Next to education providers, the voluntary and community sector has the most amount of engagement with children and young people.  Many voluntary organisations put safeguards in place to protect children and are likely to be affiliated with an association for voluntary services but the smaller organisations can often feel overwhelmed by safeguarding procedures and fall short of what is required.

The Safe Network receives between 20,000-26,000 hits per month on the website and have sent out by request more than 21,000 ‘Are They Safe? packs' since the launch of Safe Network in 2009 and the Core Safeguarding Standards have been downloaded over 10,000 times since they were launched in February 2011.  The Safe Network regularly receives enquiries from organisations about specific safeguarding issues and we are able to offer help and advice via phone, email, website and twitter.

The unit provides accessible and quality resources for organisations to assess themselves against the core safeguarding standards.  Our web based facilities offer the opportunity to put together child protection policies and procedures in a step by step and easy to follow method.  Over 5000 groups and individuals have already registered.

How the Safe Network can work together with Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs)

The Safe Network would like recommend and welcome LSCBs to make use of our quality resources in supporting local voluntary and community partners.  We can also offer to work with you to develop localised Section 11 self assessment tools based on The Safe Network core safeguarding standards like we have done with several LSCBs in England.  The benefits being the added web based support that Safe Network provides for completing the paperwork required.

The core safeguarding standards have been adopted by a number of LSCBs in England to act as an essential component in their commissioning processes with voluntary and community sector organisations.  In Bexley for example, the Bexley Voluntary Council Service (BVSC) is working with the LSCB to support individual groups with their safeguarding arrangements. The LSCB has endorsed the Safe Network core safeguarding standards and is asking the voluntary sector groups they commission to work to them.

In June 2011 the Safe Network joined forces with Luton Safeguarding Children Board, Luton Borough Council and Voluntary Action Luton to build the capacity of Luton’s voluntary and community staff to meet the recommended standards for keeping children and young people safe.  Luton was able to use Safe Network’s free resources including Safe Network core safeguarding standards and the ‘Are they Safe? pack' to offer voluntary and community services a step by step guide to understanding and setting up their organisations safeguarding procedures.  The Safe Network was also able to provide Luton with a unique resource; a CD ROM ‘Keeping our children safe’: Raising awareness in black and minority ethnic communities’, which helps facilitators and trainers raise awareness of child protection issues in black and minority ethnic communities. 

Safeguarding case study: Working together in Luton

The core safeguarding standards include the need to prevent accidents and to run safe activities and events. To support these objectives the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) is delivering the Making the Link programme of mentoring support, training workshops and online information sharing and good practice. Further information on Making the Link website

Ofsted’s report on Local Safeguarding Children Boards good practice

Ofsted published a report on 15th September 2011 regarding LSCB best practice which identifies how important VCS organisations are to effective safeguarding.

Ofsted report: Good practice by Local Safeguarding Children Boards