Tag: safeguarding

Safeguarding for Charities and Trustees

All charities have a responsibility to ensure they don’t cause harm to anyone who has contact with them. Charities working with children or adults at risk have extra responsibilities.

As a trustee you must make sure your charity fulfils this responsibility. Even if you delegate some activities to a safeguarding lead or group, you retain overall responsibility.

Harm and abuse have a devastating impact. A strong safeguarding culture means:

you protect people
you minimise the risks of any harm or abuse
everyone has confidence their concerns will be dealt with appropriately
everyone at the charity understands their role

Every trustee must make sure their charity undertakes these 5 actions:

1 Identify and manage risks

2 Have suitable policies and practices in place

3 Carry out necessary checks

4 Protect your volunteers and staff

5 Handle and report incidents appropriately

Read more detailed safeguarding guidance from the Charity Commission.

Safeguarding and protecting people

Protecting people and safeguarding responsibilities should be a governance priority for all charities. It is a fundamental part of operating as a charity for the public benefit.

As part of fulfilling your trustee duties, whether working online or in person, you must take reasonable steps to protect from harm people who come into contact with your charity.

This includes:

people who benefit from your charity’s work
staff
volunteers
other people who come into contact with your charity through its work

10 actions trustee boards need to take to ensure good safeguarding governance

Click on the picture below

More detailed information and advice can be found here

Advice on Whistleblowing from the Charity Commission

Advice on Whistleblowing from the Charity Commission

The Charity Commission is a ‘prescribed person’ under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA), which provides the statutory framework for employment protections for charity workers who make a qualifying disclosure (or ‘blow the whistle’) to them about suspected wrongdoing, including crimes and regulatory breaches by their employer.

“Our aim is to make it straightforward for charity workers to bring concerns covered in PIDA to our attention. It is important that they feel able to speak up about a serious wrongdoing they have identified.

We understand how difficult it may have been for them to bring a matter to our attention, and its importance to them. We recognise the value of this information, as workers will have a unique insight into how a charity is operating on a day to day basis.

These disclosures provide us with information that will help us fulfil our regulatory duties.

When opening a case we record the nature of the issue that is raised with us. The most reported issue categories were governance issues, safeguarding, fraud and money laundering.

Whistleblowing disclosures help us detect and prevent concerns within the sector and take steps to put these right. They help create more effective and efficient charities and more generally assist in raising the public’s trust and confidence in charities and the charitable sector.”

You can also report issues to your employer – check your charity’s whistleblowing policy (a Whistleblowing Policy Template can be found here: Whistleblowing-Policy__fraud_site_)

What to report to the Charity Commission

You can report things that have happened, are happening or are likely to happen. Only report issues to them that could seriously harm:

the people a charity helps
the charity’s staff or volunteers
services the charity provides
the charity’s assets
the charity’s reputation