Why Is Duty Of Care Important

Explain what is meant by child protection in the wider concept of safeguarding children and young people. 1.2

The UK Government has defined the term ‘safeguarding children’ as: ‘The process of protecting children from abuse or neglect, preventing impairment of their health and development, and ensuring they are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care that enables children to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully.’

To have a duty of care means you must aim to provide a high quality of care to the best of your ability, not act in a way that could case harm and always act in the best interest of the individual.

Today we use the term safeguarding instead of child protection because it covers a much broader range. These changes were influenced by the first Joint Chief Inspectors’ safeguarding report 2002 and formalised in the Every Child Matters legislation outlined in the Children Act 2004. By safeguarding a child or young person we ensure they get the very best of the opportunities available to them for them to achieve the best of their potential while keeping them safe from bullying, crime, accidents, neglect and abuse.

It is important to safeguard children and young people because no one deserves to be abused whether it be emotional, physical, sexual abuse and no young person deserves to be neglected and we have a duty to protect them from harm.

Principles for implementing duty of care in health, social care or children’s and young people’s settings

Safeguarding means protecting and promoting the child’s welfare and putting measure in place to prevent abuse. Child protection is protecting a child where there is reason to believe that the child has suffered or are likely to suffer as a result of abuse.

Safeguarding involves everything a setting does, including their procedures and policies etc, to ensure children are kept safe and healthy, and that the risk of them coming to harm or being involved in an accident, is minimised.

Safeguarding is about keeping children safe from harm and abuse. It means proactively seeking to involve the whole community in keeping children safe and promoting their welfare.

Safeguarding is for everyone and every organisation responsibility to protect children from any harm and promote their welfare (Children Act, 2004). However, the Department of Children, School

Any individual who comes into contact with children in their daily work has a duty to ensure the safety and well-being of children. Safeguarding means protecting and promoting the childs welfare and putting measures in place to prevent abuse. Child protection is protecting a child when there is reason to believe that the child has suffered or is likely to suffer from abuse or neglect. In order to ensure this happens within a school setting, there are many laws that protect the welfare and safeguarding of children:-

safeguarding, who a vulnerable adult is, different types of abuse, who may abuse, factors and

Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility, and includes measures to prevent or minimise the potential for abuse occurring. Protection is considered a statutory responsibility in response to individual cases where risk of harm has been identified

A duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeable harm others. A definition from Wikipedia

Safeguarding is the term that has replaced the term Child Protection. It includes promoting children’s safety and welfare as well as protecting children when abuse happens. It has only been developed in the past 50 years, and the need for improved legislation has been highlighted by cases such as Maria Colwell (1973) and Victoria Climbie (2000) as these cases showed weaknesses in procedures.