- reasonable measures are taken to minimise risks of harm to children’s welfare
- appropriate actions are taken to address concerns about the welfare of a child or children, working to agreed local policies and procedures in full partnership with other local agencies
Supplementary guidance for inspecting safeguarding in non-maintained settings
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Definition of safeguarding
All settings have statutory duties to operate in a way that takes into account the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The arrangements that settings have in place need to ensure that:
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is concerned with:
- protecting children from abuse and neglect
- preventing impairment of their health or development
- ensuring that they receive safe and effective care
This is to enable children to have optimum life chances.
Everyone who works in education shares an objective to help keep children and young people safe. When inspecting a provider’s safeguarding arrangements inspectors should consider how effective the setting is in the following:
- creating and maintaining a safe learning environment for children
- identifying where there are child welfare concerns and taking action to address these, where appropriate, in partnership with other agencies
- the development of children’s understanding, awareness, and resilience through the curriculum
Achieving this objective requires systems designed to:
- prevent unsuitable people from working with children
- promote safe practice and challenge poor and unsafe practice within the provision
- identify instances in which there are grounds for concern about a child’s welfare arising from home, community or setting, and initiate or take appropriate action to keep them safe
- contribute to effective partnership working between all those involved with providing services for children
Child protection
Child protection is a part of safeguarding and promoting welfare. This refers to the activity which is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering or are at risk of suffering significant harm as a result of abuse or neglect.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding covers more than the contribution made to child protection in relation to individual children. It also encompasses issues such as:
- the safe recruitment, supervision, training and management of staff
- how staff manage children’s behaviour
- how well the provider monitors children’s pattern of attendance and engagement with the provision, which is able to identify quickly unexplained medical conditions, unusual absences, and disappearances
- children’s health and safety and wellbeing, on and off-site
- bullying, including cyberbullying
- arrangements for meeting the needs of children with medical conditions
- promoting healthy relationships
- child sexual exploitation
- forced marriage
- preventing radicalisation and extremism
- trafficking
- signposting victims of abuse to appropriate help and support
- mandatory reporting duty for female genital mutilation
- drugs and substance misuse
- e-safety
The Welsh Government has issued specific statutory requirements about many of these issues. There may also be other safeguarding issues that are specific to the local area or population.
Where there are statutory requirements, settings should already have in place policies and procedures that satisfy those and comply with any guidance issued by the Welsh Government. Similarly, arrangements about matters on which the Welsh Government has issued guidance should be evidenced by policies and procedures that are in accordance with that guidance or achieve the same effect.