Empowering Boards and Board level safeguarding leads

From supporting Boards to ensuring your safeguarding arrangements are effective, robust and compliant.

Download: 7 questions you need to ask in your organisation

Empowering Boards and Board level safeguarding leads

Organisational leaders have a responsibility to ensure the organisation provides safe services to children and/or adults at risk. It doesn’t happen by chance and it's not easy to do, so it takes work to get it right.

As we're collaborating with our clients we are learning lessons all Boards can learn from and you can learn from it too. Just download our 7 questions you need to ask in your organisation guide (above) and give yourself a head start.

Keep Governance and Safeguarding is working with some of the most inspirational and compassionate organisations who are focussed on continually improving their safeguarding practice, including with some of England's elite football clubs through our work with the Premier League.

Together, we're finding innovative ways to improve their safeguarding governance arrangements and ultimately help their leaders make their organisations safer. We work in partnership with organisations focussed on improving their safeguarding frameworks. We take a strategic perspective, ensuring your safeguarding work is effective and protects your people.

And we can help you to get a better hold of the safeguarding arrangements within your organisation whatever its size or shape.

Why work with us?

In recent years we have seen the start of company directors being found guilty for not protecting vulnerable people in their care at the same time as statutory guidance is putting new responsibilities on Boards. Whether you are a Governor in education, a Non-Executive Director of a company or a Charity Trustee, we are here to provide tailored support to you.

For whole Boards, we provide Safeguarding Governance and Leadership Training which covers key areas of organisational responsibility including:

The safeguarding landscape and organisational culture
Key roles and responsibilities and the prioritisation of safeguarding
Developing Board oversight to support effective safeguarding governance

For Board members with responsibility for safeguarding we are a trusted adviser, to walk with you through your safeguarding responsibilities and provide confidence that you are providing effective oversight of safeguarding. We provide this service to Board members at some of the Premier League's top Clubs, school governors and the Trustees of national charities and can provide it to you in your role.

With extensive experience providing support for safeguarding leaders, including Heads of Safeguarding and Board members with responsibility for safeguarding at some of the Premier League's top Clubs or the Trustees of National Charities, we are well placed to help your leaders effectively discharge their responsibilities while ensuring your operational arrangements are robust.

Safeguarding Governance Training for Strategic Leads

A recent addition to the statutory requirements on schools is that governing bodies should ensure that all governors receive training to enable them to own the effectiveness of safeguarding practice in the school or college (KCSiE paragraph 81).

Our three hour training session develops governors understanding of holistic safeguarding and how it is different from a traditional view of child protection; governors statutory responsibilities for safeguarding and an exploration of good governance structures. The course builds on relevant learning from national and regional reviews into organisational safeguarding failures including outcomes of the Charity Commission's investigation into Oxfam's operations in Haiti, the Whyte Review into British Gymnastics and the Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse.

Evaluations and Audits into the effectiveness of your safeguarding arrangements

Bring an independent eye to the assessment of your practice. We'll shape an audit around your needs and speak to your stakeholders to get an accurate view of your organisation.

Building on experience supporting a range of statutory agencies, service providers and third sector organisations to assess their safeguarding processes and procedures, Keep Governance and Safeguarding provides one-to-one support services and impartial strategic analysis to ensure your organisation is best prepared to safeguard the children it works with.

One school we partnered with to provide such a service underwent an Ofsted inspection shortly after we had delivered an audit of their systems. Impressed by the school's leadership's commitment to safeguarding Ofsted noted that:

"Safeguarding is effective. Leaders commissioned an audit of their safeguarding culture because they want to keep vigilant and make sure all its actions are as secure as they can be. Governors are overseeing the implementation of this audit and have regular contact with the designated safeguarding officer and his team."