School age childcare quality indicators: Safeguarding and child protection

‘Very Good’ culture of safety and wellbeing

Our ethos sensitively and effectively promotes children’s rights and equality. This is supported by strong leadership that empowers all staff to continuously improve safeguarding and child protection practice across the setting. We understand our shared responsibility in ensuring that children live safely and are supported to thrive.

Our leaders effectively support all staff to ensure we have a deep understanding of our shared responsibilities. We ensure any volunteers or covering staff are fully aware of our arrangements for safeguarding and child protection. We have a culture of accountability and continuous learning, driven by robust reflective practice. We understand that transitions for children, as part of daily routines or periods of significant change, can affect children in different ways. Our strong rights-based and trauma-informed practice ensures we anticipate and respond promptly and sensitively to safeguard children.

We understand the needs and experiences of children and families are varied. We prioritise fostering partnerships within our community and with families to ensure that we work well together to keep children safe. We proactively share information about available family supports that can offer early help in a sensitive way, to prevent escalating needs and risks to children.

‘Weak’ culture of safety and wellbeing

Our ethos does not effectively uphold or promote children’s rights. Approaches which enable staff to actively listen to children and develop trusting relationships are not embedded. Children’s views are not taken into consideration or respected. Children and families do not feel listened to.

Our leaders have not appropriately identified or addressed staff training needs related to wellbeing, safeguarding or child protection. Shared responsibility for continuous professional learning and self-reflection is not in place. When training is provided, we do not effectively apply new learning or update practice.

Concerns that arise may not always be recognised or responded to in a timely or sensitive manner. We have not yet established consistent approaches to uphold children’s rights to safety and protection.

‘Very good’ legislation, policy and guidance in practice

We have a comprehensive understanding of our safeguarding policies, which we apply consistently across our practice. Our team work closely to identify, record and respond to concerns effectively. Safeguarding arrangements are well implemented and monitored. We use our knowledge of best practice and internal procedures in areas such as recruitment and whistleblowing to keep children safe.

We are committed to protecting children from harm. We have well established and clear procedures that enable staff and volunteers to report concerns about a colleague or leader if they pose a risk to a child. Our policy and procedures empower everyone to escalate child protection issues that are not being handled appropriately.

Our robust approach to self-evaluation fully informs our arrangements for recognising, responding to, recording and reporting concerns about children’s wellbeing or safety. We use legislation, national guidance and policies to support our self-evaluation. We proactively take account of new information, policy developments and emerging issues to improve our practice.

We have highly effective safeguarding and child protection processes to support our communication with other agencies. Our staff are confident in using these procedures. We have a clear understanding of our role and responsibility to keep children safe and when to share information with others.

Our proactive approach carefully considers the strengths, needs, risks and protective factors for individual children and their families. We pay particular attention to the unique needs of individual children, including those with additional support needs or who are care experienced. Our consistent application of clear procedures supports us very well in developing and sustaining effective partnerships. Children’s and families' views fully inform our well-judged decisions and actions.

‘Weak’ legislation, policy and guidance in practice

Our limited understanding and ineffective implementation of national guidance mean that policies and legislation are not applied effectively. A lack of clearly defined roles and shared responsibilities in safeguarding and child protection has the potential
 to compromise children’s safety and care.
 
Our safeguarding and child protection policies do not clearly outline how to escalate concerns when someone in our team, including someone in a leadership role, may pose a risk to children. They are also unclear about what to do if a child protection issue
 is not being handled appropriately.
  
Our record-keeping practices are inconsistent and fail to adequately capture how different types of harm can create or heighten risk to a child. Opportunities to ensure support is in place, or appropriate action is taken, are missed. Agreed next steps are not consistently followed through, which limits improvements to children’s wellbeing. Information required to keep children safe is not available to relevant staff or shared appropriately with partner agencies. These gaps may place children’s safety and care
 at risk.

‘Very good’ empowering children and staff

We apply a trauma-informed lens to all of our practice and interactions with children, their families and people within and outside of our team. We nurture trusting and respectful relationships with children, families and the local community.

Our interactions are underpinned by children’s rights. We know individual children very well. We communicate respectfully with families and one another to develop a holistic knowledge of children and their wellbeing needs. This enables us to identify children and families who may be at risk of harm and respond appropriately.

We are a highly skilled team with a deep understanding of safeguarding and child protection practice, which we use to create a safe and trusting environment for all. Children feel secure in expressing their views, sharing worries and asking for help. We prioritise listening with sensitivity and responding with care. This is supported by an empowering and empathetic leadership team that values staff wellbeing and encourages openness.

We regularly provide motivating opportunities where children assess and manage appropriate risk and learn about how to keep safe. Through our responsive interactions and well-judged support, we help children build skills and learn to keep themselves safe. Children develop their resilience and their understanding of physical and emotional safety very well.

Our thoughtful approaches support families well to learn about safeguarding and children’s rights within our setting. This includes high quality opportunities for children and parents/carers to develop their cyber resilience and internet safety skills.

‘Weak’ empowering children and staff

Our team lack a consistent approach to understanding and respecting the different ways children communicate their views and experiences. We rarely notice what children express through their actions, as well as their words. As a result, important signs that a child may need protection or support may not be identified or acted upon.

We do not recognise our role in supporting children to build resilience. Stable, consistent routines are undervalued. Frequent staff changes and inconsistent approaches can make it difficult for children to form secure, trusting relationships with staff.

We do not consistently demonstrate a working knowledge of safeguarding or child protection practices. We are not encouraged or supported to be proactive in recognising, responding to, reducing, or removing potential harm to children. Processes for escalating concerns are unclear or not consistently implemented.

The following challenge questions can support your self-evaluation:

• How effectively do leaders and staff implement national guidance and take account of legislation to keep children safe, secure and protected from harm?

• To what extent do our relationships with children, staff, families, partners and the local community promote children’s welfare and safety?

• How well do our self-evaluation and quality assurance processes support improvements in safeguarding? To what extent do they strengthen areas such as staff and volunteer recruitment, personal planning, and practice in place to keep children safe during play and learning?

• To what extent does regular, high-quality, professional learning improve our practice?

• What changes have we made as a result of professional learning? How do we know practice changes have had a positive impact for children and/or staff?

• How effectively do we identify and support children at risk of harm, including those who are on, or were previously on, the child protection register?

• How effectively do we identify and support children who are care experienced and living with kinship, foster or adoptive families or in residential care?

• How well do we use risk assessment tools, such as chronologies, to inform our actions and improve outcomes for children and families?

• What evidence tells us that we are effectively using a trauma-informed approach?

• How effectively do staff support children, parents/carers and one another to develop their cyber resilience and internet safety skills?

• How well do our child protection policies and procedures support us to keep children safe from harm?

• How effectively do staff support children to learn how to recognise and manage risk as they play and learn?

• How well are staff wellbeing needs recognised and supported within our child protection practice?