What is safeguarding?

Safeguarding is action taken to protect children and vulnerable adults from harm.

For the purposes of safeguarding, a child is defined in the Children Act 1989 and 2004 as anyone under the age of 18 (in certain limited circumstances it applies to anyone up to the age of 21).

A vulnerable adult is defined as someone who has needs for care and support, who is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect and as a result of their care needs – is unable to protect themselves (Care Act 2014).

In the Children Act 1989, harm is defined as “ill treatment or the impairment of the health or development of the child”. The NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) has comprehensive guidance on its website about different types of harm and abuse and how to identify them.

If your museum works with children, young people or vulnerable adults, you should have safeguarding processes in place.

It’s worth noting that if your museum is a registered charity, ensuring that your organisation safeguards the welfare of any children and young people that it works with is part of the Trustees’ responsibilities defined by the Charity Commission in England and Wales.

Safeguarding has different legislation and processes in the four UK nations. The main features of each system are summarised on the NSPCC website:

This resource is written with legislation from England as a starting point.

Who is involved?

Everyone in your organisation has a role to play in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.

Board of Trustees

Your Board of Trustees has overall responsibility for safeguarding in your organisation. You should ensure they are regularly briefed about safeguarding issues and have appropriate training. It may be helpful to appoint a Trustee to lead on Safeguarding at Board level.

Staff and volunteers

You should appoint a Safeguarding Lead and if possible, a Deputy from among your staff. They will take responsibility for developing and implementing your safeguarding processes including ensuring all staff and volunteers receive appropriate safeguarding training.

All staff and volunteers need to know where to find the safeguarding policy and processes, understand what constitutes abuse and how to identify abuse, and know how to report concerns about abuse and harm. You should consider how safeguarding is included as part of all inductions and how additional training is offered to staff and volunteers.

Participants

Young people involved in long-term programmes or on work placements should have some awareness of safeguarding processes. They should understand what safeguarding means and how to raise a concern.

Essentials

If your organisation does any work with children, young people or vulnerable adults, the following are essential components of your approach to safeguarding.

Safeguarding Policy

Your safeguarding policy is an essential document and all organisations that work with children, young people and vulnerable adults should have one and ensure that it is updated regularly and reviewed by Trustees. All staff should have access to the policy and understand how to implement it.

Your policy should include the following as a minimum:

  • an overall statement about your approach to safeguarding
  • the context and relevant legislation (this will vary depending on where your museum is based)
  • roles and responsibility for safeguarding in your organisation
  • how to recruit safely
  • definitions of abuse and how to identify it
  • process for reporting concerns about abuse
  • best practice guidelines/ code of conduct for working with children, young people and vulnerable adults in person and online
  • contact details and information for your Safeguarding Lead, Local Child Safeguarding Board, CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) and other relevant organisations, such as Childline.

There is an extremely comprehensive policy template available on the Group for Education in Museums website. This is tailored for use in museums and heritage organisations.

The NSPCC also offers a guide to writing a safeguarding policy and procedures, a template policy and codes of conduct on their website. There is also a free guide about writing a safeguarding policy on the NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations) website.

Safeguarding Lead

If your organisation works with children, young people and vulnerable adults, you should appoint a Safeguarding Lead and if the size of your organisation allows, a Deputy Safeguarding Lead. The Lead and Deputy Lead may not be closely related, married or live together.

Your Safeguarding Lead has responsibility for safeguarding in your organisation and the Deputy covers their role when they are unavailable. Their role will typically include:

  • promoting safety and wellbeing for all children and vulnerable adults who engage with the organisation
  • ensuring the organisation has appropriate policies and processes in place and that these are regularly updated
  • briefing the Board of Trustees about safeguarding issues
  • giving staff and volunteers access to relevant safeguarding training for their roles
  • receiving information and taking the lead if someone reports concerns about the welfare of a child or vulnerable adult.

Your Safeguarding Lead should have a clear role description. The NSPCC offers an example role description on their website.

