healthy, and recognising the signs when they might be at risk of harm. It also means creating safe environments and taking action if something doesn’t seem right.
The purpose of safeguarding is to ensure that these groups have the best chance at a safe and stable life and to ensure that they can learn and thrive without risk of harm.
People can experience many different kinds of harm. These include, but are not limited to:
- Physical abuse
- Emotional abuse
- Sexual abuse
- Neglect
- Online abuse
- Criminal exploitation
- Sexual exploitation
Those at risk also tend to be more at risk of mental health issues and self-harm. These are equally important concerns.
Safeguarding is everyone’s business. We should all know how to spot the signs and raise concerns to the appropriate people to keep ourselves and others safe.
However, those who work directly with vulnerable groups have a legal responsibility to uphold high safeguarding standards. They must participate in regular training and be aware of any updates made to statutory guidance. They should understand how they may confront safeguarding concerns in their individual job role, consider the unique situations they may confront in their workplace setting, and be aware of how technological innovations in their field may pose new risks.
Organisation responsibilities #
Safeguarding should always be both proactive and reactive. It is always essential to know how to react when a disclosure is made. At the same time, though, we need to take steps to recognise where safeguarding risks may arise and reduce them as much as possible.
This involves staying on top of statutory guidance and information from key safeguarding organisations. However, this alone is not enough. Guidance takes time to develop and can quickly become outdated. It also cannot cover every safeguarding issue or sign that may arise in a workplace with a unique setup. Therefore, companies should complete regular audits of their own organisation and remain alert to new or emerging concerns.
People in different job roles have unique, job-specific professional relationships with children, young people and adults at risk. This will therefore mean that they will have unique insights into risks and will notice different signs of harm. Therefore, companies should consult a range of different voices and refer to data from all sectors of their organisation to form safeguarding policies. These policies should include and build upon statutory safeguarding guidance and training to create comprehensive and robust procedures.
For more information, see the NSPCC’s curated list of resources.