Voluntary, Community & Faith Sector safeguarding checklist

All voluntary, community and faith sector organisations who work with children or adults at risk have safeguarding duties to protect children and vulnerable adults from abuse and neglect. The Charity Commission’s guidance sets out what your responsibilities are. You can also find more support and advice on the NSPCC and NCVO websites.

 At Barnet Safeguarding Children Partnership we want to support local voluntary, community and faith sector organisations to safeguard children and young people well. We have a Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector subgroup with members from Barnet organisations and you can find out more on our website.

 We have created this checklist as a way of helping you to reflect on how well you are meeting your duties and to identify how you can improve. It is optional but we hope you will find it useful.

 After you have completed the checklist, we will support you by:

• Providing personal feedback on your checklist, identifying your strengths and areas for further development
• Where we can, we will direct you to other resources online or local voluntary organisations who may be able to help you
• Hosting a learning event for everyone who completed the checklist to share ideas and discuss challenges
• Using the information from the checklists to guide the training and support we give to the sector.

 Here is some advice for getting the most out of the checklist:

• Be honest and open about how you are doing, so we can help you improve
• Talk to others in your organisation to test out what they think – for example, do they know where to find your safeguarding policy?
• What good might look like – this is some examples and links to help you think about what your organisation should be doing. Every organisation is different so these may not all apply to you or you may do things another way. Not all of your legal duties will be covered in this checklist so be sure to still look at the Charity Commission’s guidance.
• Your self-evaluation and evidence – write about what your organisation is currently doing in this area. Giving a few examples of how you do this and evidence (eg linking to a copy of your policy) will help you and us to understand better.
• RAG – rate your organisation’s current work as:
  • Green: this is an area of strength, where you have several examples of how you are meeting the standard, but you may still have a couple of points to improve
  • Amber: your work in this area is ok but you know you want to improve
  • Red: you are not meeting the standard and you need to work on this as a priority so you meet your safeguarding duties
• Actions – what you are going to do over the next year to improve. Try to keep these clear and possible (eg not ‘all our staff will be safeguarding experts’, but instead ‘we will give introductory safeguarding training to all our staff and volunteers who work with children’). Feel free to ask for help, advice or support from us here.

The checlist can be found here: 

If you have any questions or want help with the checklist, please contact us at BSCP@barnet.gov.uk.