Training

Everyone directly or indirectly involved with work with children, young people and vulnerable adults in your organisation should have appropriate safeguarding training. Your Safeguarding Lead and Deputy need training for their roles and your Trustees should have training to enable them to take overall responsibility for safeguarding in your organisation.

Safeguarding training is widely available in person and online. Here are a few suggestions for training providers:

  • Artswork – Training tailored to working in the cultural sector for staff and volunteers.
  • NSPCC – Training for staff, volunteers, Trustees and Safeguarding Leads.
  • Safe CIC – Training for staff and Safeguarding Leads. (If you are a member of NCVO, you can get a discount on their services.)

DBS checks

A Disclosure and Barring Service check (DBS check in England and Wales) is an official record of a person’s criminal convictions. They are used to help make decisions during a recruitment process.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the process is slightly different and administered by Disclosure Scotland and Access NI Criminal Record Checks.

What kind of check you need depends on the location of your museum. The information below refers to England and Wales.

It is important that your museum carries out appropriate DBS checks. However not everyone who sees a child or young person in a museum needs a DBS check and not everyone in your museum will be eligible for one (who can have a DBS check is defined in law).

You are likely to need and be eligible for a DBS check if you have regular contact with children and young people in an educational or supervisory role – for example if you run a weekly session for under 5s, a museum sleepover or a week-long holiday youth club. If you work or volunteer front of house, you may not need a DBS check. SHARE East has more information about the process of deciding who needs a DBS check.

There is a guide for employers to using the DBS service on the government website. The charity Mind has a very clear step by step explanation of the application process (from the point of view of an individual) on its website.

If you submit more than 100 eligible DBS applications per year and comply with the DBS code of practice, you can register directly with the DBS to submit applications. All organisations submitting fewer than 100 applications will need to work with an ‘umbrella body’. The ‘umbrella body’ will check forms and submit them to the DBS on your behalf (there is often a charge for this service). An ‘umbrella body’ could be a council, local school or college or another charity. If you can’t find a local organisation, there is a list of umbrella bodies you could use online.

Most organisations recheck DBS certificates every three years. To avoid having to do brand new checks every three years, you should ask staff, Trustees and volunteers to register their checks with the DBS update service. This is free for volunteers or £13 for staff, but this could be covered by your expenses policy.

Safeguarding and recruitment

Safeguarding is an important consideration in recruitment for staff, volunteer and Trustee roles. Your organisation should include safeguarding in its recruitment policy and have a specific policy or section of a policy about the recruitment of ex-offenders. There is a sample policy on the government website.

In addition, your recruitment process should include the requirement for all Trustees, staff and volunteers to have two references in place before they start their role.

Risk assessments

It is really important that safeguarding is included in your museum’s risk assessments for general visiting and specific activities that you run.

Safeguarding in your museum

General museum visitors (under 18s)

You need to ensure that staff and volunteers are clear about who can visit your museum without adult supervision and what processes you have for monitoring those rules.

There is no fixed legal position about what age children and young people can visit a public space without adult supervision. Therefore your organisation needs to come up with a policy about what age children and young people are able to visit without adult supervision. This will need to consider the nature of your site, its location and any other factors that could feed into children and young people’s wellbeing and safety. If you decide that children and young people aged 13-18 are able to visit unaccompanied, you should bear in mind that they are safer in groups.

Other considerations for children and young people visiting your museum:

  • Ensure that you have a robust process for dealing with children who become separated from the adults they are visiting with and missing children.
  • In the event that urgent First Aid is required, this would supersede any safeguarding concerns. Ideally however First Aid should be administered with two adults present.

Running group visits, events or participation sessions (under 18s)

Always avoid situations where adults are alone with children, ensure that there are others close by. You should always work with groups of children and young people unless there is an emergency. If you are running an event for families, encourage the parents, guardians or carers to remain in the room or close by.

If you are working with external groups such as schools or uniformed groups, there is guidance about ratios of children to adult supervisors provided by Ofsted, summarised by the NSPCC. In general do not leave groups of children under the age of 13 unattended.

