Safeguarding children policy

Implemented January 2016
Reviewed Jan-March 2022
Next review by December 2023

The Action for Child Trauma International (ACTI) Safeguarding policy applies to every area of ACTI activity and to everyone involved as a trustee, volunteer, work associate or partner. As a humanitarian charity we are committed to ensuring that we meet the responsibilities set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 – to protect children from all forms of abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence. The policy sets out our standards and guidelines for keeping children safe in the course of our work.

ACTI trains and supports people who work with children traumatised by conflict, violence and disaster in countries where trauma treatment for children is not available, or services are severely stretched and under-resourced. We also provide training and practical support for carers of traumatised children through our child rights projects We work with partner organisations in countries where children’s rights may not be sufficiently protected by law or culture. People are often working in difficult circumstances to treat and support children and minimise risks of harm. We need to work sensitively with partner organisations who ask for our involvement, as their situation may constrain their approach to safeguarding. We seek to understand their local context and share our expectations for working with them.

The principal Activity of ACTI is training of professionals who work with children. We have a robust recruitment process for trustees and volunteers and the roles do not require a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Our entire focus as a charity is on the rights and mental health of traumatised children. We aim to both teach and learn about safeguarding practice in countries we visit.

Overview of the policy

The ACTI safeguarding policy sets out:

Our guiding principles for keeping children safe
Why we need a safeguarding policy
Our understanding of what constitutes abuse
How we aim to prevent harm and minimise risk to children in all areas of Activity, including delivery of training overseas, programme planning, child rights projects, fundraising, website, publicity, and partnerships
How we maintain the safety of CATT practice - with professionals trained by ACTI
Our procedures for reporting harm and taking action
How we recruit new trustees, volunteers and associates
How we ensure that everyone involved in ACTI’s work understands our approach to safeguarding and the responsibility they have for preventing harm and reporting concerns
How we work with partner organisations overseas and in the UK to uphold our safeguarding standards when working together on projects
How we monitor, review and publicise this policy

Keeping Children Safe

ACTI’s mission is to advance the rights, education and health of children and young people who experience trauma as a result of conflict, violence and disaster. As an organisation we are completely committed to preventing harm and mitigating risks to children within any ACTI Activity undertaken by anyone involved with our work.

The professionals we train work with children who have experienced or witnessed traumatic events through conflict, violence in the family or community, and disaster. The consequences of traumatic experiences and the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be overwhelming for children and make them feel unsafe in every area of their life. We train people to use a child-centred treatment protocol – Children’s Accelerated Trauma Technique (CATT) – which is designed to feel safe and unthreatening for a child. This treatment has been developed specifically to help children with PTSD by ACTI’s founder Carlotta Raby, and is aligned with UK NICE guidance on treating traumatised children. We offer training in Anxiety and Resilience to professionals who continue to support children after trauma treatment.

Through our relationships with partner organisations overseas we create a teaching environment within which professionals explore the rights of children, and learn to use a treatment protocol that cares for the physical and emotional safety of the child at every stage.

It is important for ACTI to open dialogue with partners about safeguarding, so that it becomes something we can and do discuss. This is an opportunity for ACTI to ask about local child protection practice and show sensitivity to very challenging situations for children and those working with them. Our CATT training includes learning on safeguarding – we facilitate discussion within the local context and share approaches to mitigating risk of harm.

Why we need a Safeguarding policy

As a charity working for the rights and health of traumatised children we want to demonstrate to everyone involved with us, and to potential stakeholders and partners, that ACTI can be trusted to safeguard children. We will ensure that all trustees, volunteers and associates understand their responsibility to prevent harm and minimise risk, and know how to respond if they have concerns about a child.

With this policy we recognise that all children have equal rights to protection from abuse and exploitation. We also recognise that our standards may be more difficult or challenging to apply in some countries and local contexts than others, and we will need to work with partners to meet our minimum expectations, set out in this policy under “Working with partner organisations…”

Having an ACTI safeguarding policy does not mean that we can eliminate all harm to children. ACTI will do everything possible to understand and minimise risk, and address concerns and incidents robustly. ACTI firmly upholds the safety of the CATT protocol for traumatised children through training and on-going supervision and support for professionals.

Our understanding of what constitutes abuse

Definitions of harm – taken from Keeping Children Safe (guidance for relief and development charities)

It is difficult to define “harm” to children because children can be abused in so many ways depending on the context and culture. They may be abused in a family, an institution, community or faith setting, or via social media/internet. They may be harmed by an adult or adults or another child or children. There are also practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), forced or early marriage that cause significant harm to children. The following definitions can be used as a guide:

Physical abuse: actual or potential physical harm perpetrated by another person, adult or child. It may involve hitting, shaking, poisoning, drowning and burning. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of, or deliberately induces illness in a child.

