Keep Governance and Safeguarding

Political ideology should never again be allowed to impact so disastrously on children

“Injustices are not the exclusive preserve of the unjust; they can be presided over by people who are in all other respects well-meaning and decent.”

It's been a long time coming... we even took a break in 2022 after Elon Musk bought Twitter. But its increasingly clear that we’ve both grown apart from each other and we can no longer stay together. Don’t get me wrong, from a safeguarding and online safety point of view, I cannot say with confidence that X is any worse than any of the other platforms. The only way social media platforms seem to be able to make the business model work is to avoid large workforces and rely on technology to moderate content. The online safety risks from inappropriate content are now well known. They also all seem committed to having some sort of encryption on their messaging services which, while apparently protecting our privacy, creates worrying space for abusers to communicate with each other and share abusive content. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way of doing business in the 21 st century without engaging with social media and so, at the moment at least, engaging with the market on these platforms is an uncomfortable necessity for many people working in safeguarding. However, for Keep Governance and Safeguarding, our relationship with X has moved from uncomfortable to untenable. Keep Governance and Safeguarding operates to reduce the risk of abuse, neglect and exploitation through supporting strategic leaders and safeguarding managers, driving improvement in organisational safeguarding arrangements and creating ways to empower children and adults at risk. Our work to deliver on this mission is guided by our values in which we commit to always being collaborative, knowledgeable, personable, thorough and respectful . As recent actions have shown, it doesn’t seem that Elon Musk and X are working to similar values to ours and I feel increasingly uncomfortable using the platform. Twitter had banned a number of far-right voices but these were lifted by Elon Musk after buying it. If it was just about championing free speech I am not sure I would have had a huge problem with this, but he has himself published provocative, disrespectful and ill-informed posts and commented on, and therefore promoted, some from these previously banned accounts. During the riots which for a week or so erupted in the UK following misinformation spread on social media about the awful murders of children in Stockport in August, Elon Musk shared posts which seem to have little or no basis in the truth. He also made provocative comments on other people’s posts, clearly intended to stoke fires rather than try contributing to a calming of the situation. In one such example, which he later deleted, Elon Musk shared an image on X which promoted a conspiracy theory about the UK building "detainment camps" on the Falkland Islands for rioters as if it were a headline from the Daily Telegraph. He is happy to share ill-informed, antagonistic and inaccurate views with over 197 million followers on X, and is at best agnostic about the consequences of these actions or, at worst, deliberately trying to stoke right-wing opinions to undermine otherwise stable democracies. He has reposted numerous posts which personally attack the leadership in Brazil, a country trying to ban X, demonstrating a huge lack of respect for the legal processes of another country and undermining their leaders with his written attacks. In Australia, where the government are trying to regulate content on social media platforms, their eSafety Commissioner was attacked in posts by Elon Musk which led to her receiving a huge amount of online abuse including death threats. He is also taking a group of major companies to court for boycotting X… surely it is the right of any company to decide what platforms they use to interact with the market. For me, the real problem here is the hugely amplified voice of the owner of a platform. With a large amount of money, he has bought himself the ability to speak directly to many people, and his voice unfortunately reflects values which clearly do not align to those of Keep Governance and Safeguarding. So, we will shortly stop posting our social media updates to X and will be adding Youtube to our suite of socials. I am grateful that as a company in most of our work we have the ability to choose who we work with.

