One of the designated safeguarding leads main responsibilities will be receiving, assessing and managing any safeguarding concerns. However these pages can also be used by anyone who is managing a concern in their organisation.
- Our assessing complaints and concerns page helps you understand the different types of concern that reach you, and how to proceed with each.
- Our managing safeguarding concerns gives you an overview of the follow-up stages for all concerns
- Our making a safeguarding referral page helps you prepare for contacting local authorities
- Our reporting safeguarding concerns to regulators page lists the agencies you may need to tell about an incident and links to their criteria
You will need to know your local processes for the assessment and referral of safeguarding concerns. It’s a good idea to look up your local safeguarding children and safeguarding adults teams and read their guidance on reporting safeguarding concerns alongside our guides.
As well as finding out about the local processes, it’s useful to identify other organisations or services in your area and nationally that can help with safeguarding concerns as you develop your procedures.
- Want to find the right support for you? Use our local and national support page for suggestions
- Want to know more about safeguarding law? Read the law, rules and duties page for an introduction.
- Want to check a specific term? See our talking about safeguarding guide.
- Work regularly with children and responsible for them? Read statutory guidance on working together to safeguarding children (from GOV.UK)
- Work in care for adults at risk? Read care and support statutory guidance for adults (from GOV.UK)
- Want to assess your report-handling mechanisms? Use the safeguarding report-handling toolkit to identify strengths, weaknesses, or gaps. Designed mainly for international development organisations but could be adapted for any organisation (from BOND).
