Safeguarding consultancy, reviews and audits
Expert support to improve practice in safeguarding children and adults
Understanding your safeguarding duties and responsibilities, and developing and embedding good safeguarding practice, is key for all organisations.
Whether your organisation works with children and young people, adults, or both, we can work with you to make sure that the correct measures are in place to safeguard them from harm or neglect. We have experience working with, amongst others: local authorities, safeguarding boards, health providers, faith-based organisations, charities, housing, education and registered care providers.
Work with SCIE’s experts to:
- Evaluate current practice across both children’s and adults’ safeguarding - to understand what is working well and what challenges exist
- Review and update your safeguarding and related policies to reflect good practice and the latest legislative and regulatory requirements
- Conduct audits of your safeguarding processes, from identification and reporting, to enquiries, reviews and ongoing learning
- Establish good governance, developing designated roles and responsibilities, including safeguarding leads and internal safeguarding boards
- Use whole systems thinking to understand and learn from safeguarding incidents and near misses
- Broker access to Learning Together accredited lead reviewers
How we can help
Audit
SCIE’s safeguarding experts can work with you to audit your safeguarding systems and culture. Combining policy reviews, in-depth conversations, focus groups, and case audits as appropriate, we can provide insights and considerations relating to leadership, culture, policy and practice. Our overview of safeguarding strengths and challenges across your organisation, will enable you to build a clear improvement programme.
Safeguarding review
We can provide an independent review of current practice on a smaller scale than a full audit, liaising with key staff and people who use services and reviewing relevant documentation to provide you with a clear understanding of what is working well. We can help you build on good practice and identify where things are working less well, what the barriers are to overcoming challenges.
Policy updates
SCIE’s safeguarding experts will support you to write, refresh, or review your organisation’s safeguarding policies, procedures and guidance, and are CQC compliant. Incorporating related areas such as deprivations of liberty, mental capacity and dignity, our expert knowledge can help you build your safeguarding on strong foundations.
SCIE’s Learning Together Model
SCIE’s Learning Together model is one of the most developed and tested systems-approach models available. This collaborative methodology aims to gain a deeper understanding of current local practice and cultivate an open, learning culture. Each review is bespoke, designed to fit your needs, the case(s) and circumstances.
Our in-house experts and associates conduct audits and case reviews on a consultancy basis.
Safeguarding clients
Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport and The National Lottery Community Fund
Faith-based and user-led organisations
SCIE is partnering with the Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport and The National Lottery Community Fund to support smaller faith-based organisations, and user-led organisations (ULOs) for people with learning disabilities, to improve their safeguarding work. The project will use the excellent safeguarding materials developed by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and partners in 2019.
SCIE is supporting faith groups and ULOs to develop consistent, high-quality safeguarding practice via a combination of workshops, webinars, bespoke training courses, and a safeguarding governance and accountability toolkit. The project will run for two years, and will be led by SCIE’s expert team of Practice Development Managers. It will involve close collaboration with our sector-leading co-production specialists. This work will end with the provision of free-to-access safeguarding resources to build a lasting impact in these and related sectors.
Mayor of London's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU)
Analysis of statutory reviews of homicides and violent incidents
SCIE produced a thematic review of homicides across London, in order to establish key causation factors and common patterns. It will help to bring forward recommendations for the VRU and partners to consider in developing a longer-term approach to violence reduction in the capital.
London 2020: Analysis of statutory reviews of homicides and violent incidents
Church of England
Independent audit of safeguarding arrangements and survivors’ survey
The Church of England commissioned SCIE to provide an independent audit of diocesan safeguarding arrangements. SCIE has subsequently been commissioning to conduct audits of the Church of England’s palaces and cathedrals.
States of Jersey
Children’s social care learning partner
SCIE has been asked by the States of Jersey to become a long-term learning partner on children’s social care. This role will include: developing a learning programme; supporting the implementation of a practice framework; quality assuring and auditing to improving safeguarding practice; and coaching and mentoring.
Downside School and monasteries
Independent audit of safeguarding arrangements
Downside Abbey commissioned SCIE to carry out a systems-based joint audit of its abbey and school. Engagement took place with senior leaders, current staff, pupils and parents, past pupils and those that have previously held safeguarding roles.
Mencap
Safeguarding review
Mencap commissioned SCIE to review the effectiveness of its safeguarding arrangements. SCIE recommended that Mencap should consider appointing an independent chair for its internal safeguarding panel. This recommendation was approved by the Board of Trustees.
Friends of the Elderly – National charity and care group
Reviewing safeguarding practice
SCIE supported Friends of the Elderly to carry out a comprehensive review of safeguarding practice. We helped to review policies and procedures, alerts and care plans, and conducted site visits, reviewed training and helped establish an internal safeguarding board.
Refuge
Scrutiny of safeguarding adults and children policies
SCIE provided scrutiny of safeguarding adults and children policies, identifying gaps and changes or additions to ensure that the policies reflect latest legislative and regulatory requirements as well as good safeguarding practice.
Reshet
Improvement support on children and young people’s safeguarding in the Jewish community
SCIE is supporting Reshet with developing and strengthening best practice in child protection and safeguarding for synagogues and communal organisations. SCIE has provided a range of support services to organisations in the Jewish community.
SCIE's safeguarding training was extremely well run and sensitive to our specific needs.
Avi Lazarus, CEO, Federation of Synagogues
The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland
Audits to improve safeguarding
SCIE has recently conducted independent audits of the safeguarding arrangements of two dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland: the diocese of Galloway and the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
These were commissioned by the Independent Review Group (IRG), chaired by Baroness Helen Liddell. We worked in partnership with Children in Scotland. The aim of each audit is to work with the Diocese to support safeguarding improvements by identifying how well safeguarding is working, identifying where there might be weaknesses and exploring the rationale for both strengths and weaknesses found.
The audits have used SCIE’s established methodology Learning Together, which has been used through a three-year programme of Church of England Diocesan Audits. While some of the areas to be explored differ slightly, the methodology remains the same. This process will be repeated each year until all eight dioceses have been audited. The IRG was established by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland (BCOS) in 2017 to help ensure the implementation of recommendations made in a comprehensive report into safeguarding in the Catholic Church in Scotland by the McLellan Commission in 2015.
