Tips for a Successful Safeguarding Committee
A safeguarding committee is a powerful tool for keeping your children’s organization as safe as possible.
A safeguarding committee is a group of people with varying roles and experience who work together to focus on improving child safety.
Some benefits of establishing a safeguarding committee include:
- It helps to establish a Speak Up Culture that gives staff and volunteers a process to raise safety concerns without retaliation.
- Acts as a deterrent for potential predators.
- Works to identify and correct child safety breakdowns.
- Corrects potential hazards that may cause injury.
- It provides a system for involving staff, volunteers, and families in making child safety a natural part of daily processes.
- Educates staff, volunteers, and leadership about the overall safety plan, which includes check-in and check-out procedures, child protection policies, health & wellness guidelines, screening, and emergency procedures.
- Increases loyalty by helping people feel seen and heard when their child safety concerns are addressed.
- Assists in meeting insurance requirements.
Whether you have an existing safeguarding committee or are just starting one, here are five best practices for success.
- Define the Committee’s Roles and Responsibilities. Create a mission statement outlining the goals, duties, structure, and action plans. When everyone understands why the committee exists and what it hopes to accomplish, it helps build buy-in and cooperation.
- Hold Regularly Scheduled Meetings. Maintain a consistent meeting calendar. Send out an agenda for each meeting and invite others to attend. Use the time to discuss prevention, child safety promotion, emergency response, and incident reports.
- Analyze Incident Patterns. Thoroughly review accidents, safety breaches, and reports, even if they are only close calls. This will help establish patterns in safety gaps and help quickly address improvement areas.
- Promote Safety. Collaborate with different areas of the organization and work to inform and educate on the benefits of improving safety and how it is everyone’s responsibility. Use various means, such as the website, newsletter, leadership meetings, signage, onboarding activities, etc.
- Champion Ongoing Training and Education. Continuing training and education for staff and volunteers differs from new volunteer orientation or onboarding activities. Training and education should focus on specific guidelines, such as the rule of two, classroom ratios, bathroom procedures, incident reporting, and policies, including the child protection policy and health and wellness information.
Even if you don’t yet have a committee, establishing one with child safety and abuse prevention goals is worth the time and effort. However, remember that a safeguarding committee is only successful when it can identify issues and has the authority and resources to solve them, making leadership support imperative.
Click here to learn more about the benefits of using secure children’s, youth check-in, and volunteer scheduling to help manage your events.
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