5.3 Arrangements for Training Staff

Employers are responsible for ensuring their staff are competent and confident in carrying out their responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. To do this employers will recognise that staff have different training needs depending on their degree of contact and their level of responsibility.

All professionals including staff in the private and voluntary sectors, require a general awareness of known indicators and pre-disposing factors of abuse as well as (role specific) detailed knowledge of agreed policies and procedures.

As stipulated in Working Together to Safeguard Children, professionals should, in particular, be alert to the potential need for early help for a child who:

• is disabled and has specific additional needs
• has special educational needs (whether or not they have a statutory Education, Health and Care Plan)
• is a young carer
• is showing signs of being drawn into anti-social or criminal behaviour, including gang involvement and association with organised crime groups
• is frequently missing/goes missing from care or from home
• is at risk of modern slavery, trafficking or exploitation
• is at risk of being radicalised or exploited
• is in a family circumstance presenting challenges for the child, such as drug and alcohol misuse, adult mental health issues and domestic abuse
• is misusing drugs or alcohol themselves
• has returned home to their family from care
• is a privately fostered child

All front line staff must be trained to pass calls about the safety of children to the appropriate professional staff. This includes reception and switchboard operators and administrative staff.

Safeguarding Children Partnership training for staff engaged in child safeguarding must include:

• The Assessment Framework (see Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018);
• Basic and advanced inputs on all forms of abuse and neglect, associated vulnerability and risk indicators and resilience/protective factors;
• Targeted joint training - e.g.  Achieving Best Evidence. 

Local organisations and agencies should have in place effective ways to identify emerging problems and potential unmet needs of individual children and families.

Local authorities should work with organisations and agencies to develop joined-up early help services based on a clear understanding of local needs. This requires all practitioners, including those in universal services and those providing services to adults with children, to understand their role in identifying emerging problems and to share information with other practitioners to support early identification and assessment. Multi-agency training will be important in supporting this collective understanding of local need.

For staff working with adults, employers must ensure that they have sufficient training to inform and enable recognition of concerns about any dependent children which require referral to Children's Social Care/Police.

Health professionals, including GPs and professionals who predominantly treat adults, are expected to participate in safeguarding training. Expectations are set out in the Safeguarding Children and Young People: Roles and Competencies for Healthcare Staff (Intercollegiate document)

All employees and volunteers who have any contact with children must be included in their agency's training programme on child protection at basic or more advanced level according to their role.

For further information, please see Chapter 2 of Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018.

The Safeguarding Children Partnership is accountable for:

• Provision of sufficient general and specialised safeguarding and child protection training;
• Clarifying the specialist training required for different staff e.g. those undertaking Section 47 Enquiries, GPs etc;
• Monitoring of the take-up rate amongst those offered those training opportunities; and
• Routine evaluation of the perceived effectiveness of the training received with a focus on outcomes.

The Children Act 1989 promotes the view that all children and their parents should be considered as individuals and that family structures, culture, religion, ethnic origins and other characteristics should be respected.

The Equality Act 2010 safeguards those who may face discrimination. The act describes nine “protected characteristics” which identify those who may face inequality or harassment due to one or more of the nine protected characteristics:

1. age
2. disability
3. gender reassignment
4. marriage and civil partnership
5. race
6. religion or belief
7. pregnancy and maternity
8. Sex
9. Sexual orientation

All staff should, under the partnerships’ arrangements, be provided with comprehensive Equality, Diversity and inclusion training.

Such training must

• Be rooted in recognition of the diversity of families and communities staff serve and respect for the differing approaches to child rearing this diversity represents such as ethnicity, race, culture, heritage and sense of identity.
• Ensure that respect for difference is not confused with acceptance of any form of abuse or neglect;
• Equality, diversity and inclusion must be integrated within all child protection training provided to staff.