Safeguarding Policy
If you are in need of support regarding a safeguarding issue, please contact your training officer or safeguarding lead. The following websites may also be helpful:
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/
https://www.thecalmzone.net/calm-guides/
https://www.tynesidemind.org.uk/
https://www.samaritans.org/
Purpose
This safeguarding policy outlines the responsibilities of Empentis Training Solutions in relation to the protection of children, young people and vulnerable adults in response to:
- The Children Act 1989
- The Protection of Children Act 1999
- The Children Act 2004
- Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023
- What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused. DfES 2006
- Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education 2007
- Safer practice, safer learning 2007
- Keeping children safe in Education 2023
- Data protection act 1998 / General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 2018
- Working Together to Safeguard Children (HM Government 2015)
Scope
Empentis Ltd holds as one of its highest priorities, the health, safety, and welfare of all children, young people and vulnerable adults involved in courses or activities which come under the responsibility of the company.
Throughout this policy and related procedures reference is made to “children”. This term is used to mean “those under the age of 18”. Empentis Ltd recognises that some adults are also vulnerable to abuse; accordingly, the procedures may be applied to the protection of vulnerable adults. A vulnerable adult is defined as a person ‘who is or may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness, and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation’.
What is Abuse?
Abuse and neglect are forms of maltreatment of a child. Someone may abuse or neglect a child by inflicting harm, or by failing to prevent harm. Children may be abused in a family or in an institutional or community setting, by those known to them, or more rarely by a stranger. The fact that the abuser is usually someone they know can make it more difficult to talk; it also makes it more important to talk to someone who can be trusted.
Abuse can be:
- Physical Abuse
Physical abuse causes harm. It may involve hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning, scalding, drowning or suffocating. It may be done deliberately or recklessly, or be the result of a deliberate failure to prevent injury from occurring. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of or deliberately induces, illness in a child.
- Neglect
Neglect is the persistent or severe failure to meet an individual’s basic physical or psychological needs, likely to result in serious impairment of their health or development. Neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to:
- Provide adequate food, clothing, and shelter including exclusion from home or abandonment.
- Protect from physical and emotional harm or danger.
- Ensure adequate supervision.
- Ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment.
It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.
- Sexual Abuse
Sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing an individual to take part in sexual activities, including prostitution, whether or not they were aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including penetrative or non-penetrative acts. They may include non-contact activities, such as involvement in looking at, or in the production of, sexual online images, watching sexual activities, or encouragement to behave in sexually inappropriate ways.
- Psychological/Emotional Abuse
Psychological abuse may include emotional abuse, threats of harm or abandonment, deprivation of contact, humiliation, blaming, controlling, intimidation, coercion, harassment, verbal abuse, isolation or withdrawal from services or supportive networks.
Responsibility
The director is committed to ensuring that the company:
- Provides a safe environment for children, young people and vulnerable adults to learn in.
- Identifies children, young people and vulnerable adults who are suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm, and
- Takes appropriate action to see that such children, young people and vulnerable adults are kept safe.
Designated Senior Staff
Safeguarding Officer: Andrew Hughes
Contact: andrew.hughes@empentis.co.uk
The senior designated person – Andrew Hughes, Safeguarding Officer, holds strategic responsibility for the safeguarding processes and procedures are robust and consistently applied and that Empentis Training Solutions fulfils its legal duties within the legislation.
As the company’s senior representative, Andrew will be responsible for taking the lead in raising awareness within the staff of issues relating to the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults, and the promotion of a safe environment for learners within the company.
She has received training in safeguarding issues and inter-agency working, as required by the Safeguarding Children’s board, and will receive refresher training at least once every two years. She should keep up to date with developments in safeguarding issues including:
- Overseeing the referral of cases of suspected abuse or allegations to Children’s Social Care.
- Ensuring that all staff receive basic training in safeguarding issues and are aware of the company’s safeguarding procedures. Ensure that all other staff receive training as appropriate to their needs and responsibilities.
- Providing an annual report to the directors of the company setting out how the deficiencies in procedure or policy identified by the Safeguarding Children’s Board (or others) to the directors at the earliest opportunity.
- The referral of cases of suspected abuse or allegations to Children’s Social Care.
- Providing advice and support to other staff on issues relating to safeguarding.
- Establishing a system for the safe, confidential storage of records maintaining a proper record of any safeguarding concerns (even where that concern does not lead to a referral).
- Ensuring that parents of children and young people within the company are aware of the company’s Safeguarding Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adults Policy.
- Liaising with the LA, Safeguarding Children’s Board, Children’s and Adult Social Care and other appropriate agencies.
- Ensure that systems are in place to ensure that appropriate safeguards are put in place for young people on long-term work placements.
She will have received training in safeguarding issues and inter-agency working, as required by the Safeguarding Children’s Board, and will receive refresher training at least once a year.
Statement of Policy
- The company has a duty to ensure that staff fulfils their responsibilities in safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults. The company will provide a safe and secure environment for learning with appropriate supervision and support of staff.
- The company will work with appropriate agencies, and in particular the local Safeguarding Children’s Boards to ensure that learners are safeguarded through the effective operation of the company’s safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults procedures. These agencies in turn will be responsible for advising the company on any issues relating to learners.
- The company’s Safeguarding Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adult Policy and procedures shall be made available to all parent(s)/carer(s) upon request.
- The company requires all staff to familiarise themselves with the Safeguarding Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adult Policy and procedures. The company recognizes that it is the responsibility of all staff to act upon any concern no matter how small or trivial it may seem in accordance with this policy and procedures.
