Section 4: Understand the key principles of safeguarding and protecting children and young people

In this section you will learn:

• Key government legislation in relation to safeguarding and protecting children and young people.

• What constitutes good working practices for safeguarding.

• What is meant by appropriate and inappropriate behaviour with children and young people.

• The scope of own role and that of others in safeguarding and protecting children and young people.

Section introduction

In this section you will explore the key legislation that is in place in relation to safeguarding and child protection. These inform the policies, procedures and processes that will be in place within your own organisation. You will also revisit the best practice in terms of your own role in safeguarding, such as reflection, understanding boundaries and being aware of policy and procedural updates where required. A little more will be discussed about appropriate behaviour and how you should behave towards children and young people in your workplace. Finally, you will consider what your role is in safeguarding and child protection.

Key government legislation in relation to safeguarding and protecting children and young people

There are a range of policies and procedures that any organisation that works with children and young people will need to have in place. These policies and procedures must meet a range of legislative requirements, as the following table outlines.

Legislation

UN convention on the rights of the child Description

The United Nations convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). It is the agreement between all the governments in the world that defines the rights of children under 18 years old, the rights that children need to live a full life. At the heart of this convention is the idea that children are equal to and as important as adults and what they think, say and feel is as important too.

The Children Act 1989

Every Child Matters 2003 & Children Act (2004) The convention says that children should never be hurt in any way and there is a long list of human rights, such as ‘Every child has the right to life. Governments must do all they can to ensure that children survive and develop to their full potential’. In short, the list says all children should have houses to live in, someone to care for them, places to play and schools to learn. This is so they can develop their personalities, abilities, and talents to their own potential. It also says children should be looked after, especially when they get sick and the most important thing is that they need to be safe and happy. It is our government’s job to make sure the convention shapes how children are being treated and every adult who works with children needs to know the human rights that children are entitled to.

The Children Act 1989 is still relevant today because it gave every child the right to protection from abuse and exploitation. It makes it law for the right to inquiries when there is a suspicion that a child might be harmed. It also redefined the concept of parental responsibility, where the focus is on the parent’s duties to their child rather than the parent’s rights over their child.

In 2000 in London an 8-year-old girl, Victoria Climbié, was tortured and murdered by her guardians. Her case was one shocking example from a list of children terribly abused and mistreated. Her death led to a public inquiry and produced major changes in child protection policies in the United Kingdom. The Children Act 2004 made legal the recommendations from the report on Victoria’s death summed up in the ‘Every Child Matters’ (ECM) policy. It was designed to deal with poor coordination between agencies, information not being shared, the absence of a strong sense of accountability, frontline workers stretched too thin, poor management and no training. The ECM promotes multiagency working and sharing of information across agencies to better protect children from harm.

Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) This sets out what the above different professionals can expect from each other. Most importantly the guidance puts the needs of children and young people at its heart so that the system fits and responds to them and not the other way around.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and the Serious Crime Act (2015) The Serious Crime Act (2015) introduced a duty on all teachers and registered health and social care professionals to notify the police of any known cases where FGM has taken place on a child, ie, anyone under the age of 18. If you fall into one of these categories it is therefore your duty to

Prevent Strategy (updated 2021), as a part of the UK Government Counter-terrorism Act (2015) report it directly to the police, as well as notifying your designated safeguarding lead. The duty does not apply where there are concerns that a child may be at risk of FGM. With regards to the “observing of physical signs”, the guidance notes that it will be rare for professionals to see visual evidence and they should not be examining children.

The prevent strategy, published by the Government in 2011, is part of our overall counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST. The aim of the prevent strategy is to reduce the threat to the UK from terrorism by stopping people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. In the act, this has simply been expressed as the need to “prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. The prevent strategy requires those working with children and young people who spot any signs of radicalised behaviour to report these through their organisation’s safeguarding channels.

What constitutes good working practices for the safeguarding and protection of children and young people?

You have already learned about the key policies and processes of safeguarding and ensuring you are aware of the signs and symptoms of abuse. You have explored your wider responsibilities such as confidentiality, whistleblowing and raising concerns about colleagues where necessary. To aid your good practice in safeguarding you need to ensure that you are constantly working as a reflective practitioner. This can happen naturally, each day after you have completed your shift. It can also happen continuously throughout the day after each activity you have planned. You may wish to formally reflect upon your practice by keeping a journal of events and how you have dealt with them. Did you feel you dealt with them effectively? Did you feel that you had the appropriate support to deal with these events effectively and you knew what the procedures were at that time? Along with this, you can identify any training and developmental needs that you may require in terms of safeguarding practice and other elements of your own role when working with children and young people. Reflective practice is extremely important so that you can identify any areas that you feel you need to develop. It is particularly important in terms of safeguarding and child protection so that you are constantly up to date and aware of what you need to do and how you need to handle each situation. You will need to revisit safeguarding as part of your own training development at least annually or as updates are brought in. There are often changes to legislative documents such as Keeping Children Safe in Education. This document was changed in 2019 to include issues around ‘up skirting’ and ‘county lines’. It was also changed in 2020 to include information around safeguarding in relation to COVID-19 and again in 2021 where information about sexual exploitation amongst peers in schools and colleges was added.

