Safeguarding and Promoting Children’s Welfare
Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 places a duty on agencies to ensure that their functions are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard children and promote their welfare; by safeguarding and promote welfare we mean:
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Protecting children from abuse or neglect;
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Preventing impairment of the child’s health or development;
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Ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and
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Creating opportunities to enable children to have optimum life chances in adulthood.
The National Service Framework (NSF) for Children, Young People and Maternity Services also forms a key strand of the change agenda for children’s services, setting out standards for children’s health and social care, and the interface with education. The NSF aims to break down professional boundaries and strengthen partnership working between agencies by placing children and young people at the centre of their care, building services around their needs.
Standard 5 of the NSF states that “all agencies work together to prevent children suffering harm and to promote their welfare, provide them with the services they require to address their identified needs and safeguard children who are being or who are likely to be harmed.”
Activity aimed at all Children:
This will include:
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Mechanism to identify abuse and neglect wherever they may occur;
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Work to increase understanding of safeguarding children issues in the professional and wider community, promoting the message that safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility
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Work to ensure that organisations working, or in contact with children, operate recruitment and HR practices that take account of the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children;
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Monitoring the effectiveness of organisations’ implementation of their duties under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004;
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Ensuring children know who they can contact when they have concerns about their own or others’ safety and welfare;
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Ensuring that adults (including those who are harming children) know who they can contact if they have a concern about a child or young person.
In particular, the Board will primarily focus on ensuring that Children and Young People are safe from abuse, neglect, violence and sexual exploitation; accidental injury and death; bullying and discrimination; crime and anti-social behaviour.