Sexual abuse: forcing or enticing a child to take part in sexual activities that he or she does not fully understand and has little choice in consenting to. This may include, but is not limited to, rape, oral sex, penetration, or non-penetrative acts such as masturbation, kissing, rubbing and touching. It may also include involving children in looking at, or producing sexual images, watching sexual activities and encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways.

Child sexual exploitation: a form of sexual abuse that involves children being engaged in any sexual activity in exchange for money, gifts, food, accommodation, affection, status, or anything else that they or their family needs. It usually involves a child being manipulated or coerced, which may involve befriending children, gaining their trust, and subjecting them to drugs and alcohol. The abusive relationship between victim and perpetrator involves an imbalance of power where the victim’s options are limited. It is a form of abuse that can be misunderstood by children and adults as consensual.

Child sexual exploitation manifests in different ways. It can involve an older perpetrator exercising financial, emotional or physical control over a young person. It can involve peers manipulating or forcing victims into sexual activity, sometimes within gangs and in gangaffected neighbourhoods. It may also involve opportunistic or organised networks of perpetrators who profit financially from trafficking young victims between different locations to engage in sexual activity with multiple men.

Neglect and negligent treatment: allowing for context, resources and circumstances, neglect and negligent treatment refers to a persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, which is likely to result in serious impairment of a child’s healthy physical, spiritual, moral and mental development. It includes the failure to properly supervise and protect children from harm and provide for nutrition, shelter and safe living/working conditions. It may also involve maternal neglect during pregnancy as a result of drug or alcohol misuse and the neglect and ill treatment of a disabled child.

Emotional abuse: persistent emotional maltreatment that impacts on a child’s emotional development. Emotionally abusive acts include restriction of movement, degrading, humiliating, bullying (including cyber bullying), and threatening, scaring, discriminating, ridiculing or other non-physical forms of hostile or rejecting treatment. Commercial exploitation: exploiting a child in work or other activities for the benefit of others and to the detriment of the child’s physical or mental health, education, moral or social-emotional development. It includes kidnap, trafficking and child labour.

How we aim to prevent harm and minimise risk to children in all areas of ACT Activity

We will

Ensure that everyone involved with ACTI's work understands our approach to safeguarding and the responsibility they have for preventing harm and reporting concerns
Have a designated Safeguarding Officer, and procedures to follow for reporting concerns and taking action
Integrate the identification and mitigation of child safeguarding risk into ACTI's risk assessment process at all levels – from identifying corporate risks and training impact, through to fundraising and communication
Ensure the safety of CATT practice through support and supervision, and a forum for professionals to share cases
Have recruitment and induction procedures for trustees and volunteers that deter potential abusers and minimise the risk of harm to children within the scope of ACTI's work
Have a Code of Conduct for trustees, volunteers and associates that states ACTI's expectations of appropriate behaviour with children
Work with partner organisations overseas and in the UK to share and uphold our safeguarding standards

Procedures for reporting concerns and taking action

Role of the Safeguarding Officer

The Safeguarding Officer (SO) is: Brenda Graham, ACTI trustee. She can be contacted via the website. Trustees and volunteers will have direct contact details when undertaking ACTI work. The Safeguarding Officer acts as a focal point for trustees and volunteers if they have concerns about harmful treatment of a child or children arising from our direct or indirect contact. The concern may arise from observing or discovering harm, suspecting harm, or from disclosure by a child. On our training participants can discuss safeguarding issues about their cases in confidence. If a trainer is concerned about the professional practice of a participant and their organisation, they can contact the SO for advice on a course of action.

The SO decides when to refer a child abuse concern to the authorities (usually after discussion with the chair of trustees). The SO will gather information and seek advice from local partners, but if there is any doubt about the extent of the concern the SO will always err on the side of making a referral.

The Safeguarding Officer is responsible for:

ensuring that the Safeguarding policy is communicated to everyone involved with ACTI, and that it is monitored, reviewed and updated
acting promptly to protect a child, and to maintain the integrity and reputation of ACTI
acting promptly if an allegation is made against a trustee, volunteer or associate
following ACTI’s procedures for dealing with allegations or disclosures of abuse
supporting trustees and volunteers with their safeguarding responsibilities

Definitions of ‘child’ and ‘child abuse’ may differ according to national and cultural understandings. However we are clear that ‘children’ are defined as anyone less than 18 years of age, and that ‘abuse’ is the range of acts, intentional or not, which harm children. See Our understanding of what constitutes abuse. It will be part of our planning and risk assessment to identify local legal, social welfare and child protection arrangements in the countries we visit. We need to be prepared to take action locally alongside partner colleagues when concerns arise, and have information available on: local services; the authorities to whom we should report concerns; and organisations which can provide support to children.

