We are committed to creating and maintaining the highest standards of safety for our children, our mothers, our volunteers, staff and visiting professionals.
We do this by making sure that our safeguarding policy is only the beginning of the story. We add in to this daily meetings, weekly reviews, a Magpie Watch system, safer recruitment, behaviour agreements, a safeguarding board and training
To ensure the safety of our children and ourselves we think through our processes, practices and procedures all the way from safer recruitment to reporting and escalating to Local Authority multi agency safeguarding hubs, and advocating for families at child protection conferences.
We train and induct all our volunteers, visiting professionals and staff in safeguarding and everyone who enters our building agrees to a basic behaviour policy.
We make sure that everybody knows that keeping children safe is their responsibility and there is no concern too small to share. We understand that not everybody has the full picture so it is important to notice and record small concerns so that a child’s suffering does not go unnoticed. To do this we have a Magpie Watch for those children who we just wish to keep an eye on. It works like this:
We understand that safeguarding children and adults takes energy, focus and attention. We also know that our staff, visiting professionals and volunteers can experience vicarious trauma when they hear, or witness the tough lives that our families endure. That is why, alongside supporting our families we support our staff and volunteers with:
Regular reflective practice,
Safeguarding training and updates,
Training on trauma informed environments,
Trauma protocol
Our trauma protocol:
- Tell someone on the day (share your experience, worry or concern, the CEO or staff member will help you put it in context and think through it).
- Go home and practice your own form of self care
- If the next day you are still worried or ruminating, then contact us and we will put you in touch with our psychologist to discuss your feelings.
We are always happy to discuss how we keep ourselves and our children safe. We also have an adult safeguarding policy and practice, a safe spaces policy and practice, and a health and safety and risk assessment policy and practice.