Safeguarding is Everyone's Responsibility
What is Safeguarding and Child protection ?
Safeguarding is the action you take to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Safeguarding means:
- protecting children from abuse and maltreatment
- preventing harm to children's health and development
- providing support to meet children's needs when problems emerge
- ensuring children grow up with safe and effective care, within their family where possible
- taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes.
Child protection is part of the safeguarding process. It focuses on protecting individual children identified as suffering, or likely to suffer significant harm. This includes child protection procedures detailing how to respond to concerns about a child.
What are the key principles of safeguarding ?
Several key principles underpin safeguarding to ensure the welfare and happiness of children, mainly:
- A child’s needs should be put first — always.
- It's important to help and support children as early as possible before issues escalate and become more damaging.
- Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility and everyone in the setting should act in a timely and coordinated manner to respond to any concerns about the welfare of a child.
The Early Years Foundation Stage sets the foundation of safeguarding measures for early years providers to follow. They are based on four overarching principles, including:
- Children learn and develop best in an enabling environment
- Children are unique, learn constantly and can become resilient, capable, confident and self-assured
- Children learn and develop best in different ways and at different rates
- Children learn strength and independence from positive relationships.
