Safeguarding Champion’s Information Pack

Written and produced by Read Easy UK Last updated April 2014

© Read Easy UK 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the permission of the copyright owners, Read Easy UK,, a

charitable incorporated organisation (Registered Number 1151288)

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SAFEGUARDING INFORMATION PACK

Introduction Thank you for agreeing to become Safeguarding Champion for your affiliated Read Easy group. This pack is to help you understand your role, the training you and others will need and the resources that Read Easy UK can provide to support you. At Read Easy we believe that, in its broadest sense, ‘safeguarding adults’ is everyone’s business: Read Easy UK, Affiliated Groups, Staff and Volunteers. However, as Safeguarding Champion you have the key role in ensuring that the local group meets its obligations to protect and support the people it works with.

The role of the Safeguarding Champion 1) The Safeguarding Champion is responsible for ensuring that the Committee, Coordinator

and all the group’s volunteers are aware of the requirements of the Read Easy Safeguarding Policy and the Read Easy DBS Checks Policy and the need to abide by the guidance they contain.

2) The Safeguarding Champion is the single point of contact to refer to for anyone within your group who wants to report any form of abuse or suspected abuse, or who has concerns and needs advice.

3) The Safeguarding Champion is then responsible for liaising with the local Adult Safeguarding Board and referring the case to them for further action. The Champion is not responsible for decision-making with regard to cases of suspected abuse, but does act as the conduit. Except in exceptional circumstances, it should always be you who reports a case to the local authority, the Coordinator, a coach or another member of the Committee.

4) The Safeguarding Champion is responsible for ensuring that the appropriate level of Safeguarding training is provided for, and undertaken by, everyone in the group (see below for more details). This includes generally ensuring that everyone is aware of your role and the need to refer to you, rather than dealing with incidents themselves.

5) The Safeguarding Champion is also responsible for carrying out Enhanced DBS (previously CRB) checks on behalf of the group when appropriate (see below for more details).

6) The Safeguarding Champion needs to be generally vigilant that the group is acting in a way that recognises its safeguarding responsibilities in all its activities.

Training Read Easy will provide general Safeguarding Awareness training as part of its general training sessions for Committees and Coordinators, and for Reading Coaches.

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Over time, it is expected that wherever possible the Safeguarding Champion will take on the responsibility for delivering this element of training at Reading Coach Training days, using materials provided by Read Easy UK.

In addition, anyone taking on the role of Safeguarding Champion, Coordinator or Volunteer Interviewer is required to undergo extra online Safeguarding training, and it is the responsibility of the Champion to alert Committee members to the need to do this and to ensure that it is done.

Accessing online training Read Easy uses Gloucestershire County Council’s e-learning provider, which offers a good online training course for anyone undertaking a role with regard to safeguarding vulnerable adults. The course is specifically aimed at individuals who have no prior knowledge of adult safeguarding, or whose knowledge may be significantly out of date in terms of the relevant legislation and practice.

The e-learning environment can be accessed at http://www.kwango.com/

Username: GCCVolandComm

Password: GlosKWA10

The course title to select is ‘Safeguarding Adults under the Care Act 2014’.

You will need to allow approximately two hours to complete the course. The username and password are shared with many voluntary and community groups in Gloucestershire so you must be prepared to complete the course in one sitting as it will remember the previous position in the course of the last person who used the login details, which may not be you!

(Please note that undertaking this course is not necessary if you or the others concerned have recently undertaken similar training for another purpose. However, please ask them to provide evidence of this.)

Safer Recruitment Safer Recruitment is about adopting a consistent and thorough recruitment process for all your volunteers, in order to ensure that people who are unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults are prevented from doing so.

Read Easy has recently adapted its recruitment process for all roles to ensure we are compliant with Safer Recruitment guidelines. For this reason, we have not included any training on Safer Recruitment as we are embedding it in our standard operating procedures.

This means ensuring that a formal recruitment process is followed, including the completion of an application form, the taking up of two references and a thorough interview process, always conducted by at least two people, for which we provide appropriate questions and guidelines. (Please see the Volunteer Interviewer’s Information Pack for more details.)

As Safeguarding Champion you have a general responsibility to be aware of these standards for safer recruitment and to be vigilant that they are being followed by your group.

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DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service, previously CRB) checks As mentioned above, the Safeguarding Champion is responsible for carrying out DBS checks on behalf of the affiliated group.

Please note that there is no legal requirement for DBS checks to be carried out at all on any of our reading coaches, as Read Easy is not a ‘regulated activity’ (this is a legal definition). For the same reason, checks should not be routinely carried out on all reading coaches.

Only those coaches who will be working with a new reader who fits the legal definition of a Vulnerable Adult are legally eligible to apply for an Enhanced DBS check, and Read Easy UK recommends that these checks are carried out as a matter of good practice. For full details about this, please refer to the DBS Checks Policy in the back of your Management Committee Handbook.

Read Easy Committees are often (quite naturally) alarmed to be told that checks are no longer necessary in many cases, especially because in the past CRB checks have been so routinely carried for so many voluntary and paid posts,

The change in legislation has been in response to complaints about both the bureaucracy involved (particularly for volunteers), and about the amount of disclosure that has been demanded about offences that have no direct relevance to the role applied for. This has particularly impacted many ex-offenders trying to get work. As a result, the Government has now significantly reduced the necessity for checks wherever possible.

