Explain child protection in the wider concept of safeguarding children and young people. Safeguarding of children is known as an umbrella term which means it involves everything to ensure the health and safety of the children.
Safeguarding of a child is priority, whether it to be at home, nursery, youth clubs, in a social setting or in someone else’s care. Also whether it is an adult they know or don’t know or even another child, knowing the welfare of each individual child is paramount.
In doing this there are many policies and procedures to follow regarding a child’s health and safety, in which companies have to enforce these policies and procedures in a child based setting. When a child based setting is recruiting new members of staff there are many checks that they need to do, the main check is their DBS checks commonly known as their CRB to ensure they have no criminal convictions, ever been on a sex offenders list or are a general risk to children.
Communication with a child’s parent is so important when it comes to a child’s welfare knowing how the child’s home life is and any concerns the parents may have about their child. Having a good working relationship with the parents and getting to know them is key, they are entrusting us with the welfare of their children. It is a difficult transition for parent sending their children to nursery for the first time knowing that their child is going to be safe and their well-being is going to be well cared for is reassuring to them.
Making sure a child’s welfare is safe in all aspects of life is a vital part of their development in their learning capability, in their confidence and in the long term impact into adult hood.
It is important that all staff know the correct policies and procedures if they have cause for concern, finding ways to do this is updating safeguarding polices regularly and retraining staff often to ensure this. Also setting up a CAF (common assessment framework) and making contact with multi agencies for a child who they have cause for concern for and putting
support in place for them is a good way to ensure a child in need is getting the best possible support, and them knowing that someone is there to listen and support them is reassuring to the child.
Making staff stand out as staff with the correct uniform and ensuring ID is in full view for the parents and other staff to see clearly for identification. Making sure that the staffs don’t put themselves in any sort of situation to possible complains that can arise i.e. no mobile phones or if any conflict with a child make sure it is handled correctly following the correct policies and procedure guidelines of your work setting. Also making sure schools and nurseries know who exactly are coming in and out of the building with a signing in book. There are all types of abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and verbal abuse, following the safeguarding policies and procedures will help ensure a child’s health and safety. Making sure these policies and procedures are followed correctly will give the child the best outcome in life.
There are many ways to protect a child, at home, in a school or social setting. Unfortunately in today’s society there is a dip in the system when it comes to the protection of children, so many children are being put a risk. People need to be more vigilant to stop children getting abused in any sort of way. Every child matters they are our future abuse needs to stop, people need to become more aware to help prevent these things from happening.
