The missing piece: Part 1 The Evidence

Andy Churcher • March 16, 2023

Board level ownership of safeguarding is key to effective and robust safeguarding arrangements

How many times have we heard reviews into child deaths, or abuse of adults at risk, or abuse in sport, or failings in charities identify a lack of safeguarding ownership Board level ownership of the issue?

Lord Laming identified this requirement in 2003 when he stated in his inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié:

“I strongly believe that in future, those who occupy senior positions in the public sector must be required to account for any failure to protect vulnerable children from deliberate harm or exploitation. The single most important change in the future must be the drawing of a clear line of accountability, from top to bottom, without doubt or ambiguity about who is responsible at every level for the well-being of vulnerable children.” [a]

He went on to conclude:

“Never again should people in senior positions be free to claim – as they did in this Inquiry – ignorance of what was happening to children. These proposals are designed to ensure that those who manage services for children and families are held personally accountable for the effectiveness of these services, and for the arrangements their organisations put in place to ensure that all children are offered the best protection possible.” [b]

Published in 2019 the Charity Commission’s investigation into safeguarding failings at Oxfam found that the then executive of Oxfam GB mishandled aspects of its response to allegations of misconduct in Haiti in 2011. As a result, the Charity Commission noted that:

“Protecting people and safeguarding responsibilities should be a governance priority for all charities. As part of fulfilling their trustee duties, trustees must take reasonable steps to protect people, who come into contact with their charity, from harm. Protecting people from harm is not an overhead to be minimised, it is a fundamental and integral part of operating as a charity for the public benefit.” [c]

Sheldon’s review of historic child sexual abuse in football published in 2021 recommended that training should be provided to “encourage professional club boards to engage in safeguarding strategy and implementation” [d] noting that the Board of Directors sets the priorities and agenda as well as the culture of the organisation.

These are just three examples, but I could have taken recommendations from the Whyte Review into UK Gymnastics, the review into Women’s football in the US or from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse to name just a few!

The Charity Commission’s wording is particularly helpful, highlighting what I think is the reason why it’s taking so long to crack this issue. Our organisations are complex with competing demands which change over time; rarely are they created specifically to safeguard individuals and safeguarding activity therefore defaults to a lower priority than the service being delivered. Historically, and all too often today, Boards view safeguarding alongside other overheads to be minimised, or responsibilities that can be delegated away from them.

Empowering Boards and Board level safeguarding leads to successfully deliver on their vital (and often statutory) role in ensuring safeguarding practice is effective is the new frontier in ensuring services remain safe for the most vulnerable in our society.

We have seen in recent years the start of company directors being found personally liable for not protecting vulnerable people in their care at the same time that statutory guidance is putting new responsibilities on Boards. So far this has been limited to owners and directors of care homes, but I believe this will extend to other sectors in the coming years and having external support and guidance will help all organisations to strengthen safeguarding practice at all levels.

We’ll explore what Boards need to do in part 2, and you can find out more about how Keep Safeguarding can support your Board on our website.

Sources:

[a] Paragraph 1.27; The Victoria Climbié Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Lord Laming, 2003

[b] Paragraph 1.42; The Victoria Climbié Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Lord Laming, 2003

[c] Wider Lessons; Inquiry Report: Summary Findings and Conclusions - Oxfam, 2019

[d] Recommendation 4; Independent Review into Child Sexual Abuse in Football 1970-2005, Clive Sheldon QC, 2021

< Older Post

Newer Post >

We hear the past screaming at us. But do we listen?

By Andy Churcher • December 17, 2024

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

Strategic leaders climb the tallest trees

By Andy Churcher • November 11, 2024

“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 time to make X our ex!

By Andy Churcher • September 10, 2024

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.

Keep Governance and Safeguarding