The UK government defined safeguarding as the protection of children from maltreatment, ensuring children grow in a safe environment, and preventing impairment of children’s health and development. In the UK, safeguarding children is not an individual responsibility, but it is a shared one where all the agencies are involved with individuals who come into contact with the children. The core principles for safeguarding children are provided in the Child Care Act, 2014. The Act is the process that underpinned different principles and guidance that provide protection and safeguards to children. This Act primarily focuses on “Working Together to Safeguard Children”.
Safeguarding a child means doing everything that helps to keep the child safe and well. In this, protection should be given to children from neglect, abuse, and harm, and simultaneously, promoting their health and development. The UK government takes proactive steps so that it can stop any harm before it happens. This involves helping children to grow healthy and happy, ensuring children live in a safe environment, and teaching children how to be safe. To work on a law assignment and understand laws to safeguard the children is important that the students need to locate trustworthy sources. This blog will include information about safeguarding principles for child care and the aims and differences of the protection and safeguarding of children.
Core principles of child safeguarding and protection
In the UK, there are six core principles on which children are safeguarded and protected. These principles are outlined in the Child Care Act, 2014. Although these principles are outlined for adults, the themes of these principles are widely open and applied to the protection and safeguarding of children. In these principles, the main focus is on the child’s welfare. It focuses on the best interests and needs of the child, which always come first while making any decisions or taking action for their protection and safeguarding.
The following are the six key principles for child care:
Empowerment
In this principle, the child should be encouraged and supported to express their feelings, make informed choices, have their wishes heard, and be taken seriously. This principle must be based on their understanding of the areas and age.
Prevention
The main aim or objective of the proactive measures is to address and identify the potential risk that can harm the child. In this, individuals and agencies worked so that they could identify the risk and concern before harm occurs to children. This principle involves awareness, the creation of a safe atmosphere, and training for individuals who are responsible for the protection of children.
Protection
The main focus of this principle is to provide support and representation to children who are likely to suffer or are suffering from any harm. In this principle, it is the duty of the individual and agency to take necessary action so that protection can be provided to those children from further neglect or abuse.
Proportionality
In this principle, the main focus is to ensure that the responses are made to the appropriate concerns, and those responses must be the least intrusive on the lives of children. With this, a balance between risk and child needs can be maintained. Additionally, responses must be appropriate to the level of risk involved in safeguarding children. This ensures that all the necessary actions have been taken to ensure the safety of the child.
Partnership
The main aim of this principle is to build a partnership between professionals, families, and organisations, as effective safeguarding relies on strong collaboration among multi-agencies. Partnership among multi-agencies helps to ensure a coordinated and holistic response to the safeguarding of children who are suffering or are likely to suffer.
Accountability
This principle focuses that all organisations and individuals have the responsibility to perform their role of safeguarding the children. For this, there are clear procedures, policies and a transparent decision-making process.
Aim and key difference between safeguarding and child protection
Aim of safeguarding and child protection:
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Goal or aim: The primary goal of safeguarding is to promote the health, welfare, and development of children. On the other hand, the primary goals of child protection are to respond to specific cases of suspected and identified abuse or neglected children and provide protection to them.
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Intervention timing: In safeguarding, preventive and proactive measures are taken, which is a part of good practice. While, on the other hand, in child protection, the intervention occurs in response to or reactively triggered due to any specific incident.
Key differences between safeguarding and child protection:
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Scope: The scope of safeguarding is universal as well as broad and applies to all children. However, the scope of child protection is targeted and mainly focuses on children who are at risk of experiencing harm.
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Responsibilities: In safeguarding, the responsibility is collective for all individuals and organisations working with children. However, in child protection, the primary responsibility is of trained specialists like police, social services, and safeguarding leads.
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Approach: The safeguarding approach is systemic and holistic, which focuses on policies, training, and safe recruitment. On the other hand, the approach of child protection is individual case management, which involves legal action, child protection, and investigation.
Wrapping it up
The aim of safeguarding a child is to stop harm to a child before it occurs; however, child protection aims to act when the child is at risk of harm or neglect. The Child Care Act, 2014, includes six principles that focus on safeguarding children who are suffering from any harm or are likely to suffer harm. There are many safeguarding and protection principles made by the UK government, and in this, it is not only the individual's responsibility to protect and safeguard the child, but also the responsibility of agencies and organisations that come into contact with the child. In essence,
It can be said that every child protection case is part of a safeguarding issue; however, every safeguarding issue is not always part of child protection issues.
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