BEST PRACTICE

Alliance quality and standards manager Melanie Pilcher explains the importance of creating a culture of safeguarding in early years settings

“I recognise the fact that, over the years, successive governments have refined both legislation and policy, no doubt informed in part by earlier Inquiries of this kind, so that in general, the legislative framework for protecting children is basically sound. I conclude that the gap is not a matter of law but in its implementation.”

Laming also commented on how “nobody in any of the key agencies had the presence of mind to follow what are relatively straightforward procedures on how to respond to a child about whom there is concern of deliberate harm”.

Fast forward to 2022 and the publication of another report into the tragic deaths of children – this time, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson. Again commenting on what went wrong, the report stated that:

“…underpinning these issues is the need for leaders to have a powerful enabling impact on child protection practice, creating and protecting the organisational conditions needed to undertake this complex work.”

Updates to systems, legislation and procedures have been made over the years and no doubt will continue to be made as we strive to protect children from harm. Despite this, systems and procedures can only go so far. As identified in the inquiries into Victoria, Arthur, Star and too many other children over the years, failures are too often attributed to a poor safeguarding culture within an organisation (or multiple organisations). To embed an effective safeguarding culture, it’s important to consider the characteristics one would expect to see.

It is essential that the early years workforce reflects on what a culture of safeguarding looks like in their provision. There’s no specific criteria or templates; a culture of safeguarding is unique to your provision. There are, however, key characteristics that contribute to it – as explained in this extract from the Alliance’s new safeguarding publication:

“One of the key characteristics of effective safeguarding culture is that people are open, honest, and accountable. Without accountability, safeguarding will be ineffective and put children at risk. Accountability means everyone takes responsibility for their behaviours and actions: safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility. For early years providers, it is part of their core duties. It is a moral and statutory obligation to ensure that effective safeguarding is understood and adhered to.”

Ofsted reports generally demonstrate that we can be confident that children from birth to five are at the heart of practice and statutory responsibilities are being met. Safeguarding policies, procedures and training as regulatory requirements contribute to giving children the best possible start in life. But how do we gauge our effectiveness in terms of our approach to safeguarding? It’s obvious that high standards should always be set, but it’s important to explore what this means and how providers can be confident they are meeting them.