All those who come into contact with children, young people, vulnerable adults or those at risk of harm in their everyday work, including people who do not have a specific role in relation to adult or child protection, have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, young people and adults.

Safeguarding – for children, young people and vulnerable adults

It is vital that every person who has contact with children, young people, vulnerable adults or those at risk, either caring or working with them, should be able to recognise and know how to respond should they be concerned or be aware that a child/adult is, or may be, at risk of significant harm. This may be caused by infliction of harm or by failure to act to prevent such harm. Staff/volunteers/contractors operating on behalf of and/or supported by the Council should also be able to recognise situations where a child/adult requires extra support to prevent significant impairment to his or her health or development.

Devon County Council has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, and has obligations to every adult at risk to ensure that they can live a life that is free from abuse and neglect. As a result, the Council expects that all activities and services provided or supported by the Council, its agents, contractors or partners must comply with the principles contained within the Council’s Safeguarding Policies.

All applicants should note that Safeguarding Policies may need to be updated to reflect that the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and the Independent Safeguarding Authority have been replaced by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). The Service processes requests for criminal records checks; decides whether it is appropriate for a person to be placed on or removed from a barred list; and places or removes people from the DBS children’s barred list and adults’ barred list for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Further information is available on gov.uk.

Expectations of applicants

Where an applicant is making an application for an activity which will directly involve children, young people and/or vulnerable adults, or where the outcome of such grant activity may result in greater access by children, young people and/or vulnerable adults, then the following conditions will apply as a minimum.

All applicants should have in place a Safeguarding Policy (a copy of which must be available on request). Within the Policy, the applicant should refer to its policies for carrying out Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks on the employees and/or volunteers within their organisation.

Applicants should keep an up to date record of each person who has undertaken a DBS check, together with whether they are `enhanced’ or `standard’ and the date of expiry. The responsibility will remain with the organisation concerned to keep all safeguarding records appropriately up to date, and to make the record available on request by the Council (or agent working on its behalf).

Applicants will be expected to be able to verify on request that at least one Trustee (or equivalent position within their organisation) has received Safeguarding Training. Furthermore, and dependent on the type of activity undertaken, it is expected that a minimum of two employees or volunteers who are DBS checked have undertaken Safeguarding training, and that training records will be made available on request by the Council.

NSPCC

Contact: www.nspcc.org.uk

Devon Safeguarding Children Board

Contact: http://www.devonsafeguardingchildren.org or 01392 386067