Reporting and recording concerns about harm

Everyone involved in ACT’s work needs to be alert to signs that may suggest a child or young person is in need of help. Deciding whether to report can be a very difficult responsibility. There is a simple model that helps:

When a child safeguarding concern is brought to our attention - ACT

Act on concerns, if in doubt speak out!
Child-centred - the protection of children is the most important consideration
Time counts - our response to safeguarding issues must be timely, effective, confidential and appropriate

ACTI expects everyone involved with our work to report concerns or suspicions immediately to the Safeguarding officer, by phone or email. The SO will keep a formal record.

The SO will discuss the concern in confidence and consider:

Does the concern meet our stated understanding of abuse?
Is the local context fully understood?
Involving our partners and professionals
How the concern should be investigated
Reporting to an appropriate authority

The SO will keep records of concerns and allegations and actions taken and store them securely. The chair of trustees and the Safeguarding officer will have access. Any transfer of information must maintain confidentiality and only be made available to relevant parties.

If an allegation is made against an ACTI trustee, volunteer or associate they will be suspended from all activity by the chair of trustees and SO pending an investigation. The process will be confidential and limited to those who need to know. The SO response will depend on the level of concern. A minor breach of the Code of Conduct will be managed through training and monitoring of behaviour, but any more serious allegation will mean involving UK police and social services, and ending the relationship with ACTI. ACTI’s guiding principle is that the best interests of the child are paramount. We will act with honesty and integrity where failings in our people are found.

How we identify and mitigate safeguarding risk

We incorporate analysis of safeguarding risks into the risk assessment for training trips overseas – identifying our potential impact on or contact with children in a specific local area.

We ask our partners about the legal and cultural approach to child protection and welfare in their country and the effectiveness of authorities in responding to abuse.

We gather information on local resources and sources of support for children. See annex ‘Checklist of local resources and sources of support for children’

We evaluate all other aspects of ACTI activity for their impact on children, such as: the language, images and materials used for our training; use of photos and language on ACTI website, Twitter and Facebook; fund-raising activities undertaken by schools and individual children.

We have a recruitment and induction process that ensures all trustees and volunteers understand ACT’s expectations of their behaviour, and their responsibility to report concerns.

How we ensure the safety of CATT practice

We work to quality standards for recruiting and training professionals and trainers. CATT Professional training and Trainer training are delivered by experienced mental health professionals and trainers. Competence to practice CATT or to train others is assessed during and at the end of the training.

We assess CATT clinical knowledge and practice competence of experienced professionals who wish to become trainers.

We work with partner organisations to develop post-training supervision and support opportunities for professionals. We also facilitate peer supervision and support via a closed Facebook group and a moderated confidential forum on the professional section of the ACTI website.

How we recruit trustees and volunteers, and occasional fixed term paid posts

ACTI has a Trustees and Volunteers Recruitment policy that sets out our application and selection process. We are committed to safe recruitment which aims to deter potential abusers from working with ACTI, and to full information for applicants about the safeguarding responsibilities that come with any ACTI role. Our recruitment process complies with Charity Commission regulation and good recruitment practice.

In the application and at interview we ask candidates and their referees to disclose if the candidate has ever been the subject of a safeguarding concern. We also assess their knowledge and experience of good safeguarding practice.

ACTI’s work is to train professionals who work with children. Trustees and volunteers do not have routine direct contact with children and these positions are not ‘regulated’ under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. However there may sometimes be opportunities to meet and spend time briefly with children with their carers or workers in overseas projects.

We require trustees and UK volunteers to sign a Statement of Commitment to the ACTI Safeguarding Policy and Code of Conduct.

We require our overseas trainers to comply with their country equivalent to a vetting and barring scheme, if one exists, and to sign a Statement of Commitment and Code of Conduct as for UK.

We will monitor our need for a Disclosure and Barring Service check for any ACTI role in the future.

We will only recruit volunteers under 16 years if the venue for their ACTI activity is their school, youth or community group. Young people between 16 and 18 years will be permitted to attend other venues if they are chaperoned by a responsible adult such as parent or guardian.

Induction of trustees and volunteers

Induction will focus on understanding and carrying out the responsibilities described in the Safeguarding policy and Code of Conduct.

