Safeguarding at Safe Passage
What Safeguarding means at Safe Passage
Safeguarding is about making sure people are safe - this is at the heart of our work here at Safe Passage. Safeguarding is not only about ensuring Safe Passage is complying with minimum requirements to prevent people being harmed when coming into contact with the charity, but it's about responding to all safety concerns of the people we work with and working in a way that promotes their overall wellbeing.
Safe Passage’s Safeguarding Principles
The safety and welfare of people are of paramount importance and the primary consideration in everything we do.
Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility- At Safe Passage, we are working to build an open culture of safeguarding where everyone always considers safeguarding in their work, and where staff can openly discuss safeguarding and learn from each other.
Participation- Wherever possible we will work collaboratively with those affected by safeguarding decisions to ensure their views are heard to achieve safety.
Non-discrimination- When assessing safeguarding risks and responding to concerns, no one should be discriminated against through being a child, or on grounds of gender, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or culture.
Layers of our safeguarding work
1. Ensuring no harm comes to anyone through their contact with Safe Passage.
Our activities to prevent harm and abuse include:
Safer Recruitment Processes.
We ensure we meet best practices for safer recruitment. This includes full application, shortlisting, and interview processes that must include relevant safeguarding questions. Successful candidates are only offered jobs with Safe Passage subject to receipt of satisfactory references and, where relevant, criminal record checks. The onboarding and induction process includes signing safeguarding and confidentiality agreements and full safeguarding training for all roles. We are also members of the Interagency Misconduct Scheme.
Safer working practices
All staff and volunteers sign our Safeguarding Code of Behaviour which outlines the highest standards of ethical and professional standards expected from all team members. This includes a commitment to justice and participation and to not abuse the power or influence afforded by their position over the lives and wellbeing of others.
Beyond that Safe Passage aims to be continuously learning how better to safeguard people, build capacity in their staff through training and ensure best practice in safeguarding.
Safer programming
Safeguarding is central to the design of our programmes and activities here at safe passage. We invest in our programming to make our activities as safe as possible and mitigate and safeguarding risks that harm may come to our staff, programme participants or the wide community.
This includes our partnership working: we don’t just hold ourselves to high standards, we also strive to ensure any organisation we work with also has the same approach to safeguarding. Before entering into a partnership with another organisation working with children and people in vulnerable situations, we conduct due diligence to ensure that they have the policies and procedures in place to keep people safe and we conduct regular reviews to ensure these standards are being met.
Community Reporting mechanisms and reporting mechanisms
Victims and survivors of abuse often do not know how to report abuse, find it difficult to report. Therefore, Safe Passage aims to produce young-person friendly, easily digestible information on safeguarding in multiple languages explaining what and how they need to report.
We also have a number of different ways in which participants, families and members of the public can report concerns, including through our website and by emailing donoharm@safepassage.org.uk. The variety of ways in reporting concerns means people can choose which is the most comfortable or accessible way for them.
Please find our child-friendly information explaining what safeguarding is and how they can report concerns in multiple languages here.
Whistleblowing policy:
All staff and volunteers are trained to know how to handle a disclosure and identify and report suspected wrongdoing.
We encourage staff to report inappropriate behaviour either to our Designated Safeguarding Lead or Board of Trustees or to take the issue directly to the appropriate organisation or body, e.g. the Police, the Charity Commission, Health and Safety Executive or Social Services Department.
2. Responding to harm and abuse experienced by those we work with.
We work with people in incredibly vulnerable situations and the overwhelming majority of safeguarding concerns Safe Passage encounters occur within the wider community. We are committed to ensuring we have an effective protection response when this occurs, which includes:
Collaborating with other agencies- We cannot effectively safeguard those we come into contact with unless we collaborate with statutory safeguarding agencies and other organisations to realise safety for people.
Referring and Signposting- Although experts in what we do, we are not a specialist safeguarding agency and we cannot meet all needs of those we work with. Therefore an effective safeguarding response will often require referring or signposting people to reputable organisations which are able to meet those needs and where the person is located.
Participatory working with children and families- As well as working closely with other agencies we will do so with children, young people and families who are impacted by safeguarding concerns. We will continue to support them and ensure their views are heard in any safeguarding responses we take.
3. The overall promotion of welfare
Safeguarding goes beyond responding to concerns, but also supporting the overall welfare of a person. This includes working in a way that understands the impact of traumatic experiences and discriminatory systems on people, providing information about their rights, or having discussions with young people about issues ranging from education to healthy relationships.
Designated Safeguarding Leads
As Safe Passage’s International Safeguarding Manager, Phil Spencer, is the Designated Safeguarding Lead for the whole organisation. For any questions regarding safeguarding, or to report any concerns you can contact Phil at donoharm@safepassage.org.uk or on +447761740598.
Beth Gardner-Smith, CEO of Safe Passage International, is the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead.
Our whistleblowing policy can be found here
Our safeguarding policy can be found here
We don’t just hold ourselves to high standards, we also strive to ensure any organisation we work with also has the same approach to safeguarding. Before entering into a partnership with another organisation working with children and people in vulnerable situations, we conduct due diligence to ensure that they have the policies and procedures in place to keep people safe and we conduct regular reviews to ensure these standards are being met.