This week I seem to have had lots of meetings about training of workers in child protection/safeguarding and setting some quality standards for groups. Sound heavy?
One of the realities we face these days is that everyone looks at those of us working with children and young people through spectacles of, not sure what colour! People will always ask "Have your workers/volunteers been CRB checked?", even though many people do not know exactly what it is, they do know it is about their child being safe in your hands.
So what should you know about safeguarding young people and children? What policies should you have in place? How can you be confident that everything is in place as it should be?
Well there is loads of stuff out there, not least by people like CCPAS (Churches Child Protection Advisory Service) and the local authority, or your voluntary organisations, which is certainly true across this diocese.
I am working with various people at the moment to do two things:
Firstly, to produce some very simple standards, the basics of what you need in place to be ensuring you are working in a way that shows you meet some minimum standards. Not just giving you a list, but providing you with samples of what you need in place. It is easy for the big organisations who can employ people to do it, but where we have volunteers working away, giving their all we want to help you meet these things without killing yourselves off.
The second thing is training, we need to ensure that everyone who works with children and young people knows what safeguarding means, what they need to be aware of, and what they need to do if they see or suspect there is a young person who needs extra support.
We already have guidelines on the website to support you, but hope that very soon we can offer a coherant package to support every parish and group in its work with and for children and young people.
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