Assignment 026 - Task a

1.1 Outline current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedure within own UK Home Nation affecting the safeguarding of children and young people.

Children Act 2006 – Is an Act that defines the new duties imposed on the Local Authorities in respect to improving the Every Child Matters outcomes for pre-school children. The Act also defines new rules in relation to childcare for working parents as well as parental information services. It is aimed at improving the well-being of young children. It emphasises the importance of safeguarding children and young people within an educational setting. If a child discloses neglect or abuse; an establishment should have instructions to help the child. This could be referral to an outside organisation or internally.

Law and guidance regulate the way you should work with children in your childcare setting to support and encourage their well-being and safeguard them from abuse and maltreatment. Legislation provides a comprehensive instruction on what must be attained in respect to child protection and safeguarding. Whereas Legal guidance is more precise and provides details on how the law ought to be applied and fulfilled in early years settings and services. Laws and statutory regulation are compulsory and should reinforce policies and procedures that are used in your setting.

Current legislation is the result of The children Act 1989 which was brought in to ensure that all people who work with children worked together and was clear about their responsibility’s and knew how to act if allegations of child abuse were made.Following the death of Victoria Climbie in the year 2000 an independent inquiry highlighted many problems with how reports of neglect and child abuse were dealt with and found that vulnerable people in society were not being safeguarded.The Laming report led to the governments Every Child Matters paper and The Children Act 2004. In the last year this has now been renamed Every

Children Act 1989 – Protecting children’s welfare and to provide services according to the specific needs of children.

1.1 outline current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedures within own UK home nation affecting the safeguarding of children and young people.

Unit 14 AC1.3 Unit 16 AC 1.1 in the table below explain the following legislation and guidance in respect of safeguarding adult’s children and young people.

It is everybody’s responsibility to safeguard children – This means every single staff member within a setting; irrelevant of what role they may have there. This also includes non-staff members, such as volunteers, student’s third-party companies (visitors, service providers etc). Each setting should therefore adopt their own safeguarding policy, of which has to be kept up to date and followed at all times.

The children act 1989 has influenced some settings by bringing together several sets of guidance and provided the foundation for many of the standards practitioners sustain and maintain when working with children. The act requires that settings work together in the best interests of the child and form partnerships with parents or carers. It requires settings to have appropriate adult to child ratios and policies and procedures on child protection. This act has had an influence in all areas of practice from planning a curriculum and record keeping. The every child matters framework has

Ensuring children and young people’s safety and welfare in the work setting is an essential part of safeguarding. While children are at school, practitioners act in ‘loco parentis’ while their parents are away. As part of their legal and professional obligations, practitioners hold positions of trust and a duty of care to the children in their school, and therefore should always act in their best interests and ensure their safety – the welfare of the child is paramount (Children Act 1989). The Children Act 2004 came in with the Every Child Matters (ECM) guidelines and greatly impacted the way schools look at the care and welfare of pupils. Children and young people should be helped to learn and thrive and be given the opportunity to

Outline the current legislation that underpins the safeguarding of children and young people within own UK Home Nations.

The main current legislation guidelines policies and procedures within own UK home nation for safeguarding children and young people.

Unit 516 Understand Safeguarding of children and young people (for those working in the adult sector) P5

1. Outline current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedures within own UK Home Nation affecting the safeguarding of children and young people.

All children have the right to feel safe and be free from harm and abuse. With this in mind there are guidelines and legislation which have been put in place which relate to the safeguarding of children and young people. The Children Act of 1989 and the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child also of 1989 were significant pieces of legislation and guidelines which were introduced nearly 30 years ago. However, it is only over the last 10-15 years where there has been a significant increase in legislation and guidelines which have been introduced to recognise the rights of children as individuals, protect vulnerable children and ensure that multi-agency teams work together. Tragically a lot of these have been introduced since there were a number of high profile cases of serious child neglect leading to the tragic and horrific deaths of children.