How we ensure that everyone involved in ACT’s work understands our approach to safeguarding and the responsibility they have for preventing harm and reporting concerns

The Safeguarding policy, with associated procedures, is reviewed annually by the Trustees. We publicise the policy to all current volunteers and associates, with a request for their written commitment to it. We encourage questions and discussion, and respond fully to individual queries and concerns. The policy is publicly available on the ACTI website. The Safeguarding Officer ensures that new recruits understand the safeguarding responsibilities of their role.

Working with partner organisations in the UK and overseas to uphold our safeguarding standards when working together on projects

ACTI delivers training in collaboration with local partner organisations all around the world, and our partnership model is proving to be very successful. We have provided CATT training in Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia, South Africa, Tanzania and Malaysia, and with those supporting children in the Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. We have provided training in the UK for mental health professionals from Gaza, Pakistan and Nigeria. In 2022 we go to The Gambia and Colombia for the first time.

ACTI works with partner organisations in a number of different ways:

At the request of an overseas organisation to deliver CATT training – the organisation acts as host for the course, the participants and the ACTI trainers, with funding from ACTI
Collaboration with other charities on overseas projects – sharing resources, expertise and local knowledge
Supporting an organisation with resources, additional training and consultancy

Partner organisations overseas, and the professionals they bring to CATT training, are usually working in difficult and professionally challenging circumstances. An organisation may not have a fully formed safeguarding policy, and their country may have differing legal and cultural approaches to preventing harm to children. ACT will aim to develop relationships with partners where we can be open about our safeguarding standards and acknowledge their constraints and areas of difference.

In every type of partnership we will share our Safeguarding policy and ask the partner to share their own or commit to developing appropriate safeguarding measures. Every formal partnership agreement will include clauses that reflect this requirement.

Before discussing safeguarding with an overseas partner we will find out what we can, through our mapping exercise, about their local laws and systems for protecting children from harm, and also gather information on local resources and sources of support for children. See annex ‘Checklist of local information and resources’.

We will be culturally sensitive while never condoning any acts that harm children.

At a minimum we will want to see a policy or development work that shows:

Awareness of children’s rights to be safe, and to know where to go for help if they are being abused, exploited or neglected 11
How staff, volunteers and others can raise concerns
Clear mechanisms for dealing with concerns and incidents and reporting to authorities
The kinds of checks that are made on adults directly involved with children. Where no formal checks exist we will discuss with the partner how they determine the integrity of participants in the CATT training.
Guidelines for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour by staff.

For our part we will tell partners that:

ACTI volunteers working with them will adhere to our policy
ACTI volunteers will report any concerns involving either ACTI people or partner staff to the ACTI Safeguarding officer
The ACTI Safeguarding officer will report the concern to the partner’s senior management and expect to be kept informed of progress and outcomes
If the concern is about an ACTI volunteer the Safeguarding officer will inform the partner about how it is dealt with

How we monitor and review our Safeguarding policy

We are committed to monitoring how well we are living up to the commitments we are making and asking of others. As a small charity we rely on our trustees for oversight and governance of the policy. They will require information maintained by the SO and the Chair, and feedback from ACTI volunteers and partners. The quarterly trustee meeting will be the main forum for monitoring the effectiveness of the policy. There are a number of actions we can take to check our progress and learn from safeguarding situations that arise:

Report on the roll-out of the policy to current trustees and volunteers
Feedback the experience of sharing safeguarding practice with partners
Assess the impact of the policy on recruitment practice and outcomes
Risk register – review the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies for safeguarding, such as those included in a risk assessment for an overseas training trip
Assess the effectiveness of the safeguarding officer role in inducting new people, and dealing with safeguarding issues
Monitor data from the Professional section of the website
Safeguarding is a regular agenda item at every Trustee meeting

The Safeguarding policy will be formally reviewed and amended annually, at the last trustee meeting of the year. We will expect to find that:

Trustees and volunteers are familiar with the policy, can discuss safeguarding openly, and know how to deal with any concern about a child or children
Recruitment of trustees and volunteers includes clear discussion, understanding and acceptance of the policy and its responsibilities
We have shared the policy with all partners we work with during the year and gained their commitment to our minimum expectations of safeguarding practice
We have dealt appropriately with any concerns about a child, including any incidents arising via cases on the Professional section of the website
We may want to make amendments to the policy or procedures based on our experience of the year

Stella Charman – Chair of Trustees
Brenda Graham – Trustee and Safeguarding Officer
Approved by Trustees March 2022