Safeguarding Associates for Excellence recently posed the question: What safeguarding actions would be your go to, to make a better change in safeguarding? I thought it was such a great question which could generate so many responses, some of which included better PSHE in schools relevant to safeguarding and an expansion of multi-disciplinary child protection teams. My reflections come back to the principle of developing top level leadership throughout all organisations who understand their responsibilities toward safeguarding the people who engage with them. These already exist for charity trustees (although this responsibility is not always executed effectively) who are unpaid, and yet company executives do not have such explicit safeguarding expectations placed upon them. In 1974, the Health and Safety at Work Act created mandated duties for employers and employees to take responsibility for the safety of employees and colleagues. These responsibilities can apply to company directors if they were negligent in their decision making, and there have been cases where directors have been sentenced to a custodial sentence and/ or have been disqualified from being a director in the future. In 2008, Lord Grocott undertook a formal review the Act and observed that between 1974 and 2007, the number of fatal injuries to employees, the number of reported non-fatal injuries and the rate of all injuries to employees all fell by 70% or more. He also noted that Britain had the lowest rate of fatal injuries in the European Union in 2003, the most recent year for which figures were available. There is no doubt that the Health and Safety at Work Act, which made health and safety everyone’s responsibility (the classic question in all online training on the matter) including company directors, had a huge impact on the reduction of risk. Anyone who has done any introduction to safeguarding training, or has read their organisation’s safeguarding policies should hopefully know that safeguarding is also everyone’s responsibility. And yet, understanding safeguarding risks and raising safeguarding concerns still feels like the preserve of a few, rather than the bread and butter of the many! With the general exception of the education sector, and while some great Boards understand and engage with their moral responsibility to safeguarding the vulnerable people their organisations work with or employ, the majority of Boards do not understand the statutory responsibilities they already have. Working Together to Safeguarding Children (2023) states of itself that “this statutory guidance sets out key roles for individual organisations and agencies to deliver effective arrangements for help, support, safeguarding, and protection. It should be read and followed by leaders, managers and frontline practitioners of all organisations and agencies as set out in chapter 4 of this document.” [1] Alongside many public bodies, those organisations and agencies include “voluntary, charity, social enterprise, faith-based organisations, and private sectors” as well as the Armed Forces [2] . Further expectations are then placed on charities by the Charity Commission. So, there is statutory guidance, issued under the Children Act 2004, which mandates general safeguarding expectations on all organisations. The problem is that is currently has no teeth! No board members are currently being held criminally responsible for safeguarding failings within their organisations that didn’t directly involve them as the perpetrator and so, while they may acknowledge the risks, safeguarding is often not high enough up their priority list to ensure everyone knows that safeguarding is a fully responsibility shared by everyone and owned by the Board. But the way to make change happen is for someone at the ‘top-table’ to take absolute responsibility for effective safeguarding practice across their organisation, and for them to be able to be held account if the organisation fails to effectively protect individuals. Of course, we can never get eliminate risk all together, and there will be times when through no-one’s fault a perpetrator of abuse gains access to an individual through an organisation, but the question must then be ‘did the organisation reasonably do their best to protect their people?’ If not, the whole board should held accountable. So lets start at the very top table, our government. There should be a Cabinet Minister who leads a dedicated Department for Safeguarding and Social Care, with a remit to lead on national safeguarding policy and to ensure safeguarding is considered in governmental policy development across departments. Not only will this model the expectations we should have for all organisations, but it will be able to take a strategic perspective on the development of safeguarding practice across all sectors and all vulnerable groups. This will include a comprehensive review into the structures and processes across the whole United Kingdom to learn from the arrangements that effectively identify and disrupt abuse, neglect and exploitation. This should then shape a strategy for national improvement. I would have thought that a case could then be made for a safeguarding equivalent to the Health and Safety at Work Act, placing specific responsibilities on leaders of all organisations and through which they can be held account for failings. [1] Working together to Safeguarding Children: Paragraph 8 www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2 [2] Working together to Safeguarding Children: Chapter 4 www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2 Photo credit: www.volkswagen-newsroom.com

Really valuable guidance that most people don't know exists

Which parties have commitments which will support safeguarding? new

With the UK's Parliamentary election just days away, I've taken a look at the domestic promises of the parties within their manifestos to get an idea of how they are committed to safeguarding children and adults at risk.

I wouldn't invite someone I don't know into my home to talk one-to-one with my kids about anything and so I am not about let them into my home via an online platform or app to help them discover who they are! But without knowledge of this risk, that may have become what I have just done!

And here we are again, another scandal erupting in some of the UK’s most high profile organisations. This week its how the BBC and Channel 4 made decisions about engaging Russell Brand between 2006 and 2013, a period of time when allegations have now been made against him of rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse. Today, the Conservative MP and Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee Caroline Nokes said there are "some serious questions about who knew what and when". It’s positive that such illegal, abusive, exploitative and inappropriate behaviours are being revealed as this is the first step to stopping them even if over 10 late. Strong governance, focussing on the right areas, could potentially have protected victims of this behaviour and prevented so many people being hurt. Strong and effective governance means that leaders understand and manage the risks associated with their organisations, specific to their sectors and act to prevent the organisation’s reputation being damaged. All organisations place or maintain people in positions of power which those individuals can use to abuse people. Such positions of power include those situations provided by the legal definitions of positions of trust [a], providing opportunities to receive public adulation or even in the management of staff. Therefore, decisions about the appropriateness of people in positions of power must be of interest to Boards. Considering how both strategic and operational business decisions could result in the abuse of children and adults at risk, or the exploitation or assault of anyone, must be a fundamental part of the Board’s role. They must challenge the organisation’s executives about how business decisions could put people at risk, in the same way they would challenge them about the strategic implications of other management decisions. But too often safeguarding, conduct and protection are too far down the priority list for Boards, and they are not focussed on this fundamental part of their role. In the case of Russell Brand, it seems that specific concerns were raised about his conduct to executives, but he remained in prominent presenting roles with the broadcasters. But the parallels to similar failings are stark, including the way allegations of abuse within gymnastics were responded to by the Board of British Gymnastics [b], the descriptions by the Baroness Casey Review of the Met Police’s governance arrangements as “fog” which contributed to the failings there [c], and numerous conclusions of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse [d]. Sadly, there are many more. Lord Laming concluded in 2003 in his inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié: “Never again should people in senior positions be free to claim – as they did in this Inquiry – ignorance of what was happening to children.” Hopefully we are moving to the point where senior leaders are unable to claim ignorance to any of these issues and prioritise safeguarding, conduct and protection alongside their other responsibilities. Keep Safeguarding is working with organisations, large and small, to refine their structures to effectively provide oversight of safeguarding and misconduct issues to ensure they provide effective governance in this area too. Give as a call if you are interested in finding out how we can help you. Sources and further information: [a] How are we going to do it?, Positions of trust: Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 factsheet , Home Office 2022 [b] The Whyte Review: Final Report of Anne Whyte QC , Sport England 2022 [c] Baroness Casey Review Final Report Metropolitan Police Service 2023 [d] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse , IICSA 2022