Updates to legislation

Legislation and statutory guidance are updated regularly. Although your employer will provide training, it is up to you to ensure that you are up to date. Training is mandatory every 3 years, but you should update yourself more regularly than that.

Part of your good practice in safeguarding and child protection is being aware of your boundaries as a practitioner. You must follow your internal policies and procedures (as discussed earlier) and report to the appropriate designated safeguarding lead and offices within your own organisation. Do not take it upon yourself to approach other organisations or directly go to the parents/guardians without permission and support of the safeguarding team within your own organisation. On the other hand, you should be aware of your own organisations whistleblowing policy and how this protects you and the welfare of the children where are you have a continued concern that you feel is not being addressed appropriately.

What is meant by appropriate and inappropriate behaviour with children and young people?

You have covered this in section 1. Using the table in section 1 you can identify appropriate and inappropriate behaviour towards the children and young people in your care. In summary, you should ensure that you respect appropriate boundaries when working with children and young people. This includes avoiding favouritism and ensuring that you always work within appropriate boundaries of any relationships with those children and young people. Sometimes you will have personal family relationships with children and young people outside of the organisation. It is your responsibility to ensure that you disclose any such relationships to your seniors and that there is no impact upon your role and that it does not negatively impact the child being in your care or impact the other children in any way.

You should ensure that you use effective and appropriate behaviour management strategies with the children who you are working with. As we discussed in section 1, children and young people will exhibit a range of behaviours based on various factors and feelings. You also need to be vigilant against any bullying that is happening to children and young people. Your organisation will have a behaviour

management policy and there will be appropriate strategies within it that you must follow depending on the types of behaviour that you observe when you are working with the children and young people. If you are working in a school setting or with various schools on different days running their physical education programmes, you must ensure that you make yourself aware of what each settings behaviour management policy is and how to report any incidents while you are on their site. It is incredibly important that you show respect to children and young people at all times. This will also enable them to see how to show respect to other children and young people. This must be regardless of any gender identity that the child or young person shows, their cultural requirements, their additional needs and any other aspects about themselves. As a practitioner working with children and young people, you must ensure that you always stay within the boundaries of the policies and procedures set to you by your organisation. By following these policies and procedures you make sure that you are always staying within the law. The policies and procedures are there not just to protect the children and young people but also to protect you and the other staff members within your organisation. When working with children and young people, you must always have a positive attitude and aim to build positive relationships. As we discussed in section 1, there are aspects of life and factors in life that will determine how we may feel on a day-to-day basis. It is understandable that sometimes we may feel irritable, tired, or hungry and this can affect our mood in our job role. However, when working with children and young people, we are setting those expectations for the children and young people to follow and mirror. As practitioners it is important that we can separate our personal and professional lives.

The scope of own role and that of others in safeguarding and protecting children and young people

It is important that you are aware of how to keep children safe from abuse. Every organisation that you work with will have a child protection and safeguarding policy. You will need to find out whether you need to wear a badge, how to sign in and in what situations you may work with children. It is normal for organisations to insist that you should never be alone when working with children and you should be aware that this is important for your own protection from allegations too. As you build relationships with children and young people you may find that you feel it appropriate to hug a child in distress. Again, you should check the organisations approach and policy to this. In any case, while this might be appropriate with younger children, it is unlikely to be encouraged with older children. Sometimes a child or young person may tell you something that will raise a concern. It is important that you find out at the start of your job role or placement what you should do and who you should go to if this does happen.

Working with others

A large part of safeguarding is being able to work with others and communicate effectively. When researching serious case reviews, a lot of the issues in terms of practitioner handling of cases was due to poor communication between the teams. Your setting will have a process for recording and reporting information and no matter how small that information may seem at the time, it can build a picture of something that is happening to that child.

In your role you will find out quite a lot of personal information. Some of this information will be confidential and must not be shared with anybody outside of the workplace. You must not go and tell people in your family or any of your friends even if you think it is common knowledge because this impacts your position of trust within the organisation. An important skill that you will learn is remaining professional whilst also being friendly. Remember you can be friendly, but you are not friends. You need to build professional relationships with colleagues as well as the children, young people and family members. You will also have the opportunity to work with other professionals external from your own organisation. It is important to keep relationships at a reasonable distance as it will support you if you do need to raise any safeguarding concerns.