Safeguarding

Aim

To continue our commitment to keeping all young people in our care safe from harm. This is our number one priority. Along with safety, safeguarding is the golden thread throughout our movement.

Progress a year on

• In the past 12 months, we’ve stabilised the structure and resourcing of our national Safeguarding Team. Building upon previous improvements, we have a solid foundation for working with our volunteers, as we all strive to keep young people safe. These changes have reduced the number of open cases being worked on and improved efficiency and effectiveness in managing cases.
• We’ve introduced an accessible online referral form, making it simpler for people to report their concerns to us. This builds upon earlier changes to enable direct reporting to the national team, meaning anyone who’s concerned can report issues straight to our team. This has led to young people reporting things themselves, rather than through a third party. This child-centred approach means we can provide support directly to young people, dealing with their concerns more quickly.
• We’ve seen an increase in the number (and complexity) of cases reported to us. This reflects wider trends across society in the UK and demonstrates that our reporting procedures are easily accessible.
• We updated our mandatory safeguarding training course that’s externally validated by the NSPCC for all volunteers.
• We’re proud that our national team has become more professional. Through our comprehensive Quality Assurance Framework and regular auditing, we’ve seen increases in our performance, which means we’re providing a better service to our volunteers and young people.
• We’re committed to putting the survivor’s voice at the heart of our safeguarding work, and make sure we’re trauma informed. Along with hearing feedback from various organisations and forums, Scouts have formed a partnership with the National Working Group (NWG) as part of our shared continued commitment to actively involve survivors who have lived experience. We’ll consult them as we work on changing policies, training, and resources, and in how we work to prevent further harm from occurring.

What's next

• We’ll continue to listen to, and work collaboratively with, survivors.
• We’re continually reviewing our resources, identifying areas where we can provide more support to our members. This includes tackling how we improve our support to young people with welfare issues.
• We’ll examine our current system of learning reviews. We’re keen to embed changes to practice more quickly, learning from things that’ve gone wrong.