- The company has established and will regularly review procedures for reporting suspected abuse taking account of any new government legislation, regulations or best practice documents to ensure staff are kept fully up to date with their responsibilities and duties with regard to the safety and well-being of children.
- Company staff are in regular and frequent contact with learners and are particularly well placed to observe outward signs of abuse or unexplained changes in behaviour or performance which may be indicative of abuse. All staff will be made aware of the signs of abuse and the procedures for reporting abuse to the nominated person.
- The company will deal with allegations of abuse by staff or students according to the Company Disciplinary Procedures as appropriate.
- Confidentiality and trust should be maintained as far as possible, but staff must act on the basis that the safety of the learning is the overriding concern. The degree of confidentiality will be governed by the need to protect the learner.
- The company will provide a caring, supportive environment, which will enable young people and vulnerable adults to speak out.
- The company will support young people and vulnerable adults who may have been abused and support those working with them.
Training
It is a requirement that all staff who have been employed for more than two years undertake safeguarding training every year to ensure that they are up-to-date with changes in legislation and practice. All staff will be trained on the implementation of this policy and procedures at induction and refreshed in quarterly team meetings and safeguarding briefings.
Records
The company will keep clear, comprehensive records of any disclosures and/or allegations of abuse.
The company will comply with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998, which allows for disclosure of personal data where this is necessary to protect the interests of a learner
Safeguarding against antisemitism
Antisemitism is prejudice or hatred against Jews. It has existed in various forms for more than 2,000 years, based at different times on actual or perceived differences between Jews and others, along religious, racial, ethnic and national lines.
One of the best contemporary definitions of antisemitism is that adopted, in May 2016, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a coalition of 31 member states and 11 observer states. On 12 December 2016, the Government announced that the UK would be one of the first countries to formally adopt the definition.
In recent years, the rate of antisemitic incidents has been stubbornly high, according to research by the UK Jewish community’s third-party reporting agency, the Community Security Trust. In this period, antisemitism has sometimes shown increases in direct correlation to increases in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but this is not the only ‘trigger’. Like other forms of prejudice, antisemitism has been evident in direct interpersonal interactions, as well as on social media.
Some examples of antisemitic sentiments may include:
• Support for – or failure to oppose – terrorism against Jews in the UK or abroad
• Celebration, denial, trivialisation or revision of the Holocaust;
• Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories about ‘Jewish control’ over politics, the media or finance
• Theological antisemitism;
• Crude stereotypes about Jewish physical appearance or relationship to money or power.
• Exceptional treatment of Israel, where the world’s only Jewish state is uniquely subjected,
among all the countries in the world, to hostile behaviours such as denial of its right to exist
or holding it to standards not expected or required of any other democratic nation.
Antisemitic behaviour might include:
• Racist abuse – including name-calling or Nazi gestures
• Physical bullying – including violence or intimidation
• Graffiti – on public or personal property
• Exclusion by peers
Review and Evaluation
The policy will be reviewed annually by the named person and presented for agreement to the Director.
Related policies & procedures
• Recruitment and selection policy
• Health and Safety
• E&D Policy
Safeguarding and Protecting Procedure
4 Steps on how to respond if a learner discloses to you –
Step 1
Listen carefully to what they say and how they say it
➢Give them time and attention
➢Allow the learner to explain in their own words
➢Questions should be kept to a minimum
➢Do not offer false confidentiality
➢Empathise with their situation
Step 2
Reassure the Learner
➢That it is OK that they have told you
➢That they have done nothing wrong
➢Tell them what you are going to do next
BUT remember it is not your role to offer specific advice or to investigate alleged abuse
➢Do not assume facts
➢Do not give your opinion
Step 3
Complete a SAP1 Form and record –
➢What was said – be specific
➢The context in which it was said
➢Who was present
Step 4
Next step –
➢Discuss immediately with a member of the Safeguarding Team who will resolve or refer to the relevant body
➢Do not discuss the issue further with the student or any other member of staff
Remote Learning
Keeping learners and tutors safe during remote education is essential. The same principles set out above also apply to remote teaching.
Empentis has clear reporting routes so that learners can raise any safeguarding concerns in relation to remote online education.
For more information
- reporting harmful online content to the UK Safer Internet Centre
- getting government advice and trusted resources from Educate Against Hate on safeguarding from radicalisation, building resilience to extremism, and promoting shared values
Empentis maintains a professional practice when communicating online with learners. When possible we communicate within business hours (or agreed hours), and we advise learners not to share personal information
Empentis use secure online learning platforms. All lessons are taught from a quiet or private room with consideration to the background.
Due to the official guidelines concerning the coronavirus changes from day to day. Our guidelines and the way we operate change according to the government guidelines. We do however implement general practices to our staff, tutors, and learners.
- Watch for signs of anxiety.
- Give people control and offer simple reassurance.
- Adopt good hygiene and social-distancing habits
- Stay in touch via phone, email, or video calls.
- Encourage people to keep moving – exercise works wonders!
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Links with external agencies
Empentis Training Solutions work with Local Safeguarding Children Boards, the Local Authority Designated Officer, the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub and other professions to ensure a comprehensive safeguarding network is in place. Advice will be taken from professionals within these organisations as appropriate.
NSCB – 0191 277 2500
Durham LSCB – 03000 265 770
Empentis Training Solutions will work proactively with the regional Prevent coordinators when appropriate.
Prevent North East regional Co-ordinator – Chris Sybenga 07384 456640, chris.sybenga@education.gov.uk
Download Link
This is the PDF to go with this policy.
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