Our commitment to Safeguarding
All children, adults, families, and communities who come into contact with us or our partners (in person or online) should have a safe, inclusive and collaborative experience, free from all forms of abuse, harm and harassment.
We do everything we can to ensure that children and their families feel respected and safe.
Anyone representing our organisation (this includes our Trustees, our staff, our volunteers, our Partners, and all others) has been trained on and has committed to adhere to our robust Safeguarding Policy*, both in their private and professional lives, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This helps us to ensure the highest standards of behaviour towards children, adults, families, and communities at all times.
If you think this hasn’t happened, or if you are worried about the behaviour or actions of a Save the Children representative, please tell us as soon as possible.
Expected behaviours of our staff and representatives are clearly stated in our Code of Conduct and Safeguarding Policy. We uphold a zero-tolerance approach to the exploitation and abuse of anyone, especially children and at-risk adults.
If you are concerned about a child, at-risk adult or the behaviour of a Save the Children representative please report this.
Hear our commitments to Safeguarding from our Leaders
Our safeguarding model
Safeguarding at Save the Children focuses primarily on five Safeguarding pillars. These are: Prevention, Reporting, Response, Learning and Safeguarding Governance.
Prevention
Save the Children focuses relentlessly on safeguarding children and preventing harm. We do this by ensuring that we listen carefully to what children tell us, implementing robust risk management systems, following safer recruitment practices, safer programming principles and prioritising a strong culture of safeguarding within Save the Children.
Reporting
We have strong ‘Speaking Up’ mechanisms in place, and we are committed to protecting those who share their concerns as far as possible. We encourage everyone to share all concerns, this includes rumours, something that’s made you uncomfortable, and more serious worries. Please see our Speaking Up page to share any concern or worries that you have about our work, activities, or people.
Response
We ensure that every safeguarding concern is investigated in a prompt, safe, fair and victim/survivor centred way. This means that we always ensure that the survivor’s wellbeing is our top priority, and we are careful to listen to the survivor's wishes and needs at every stage. Read more about our Victim/Survivor approach
Learning
We aim to seek feedback regularly from the children and communities we work alongside, and we seek to always learn from any mistakes. We think that every Safeguarding concern is also an opportunity to learn, adapt and improve our practice and processes. We want all the children and families we work with to have the opportunity to input and influence our activities, and to understand the expected behaviours of our staff and representatives and know how to share any concerns and feedback.
Safeguarding governance
Save the Children takes its responsibility to safeguarding at a governance level seriously, the Board receives regular updates on our safeguarding activities within the organisation and externally. The Board have participated in bespoke safeguarding training and have robust understanding of their individual responsibilities as Trustees to the organisation's safeguarding approach. A Safeguarding Committee was established in March 2021 to provide more direct support to the organisation to fulfil our responsibility to those with whom we work, and we also have a specialist Safeguarding Trustee to oversee our safeguarding work.
Save the Children’s Safeguarding Framework
We know the prevention of abuse, harm and harassment takes more than policies. Above you can explore how Save the Children is working hard to embed a culture of safeguarding and we encourage the reporting of all concerns and worries relating to our work and our people. Please see our Annual Reports summarising our progress and priorities towards Safeguarding.