If you or your Committee are concerned that this change may mean you fail to pick up on volunteers who may pose a threat to your readers, it is worth considering a number of things:

● DBS checks only pick up on people with past offences and not those with the potential to offend in the future, so it is not an automatic means of safeguarding;

● the most important safeguard against appointing inappropriate people is to have a rigorous volunteer recruitment process, in line with government ‘Safer Recruitment’ guidelines, and an appropriate process is provided by Read Easy (see above);

● Read Easy provides guidance in the DBS Policy to help Coordinators identify those adults who are especially vulnerable and should therefore have ‘checked’ coaches;

● other adult readers whom we work with are considered to be as able to protect themselves as the coaches they work with, especially since they only meet on premises where there are others in the near vicinity;

Finding a DBS ‘umbrella body’ In order to be able to carry out checks when they are necessary, you will need to establish a relationship with an ‘umbrella body’ who can submit the applications on the group’s behalf.

The Home Office have a very useful website to help you locate umbrella bodies in your area https://dbs-ub-directory.homeoffice.gov.uk/ who can submit applications on your behalf. Whilst DBS itself makes no charge for volunteer checks, there will always be an administration fee charged by any umbrella body. This fee varies quite widely, although the average seems to be about £20 for an Enhanced Check.

DBS checks can also be done through online umbrella bodies. There are very few providers who carry out Enhanced Checks online – this is one we have come across and would

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recommend http://www.cbscreening.co.uk/enhanced-crb-check However, if possible we recommend that the group forms a relationship with a local umbrella body that can process checks on their behalf.

Within the Group, you may consider using the new DBS Update Service https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service, which lets applicants keep their DBS certificates up to date online and allows employers to check a certificate online. There is an annual fee of £13 for each individual and it may be worth investing where roles are unlikely to change or where the individual has a number of voluntary roles and can keep one DBS check up to date and also portable.

Confidentiality Please take particular note of the confidentiality clause in the Safeguarding Policy.

Legislation Safeguarding and DBS legislation is very complicated and seems to be constantly changing!

The bulk of the legislation around the definition of a Vulnerable Adult remains unchanged. The Protection of Freedoms Act (POFA 2012) altered the definition such that the term ‘Vulnerable’ only applies where the adult is in receipt of a service which is a Regulated Activity. Read Easy is not officially a Regulated Activity, but as an organisation which enables adults to learn to read, we believe it is important to adopt a safeguarding framework in a manner which fits a non-regulated activity body. If you have a deeper interest in the legislation, then this is a good place to start https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/adult-safeguarding-statement-of-government-policy-10-may-2013 .

What you need to do Once your Committee has been established there are a number of things that you can get on with immediately:

1) Firstly, please find the Adult Safeguarding Policy in the back of your Management Committee Handbook, read it thoroughly and make sure you understand it. It contains the up-to-date definition for a Vulnerable Adult and guidance on recognising abuse, together with the process for capturing the initial report of any disclosure or suspicion of abuse. It also provides general guidelines for referring the case to the relevant authority.

2) Your next job will be to contact your local authority’s Adult Safeguarding Board and find out who the relevant contacts are there. If at all possible, try to make personal contact with the relevant person(s), at least by phone. You will need to inform them about the existence and purpose of your group and your role within it as Safeguarding Champion, as well as the fact that your reading coaches may be working with vulnerable adults, and the possibility of them needing to report abuse. Then find out what their normal reporting procedures are, their emergency contact numbers, etc. and what actions you should expect from them if you were to report abuse. Make notes of the names and contact details, along with any guidance and information you are given and keep them with this pack, so you can refer to them when you need to.

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3) Have a look at the online Safeguarding training referred to above and set aside a couple of hours to undertake it. Contact your Coordinator and Volunteer Interviewer to provide them with the necessary instructions to take the training themselves. Make this an agenda item for a Committee meeting and set a deadline for when the training needs to be done by for all of you – before the group starts operating. Then check up that everyone has completed it. Certificates are available as evidence of this!

4) Borrow the spare Volunteer Interviewer’s Information Pack from your Chair and have a look at its contents and the forms for the recruitment process, so that you understand the guidelines provided for Safer Recruitment.

5) Find the DBS Checks Policy in your Handbook, read it through thoroughly and make sure you understand it. It’s a complicated area, so if in doubt feel free to ring us for clarification!

6) Ensure that both your Committee and your Coordinator properly understand the policy – it is the Coordinator’s responsibility to identify those readers who fall into the Vulnerable Adult category and should therefore have a coach with an Enhanced DBS check, so it is especially important that he or she understands the criteria for this.

7) Following the guidelines provided above, identify an appropriate DBS umbrella body in your area (if possible), or an online one. Establish a relationship with them so that you can begin to submit applications on your group’s behalf when it becomes necessary.

8) Talk to your Coordinator about Safeguarding issues and your role in the group, particularly in relation to supporting him or her. At the back of this pack we have provided a copy of the Summary of the Adult Safeguarding Policy that should be read/explained and provided to new readers by the Coordinator at enrolment. This Summary is provided here mainly for your information (and guidance about it is provided in the Coordinator’s Handbook), but you may like to discuss it with the Coordinator and any issues it raises.

Policies The Adult Safeguarding and DBS policies must be read in conjunction with this information pack.

Our support If you have any questions or need any advice please contact our office on 01386 700883 or email: ginny@readeasy.org.uk.

Enc. Adult Safeguarding Policy

Adult Safeguarding Summary for new Readers

DBS Checks Policy