We are delighted to announce that the Safe Network has been granted further funding from the Department for Education to continue our work helping to keep children and young people safe in voluntary and community activities for another two years.
The successful partnership between NSPCC and Children England is being further strengthened by the addition of the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) as a third strategic partner – this will enable us to provide even greater support and advice to the sector.
However, like many services at present we have received some reduction in funding in comparison to previous years which means there will be some changes in the Safe Network team – more information about this will be available on the website and in the next newsletter.
We remain dedicated to supporting our existing voluntary and community sector partners and will also develop more targeted support to:
• Volunteer-led groups involving people new to working with children who are unfamiliar with safeguarding
• Black and Minority Ethnic and refugee groups
• VCS groups running activities in disadvantaged rural and urban areas
• Trustees of small local groups
• VCS organisations working with deaf and disabled children
• VCS organisations whose work with children is not the primary focus of their work.
We are currently in the process of recruiting and training a pool of local champions to support and endorse our core safeguarding standards in their local communities. We will also be recruiting national champions to address any gaps in the level of provision available through local champions networks.
We have also provided a CD ROM modular training package 'Safe organisations, safe children' to help assist groups in the implementation of the core safeguarding standards in their organisations.
We will actively support organisations in commissioning and delivering quality, cost-effective programmes that capitalise on the voluntary and community sector expertise plus aiming to continue delivering safeguarding training with the addition of ‘learning nuggets’ and master-classes to share expert knowledge.
The team will continue to produce high quality up to date and user friendly web based resources and will update both the Safe Network website and our standards accordingly to reflect relevant changes in legislation.
We will be busy putting together a detailed business plan that reflects the needs and priorities of the community and voluntary sector, so please sign up to our newsletter to ensure you receive the most up to date information and remember to register so you can have full access to the standards resources.
