Overview
This page is for trustees of all charities, who already understand the basic idea of safeguarding. It is designed to help you check that your charity is doing safeguarding well, and whether it is meeting the Charity Commission’s expectations. Remember: all charities have safeguarding responsibilities, no matter who you work with.
- If you need an introduction to safeguarding, start with our what is safeguarding page.
- If your charity works with children on a regular basis then you can use Everyone's Business: Safeguarding for trustees a more detailed guide that covers your additional responsibilities. (from Children England)
Each section covers the expectations the Charity Commission set and the questions you can ask yourself to make sure you have fulfilled your responsibility as a trustee.
Six areas of activity
The Charity Commission reference 10 principles, and gives additional descriptions of what they expect to see. We have summarised these as six main areas of activity.
Understanding and managing the risks | |
You must understand, manage, record and review the safeguarding risks in your organisation, thinking about everyone you come into contact with. | |
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Policies and procedures | |
You must have the right policies and procedures for safeguarding in your organisation. You need to make them public, make sure they are used and you must review them regularly. | |
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Making safeguarding a priority | |
You need to make sure that safeguarding is a key priority for your organisation as part of good governance. This includes having the right roles in place and adopting the right practices. | |
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Supporting your staff and volunteers | |
You must understand when it is appropriate and legal to carry out background checks on your staff and volunteers. Where it is not appropriate to take these checks, you must put other measures in place to ensure they carry out their roles safely. You must also make sure staff and volunteers have appropriate training and you should regularly review the training you offer. | |
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Handling and reporting concerns | |
Everyone involved in your organisation should understand how to recognise, respond to, record and report a safeguarding concern. | |
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The Charity Commission requires any registered charity to report ‘serious incidents’. The responsibility for reporting serious incidents rests with the charity’s trustees so you must understand it, even if it is delegated to someone else, such as an employee or the charity’s professional advisers. |
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Your culture and values |
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You must make sure all trustees, staff, volunteers and people you work with understand safeguarding and their right to be safe. Everyone should know how to speak up and feel comfortable raising concerns. You must review whether you have got this right, and make changes if not. |
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Next steps for trustees
As well as following the links in the table above that help you meet Charity Commission expectations, you may also want to use additional safeguarding resources.
- Are you a lead trustee or want to know more? See lead trustee for safeguarding which explains the role and how they work alongside the chair.
- Want more detail on how to stay on top of safeguarding as a board? See about safeguarding reports which has a list of suggestions for what you might expect to cover and information about annual reports.
- Want to see the Charity Commission’s recommendations in their words? View the Charity Commission checklist. (pdf from GOV.UK).
- Want more information on creating a safer organisation? Read this report on creating a safer organisational culture (from Acevo)
- Want to understand how different parts of your organisation work together? Use working with the CEO. This covers how to build a professional relationship which supports safeguarding across the organisation and how to spot if your CEO is not taking safeguarding seriously.
- For examples of templates, tools and information for a well-run trustee board use our board basics pages
The pages safeguarding about reports, working with the CEO and lead trustee for safeguarding were produced based on content provided by The Athena Programme.