Early years safeguarding

We provide a range of services to help you meet regulatory requirements and keep children safe.

Safeguarding is everyone's business

Early years and childcare practitioners are in a unique position to observe changes in a child's behaviour or appearance which give rise to concern about their well-being. Section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 places a duty on early years providers to comply with the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage (DfE 2024), which states that:

Providers must take all necessary steps to keep children safe and well and have regard for the statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023. If concerns about a child's safety or welfare arise providers must notify children's social care services without delay.

We provide a range of services to help you meet regulatory requirements and keep children safe, including safeguarding training, consultancy support in the setting, supervision for DSL’s and evaluation of setting policy and practice. For more information about these services please contact our Early Years Team: 01905 844048

Who to contact

If you are you worried that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm and needs immediate protection:

contact the police on 999 if there is an immediate risk of danger
otherwise contact the Family Front Door on 01905 822 666 from Monday to Friday 8.30am to 5.00pm (until 4:30pm on a Friday)
out of office hours (5.00pm to 8.30am weekdays and all day weekends and bank holidays) contact the Emergency Duty team on 01905 768020

The Worcestershire Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP)

The WSCP has responsibility for ensuring that agencies work together effectively to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children and young people in Worcestershire.

Worcestershire Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP)

Early Years Safeguarding in-house training

Level 2 Early years Safeguarding training

Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility, and the early years and childcare team are delighted to offer face to face, in-house training on a date and time to suit your and your staff.

This 2.5 hour course is designed to bring teams together to reflect on current practice and remind ourselves of our safeguarding duties.

To support delegates and settings, this in-house course does not use a formal presentation. We instead use a mixture of professional discussion and practical activities to explore how we can meet the requirements of the EYFS through the following topics:

our responsibilities to Safeguard Children
raising our awareness of Safeguarding threats
recognising the signs and symptoms of abuse
consider contextualised safeguarding
understand how to handle a disclosure of abuse

Cost: £300 + VAT for a maximum of 25 staff

Settings can choose to share their in-house course with another local setting. If they do this then the responsibility to charge the other attending setting lies with the setting hosting the training

How an in-house training course is organised:

arrange a date and time which has been agreed with your trainer.
the training team will organise a contract to secure the work
once the contract is signed and invoice is requested or course is loaded into CPD
on receipt of the returned register by the trainer CPD will be updated to reflect who attended and certificates issued

Contact workforcesupport@worcestershire.gov.uk to discuss details.

Resources

Safeguarding and Child protection guidance for private, voluntary and independent early years and childcare providers

This guidance has been written to support all early years settings in delivering effective safeguarding practice. This document was previously known as the Yellow folder so can be used to update information you may currently hold.

Safeguarding and Child protection guidance for private voluntary and independent early years and childcare providers (PDF)

Safeguarding Self Assessment audit tool

These audit tools, one for group providers and one for childminders have been designed to help you reflect on current safeguarding practice and identify areas for development. It is a recommendation that you complete this annually to ensure you are always developing your safeguarding practice.

Multi-agency levels of need

This Worcestershire levels of need guidance is intended to assist professionals in identifying and responding to the needs of children, young people and families. All those working with children should be aware of this document and how it can support and inform the decisions you make regarding the safeguarding of children.

Levels of need guidance (PDF)

If you need any further support please contact the early years team on 01905 844048 or email EYCC@worcestershire.gov.uk

Model templates for private, voluntary and independent early years and childcare providers

The following are model templates for safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures.
These are intended to be model documents which providers may wish to use to support the development of the setting's policy and procedure, rather than fully comprehensive and prescribed documents.

There may be sections that the setting needs to change in order to ensure that they fully reflect their own practice.
Some settings may also want to have separate policies for such things as whistle-blowing and information sharing, and if this is the case, we suggest simply making reference to the separate document in the safeguarding policy.

Model policies

Group settings Sample Safeguarding and Child protection policy June 2024 (Word)

Childminder Sample Safeguarding and Child protection Policy June 2024 (Word)

We have created some useful templates you may wish to use or adapt to your setting. Please note that childminders who are registered with an agency may need to substitute the name of the agency where there is reference to Ofsted.

Designated safeguarding leads forums

They are open to all DSL's and Deputy DSL's, are free of charge to provide updates on policy, legislation, guidance and local procedures, as well as giving you the opportunity for peer discussion

Places on the Forums are to be booked via CPD online to ensure that we do not breach health and safety at the venues used.

The role and responsibilities of the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL)

The Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) holds a significant level of responsibility and they should be given the additional time, funding, training and resources to fulfil this role effectively. To support with this we have developed the below document which outlines the roles and responsibilities of the DSL.

DSL Job description (PDF)

Early years safeguarding review

Education Services can support early years and childcare settings to meet statutory requirements and adopt best practice by conducting a safeguarding review which will identify non-compliance and areas of weakness that need to be addressed.

We will make recommendations where appropriate and help your school to draw up an action plan to make the necessary improvements.

Education Services can help implement and facilitate management of Safeguarding within your setting by providing:

a 33 point audit to ensure your statutory requirements are being met
an action plan for corrective and preventative measures
help with change improvements

To discuss a early years safeguarding review please email: EYCC@worcestershire.gov.uk or telephone: 01905 844048

Safeguarding webcast series

Low level concerns in the Early Years

Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2024 places a requirement on schools and colleges to have policies and processes in place to deal with any concerns or allegations regarding adults working or volunteering with children, which do not meet the harm threshold, referred to as ‘low-level’ concerns.

Although this requirement is specifically applicable to schools and colleges in England, KCSIE clearly states, as a matter of best practice, it could be applied to any organisation working with children.

This 40 minute webcast explores our safeguarding responsibilities and the importance of building a positive culture around safeguarding, considering how adopting low level concerns into our safeguarding practice can strengthen this. We will address the confusion that sometimes arises between the definition of concerns, complaints and allegations and how to deal with these effectively. We will also consider past serious case reviews and investigations with a focus on Vanessa George and Jimmy Saville to help us understand the importance of addressing ‘niggles or concerns’.

By the end of the 40 minutes I am hoping you will have the knowledge, confidence and passion to adopt low level concerns into your current practices to help build an effective safeguarding culture to be proud of.