Safeguarding and Safe Practice

Overview

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility. Every HAF club must provide a safe and welcoming environment for children, and parents and carers should feel confident that their child is well looked after and that robust safeguarding arrangements are in place.

Under the Children Act 1989, local authorities are under a general duty to provide services for children in need for the purposes of safeguarding and promoting their welfare. Local authorities, working with partner organisations and agencies, have specific duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in their area.

Working together to safeguard children is the multi-agency statutory guidance for every individual, agency and organisation working with children and their families. It sets out expectations about how everyone should work together to help, support and protect children.

As set out in Working together to safeguard children, safeguarding is defined for the purposes of this guidance as:

• providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge
• protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online
• preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
• ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
• promoting the upbringing of children with their birth parents, or otherwise their family network through a kinship care arrangement, whenever possible and where this is in the best interests of the children
• taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes in line with the outcomes set out in the Children’s social care national framework

Safeguarding Training is available to all holiday club providers each delivery period. Please contact your Area Lead for more information. 

Holiday clubs in school settings

Schools are generally safe environments with established safeguarding arrangements.

Where activities are provided by the school’s governing body or proprietor under the direct supervision or management of their school staff, the school’s child protection policy applies.

Where activities are provided by another organisation within the school premises, the governing body or proprietor should seek assurance that the organisation has appropriate safeguarding and child protection policies and procedure in place.

Anyone involved in the delivery of a holiday club in school settings should be familiar with part 1 of keeping children safe in education.

Holiday clubs in out of school school settings

Out-of-school settings are organisations or individuals that provide tuition, training, instruction or activities to children in England without their parents’ or carers’ supervision, but are not:

• schools
• colleges
• education settings providing alternative provision
• 16 to 19 academies
• providers caring for children that are registered with Ofsted or a childminder agency

These settings typically operate outside normal school hours (for example, evenings, weekends, and school holidays), although some are run part-time during school hours to support home educated children.

Providers running out-of-school settings should follow the guidance on keeping children safe during community activities, after-school clubs, and tuition , which sets out what policies and procedures should be in place for:

• health and safety
• safeguarding and child protection
• staff suitability
• governance

Volunteers and DBS checking

Volunteers often play an important role in the delivery of holiday clubs. However, safeguarding must remain a priority.

Under no circumstances should a volunteer without the appropriate checks be left unsupervised or allowed to carry out regulated activity.

For voluntary staff who are regularly involved in the delivery of HAF in holiday clubs, this work is considered regulated activity. This means they will be subject to an enhanced DBS check with barred list information.

There may be volunteers who do not carry out this role regularly, so may not meet the threshold for regulated activity. In these cases, an enhanced DBS check may not be legally required

For further information on definitions of ‘regular’ or ‘regulated activity’, refer to guidance on regulated activity in relation to children in keeping children safe in education.

To provide reassurance to parents and carers, we strongly recommend that all volunteers involved in the delivering HAF-funded holiday clubs have an enhanced DBS check (which, where applicable, should include children’s barred list information).

We do not recommend holiday clubs use volunteers that are not DBS checked. However, if this occurs, it is the responsibility of the holiday club provider to ensure that volunteers are never left alone or unsupervised with children.

Other workers

All staff who are employed by holiday club providers funded through the holiday, activities and food programme should be subject to an enhanced DBS check with barred list information.

Part 3 of keeping children safe in education sets out a clear process for safe recruitment. We recommend local authorities and holiday cubs providers follow this best practice when recruiting volunteers.