Ensure that events are appropriate lengths, there is access to refreshments and that children and young people are able to take regular breaks.

Other considerations:

  • Do not follow child or vulnerable adult participants into toilets. Ensure that adults and carers have access to separate toilets if possible.
  • Never give children and young people a lift in your car or invite them to visit you at home.
  • In general it is better to avoid physical contact and physical punishment is definitely to be avoided. However, there are circumstances where a brief gesture such as a touch on the shoulder or arm could be appropriate. Avoid contact with all other areas of the body. If a young child offers you their hand while walking from one location to another, it is generally acceptable to take their hand.
  • Do not contact children and young people who have been involved with events or programmes using personal email or social media accounts – for example do not follow them on Instagram or give them your personal email address. All contact should be through work channels.
  • Do not give children and young people your personal phone number or other personal contact information. If you are running a programme that means you need to contact young people by phone, use a work device if at all possible.
  • Take care in the language you use when communicating with children and young people and do not be overfamiliar in your behaviour towards them.
  • In the event that urgent First Aid is required, this would supersede any safeguarding concerns. Ideally however First Aid should be administered with two adults present.

Work experience and volunteering (under 18s and vulnerable adults)

Make sure you involve your Safeguarding Lead in planning your activities. They will be able to advise on how to run a safe work experience week or programme for young volunteers. Ensure that these young people are aware of safeguarding processes as part of their induction.

As with all other children and young people, try to avoid being alone with work experience students and young volunteers. You might want to consider always working with a group of volunteers or offering work experience placements in pairs (this also has the advantage of peer support). Try to create tasks and jobs that can be undertaken in groups or in public and shared spaces.

Do not give these young people your personal phone number or befriend them on social media. Keep all communications professional.

Ensure that all long-term volunteers and young people on work experience placements supply an emergency contact and that they are aware of what they should do in an emergency.

Online activities

To support safeguarding online, it is essential that staff within the organisation have a basic level of understanding of the social media platforms the organisation uses. It is also important that social media channels and web search histories are monitored for potential safeguarding concerns.

All social media platforms have recommended minimum ages for use. Generally these are 13 for channels such as Instagram and Twitter and 16 for video call platforms such as Zoom and Skype. It may be possible to use video with younger children as long as they are accompanied by a responsible adult on the call. Internet Matters is a website designed for parents, but it has very clear guidance about the age restrictions on a wide range of platforms.

During the pandemic, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Childnet published a comprehensive guide to online safety.

Some key considerations for young people and vulnerable adults using social media on behalf of your museum are:

  • Any child or young person posting online on behalf of your organisation should be appropriate trained and supported. They should be briefed about the professional use of social media and the safeguarding concerns involved.
  • Any activity that a young person undertakes on behalf of your organisation should be public. They should not respond to private messages on your behalf.
  • If at all possible, young people should be using work devices to communicate digitally as part of a programme. Try to avoid asking young people to post from personal devices if at all possible.
  • If they post photographs of themselves, young people must have appropriate consent in place and the images should be appropriately captioned.
  • Keep all communications involving young people professional – for example on a video call make sure your background and clothing are appropriate. Do not use personal social media accounts to engage with them.

Filming and photography

With appropriate consent in place, photographs of children and young people can be an important marketing tool for your museum.

If you want to take photographs or film of children and young people at your venue, you must obtain consent from their parent, guardian or carer. Consent should be granular in terms of the way the image is captured, stored and used. You should be clear about how you will store the images and for how long.

If you see a visitor taking photographs of a child who is unknown to them (or suspect this is happening), you should intervene and ask the visitor who has taken the photos to delete them.

Ensure that any captions for images of children and young people do not contain identifying information.

Useful Links

Safeguarding information, advice and training

Online safety

Support for children and young people

For adults who want to discuss a concern about a child’s safety

Please consult your organisational safeguarding policy in the first instance.

For adults concerned about their own behaviour or that of another adult towards children

Please consult your organisational safeguarding policy in the first instance.

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