Safeguarding Children/ Protection of Children Policy

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility:

Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to protect people, particularly children and beneficiaries of assistance, from any harm that may be caused due to their coming into contact with Adewunmipraise Foundation.  This includes harm arising from:

• The conduct of volunteers or personnel associated with Adewunmipraise Foundation 

• The design and implementation of Adewunmipraise Foundation’s programmes and activities

Child protection is a part of safeguarding and promoting welfare. This undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering or are at risk of suffering significant harm. As adults and/or professionals or volunteers, everyone has a responsibility to safeguard children and promote their welfare. Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children – and in particular, protecting them from significant harm - depends upon effective joint working between agencies and professionals that have different roles and expertise.

Individual children, especially some of the most vulnerable children and those at greatest risk of social exclusion, will need co-ordinated help from health, education, children’s social care, and quite possibly the voluntary sector and other agencies, including youth justice services. For those children who are suffering, or at risk of suffering significant harm, joint working is essential, to safeguard and promote the welfare of the children and – where necessary – to help bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against children. 

Definitions of abuse and neglect:

Abuse is defined as any action that intentionally harms or injures another person.

Abuse and neglect are forms of maltreatment of a child. Somebody may abuse or neglect a child by inflicting harm, or by failing to act to prevent harm. Children may be abused in a family or an institutional or community setting; by those known to them or, more rarely, by a stranger. They may be abused by an adult or adults or another child or children.

Physical abuse

Physical abuse may involve hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating, or otherwise causing physical harm to a child. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of or deliberately induces illness in a child.

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is the persistent emotional maltreatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent adverse effects on the child’s emotional development. It may involve conveying to children that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children. These may include interactions that are beyond the child’s developmental capability, as well as overprotection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction. It may involve seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another. It may involve serious bullying causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger, or the exploitation or corruption of children. Some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, though it may occur alone.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities, including prostitution, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including penetrative (eg: rape, buggery or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts. They may include non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of, pornographic material or watching sexual activities or encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways.

Neglect

Neglect is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to provide adequate food and clothing, shelter including exclusion from home or abandonment, failing to protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger, failure to ensure adequate supervision including the use of inadequate care-takers, or the failure to ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment. It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.

The organisation is committed to supporting, resourcing and training those who work with children and to providing supervision. The organisation is committed to maintaining good links with the statutory social services authorities.

Procedures

For reasons of consistency and practicality, the charity's procedures for safeguarding vulnerable children will be the same as those for safeguarding adults and young people except where the law, or the specific circumstances of an individual's need require otherwise.

How to report:

If you suspect any form of abuse this has to be reported immediately. You should report an actual or alleged incident promptly. This means as soon as is reasonably possible after it happens, or immediately after you become aware of it.

If something does go wrong, you should take immediate action to:

• prevent or minimise any further harm, loss or damage

• report it in writing and verbally to the safeguarding Lead: Omowunmi Gidigbi (email) adewunmipraisef@gmail.com.

We will then:

• Aim to immediately safeguard the individual.

• Report to necessary contacts such as Social services,  Care Services, the NHS and other organisations that may be involved with the individual.

• report it to the police (and/or other relevant agencies) once it has been suspected that a crime has been committed, and to any other regulators the charity is accountable to.

• Inform volunteers, members, the public, the media and other stakeholders, such as funders

• Review what happened and prevent it from happening again – this may include reviewing internal controls and procedures, internal or external investigation and/or seeking appropriate help from professional advisers responsibility for reporting serious incidents to the Charity Commission rests with the charity’s trustees.

The responsibility for reporting serious incidents rests with the charity’s trustees. However, if you feel that the organisation has not addressed the incident correctly or the suspected abuse is by one of the trustees or chair , you should report your concerns directly to the police (999)  and the Charity Commission (0300 066 9197).

Volunteer Staff awareness

All staff will be made aware of this policy as part of their initial induction process and there will be regular briefings and updates for all staff. Where necessary or possible, staff will be encouraged to attend appropriate educative sessions run by the founder. 

All volunteers and staff should:

• be alert to potential indicators of abuse or neglect;

• be alert to the risks which individual abusers, or potential abusers, may pose to children;

• Share and help to analyse information so that an assessment can be made of the child’s needs and circumstances;

• contribute to whatever actions are needed to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare;

• take part in regularly reviewing the outcomes for the child against specific plans; and

• work co-operatively with parents unless this is inconsistent with ensuring the child’s safety.

Reviewing the Policy and Procedure

This policy and procedure will be reviewed every year, this will include checking telephone numbers, the accuracy of personnel details, and any updates required by a change in local or national.

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