OFSTED Inspection of Safeguarding

This is the printed edition of this popular special Guide for staff of FE Colleges and privately-owned but publicly contracted providers. It contains the latest OFSTED safeguarding standards and the amendments to safeguarding contained in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. It is now in its sixth edition. As well as being a good introduction to the OFSTED Safeguarding inspection requirements, it is useful for updating appointed Safeguarding Officers. Its aim is to help you understand the wide-ranging concept of Safeguarding and the considerable changes to the law on Safeguarding. Also to make you aware of the requirements placed on your Principal, Governors and senior management team as they prepare for a successful OFSTED inspection of your Safeguarding provision. The 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.' However - don't forget that the law says that Safeguarding is an all-encompassing concept including vulnerable adults and all humans linked to the provider who may be on campus/premises or working away from it. It includes full time and part time students and staff and volunteers. Risk This is not a perfect world or utopia. We can control the outcomes of some processes but some are impossible to control. Where human desires, intentions and actions are concerned it is completely impossible to remove risk. We have to plan for risk. We will not get our planning 100% right. All we can do is to strive for the very best safeguarding provision we can devise. When we do our planning, we must remember freedom. We cannot induce a 'police state' upon a college or vocational provider in order to eliminate all risk. People have to have human rights, personal dignity and freedom in our democratic society; to enjoy themselves and live their lives. Safeguarding officers and senior staff have the difficult job of balancing freedom with discipline. To help us we have laws and regulations, but there are always complex problems which the law does not seem to cover. In this guide I have set out 'incidents' which I know about personally or during my consultancy work with colleges. I do not mention names or locations. I also use case law to explain the kinds of things that can go wrong or right. I detail some good practice ideas - although no-one has a monopoly on those and better ideas are coming out all the time. There is no such thing as 'best practice'. Who Is The Guide For? This Guide is aimed primarily at staff, but experienced Safeguarding Officers, College Principals and senior management teams may also find it useful to see the issues that providers face when preparing for OFSTED inspections of what is still a 'limiting grade' and may remain so for almost another year. For example - governors bear the full legal vicarious responsibility for implementation of the Equality Act 2010 at their college and therefore they bear responsibility for staff awareness of harassment regulations. Almost always the college Principal is also a governor, making it even more vital that each aspect is fully understood by them. The guide is written in an open and frank style, as though I was addressing you face-to-face as a consultant. The guidance given is based upon my experience, research, interactions with a range of government departments, discussions with current OFSTED inspectors - and the very latest contents of key government documents affecting the Safeguarding provision. Information covers safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, but also everyone, because we all need to stay safe from harm. This printed edition comes with a CD ROM containing many useful policy documents and checklists. The Amazon Kindle edition of this guide is discontinued.

Table of Contents:
1 General Introduction 2 Harm to Children 3 OFSTED Inspection of Safeguarding 4 Safeguarding Children & Vulnerable Adults 5 Safe Use of Electronic Communications 6 Lone Workers 7 Health & Safety 8 Administration of Medicines 9 Intimate care 10 Challenging behaviour 11 Every Child Matters 12 Harassment & Bullying 13 Dispute Resolution and Enforcement 14 Technical section for Safeguarding Officers Conclusion

About the Author :
David worked in vocational learning for 20 years after being in the RAF for 25 years. He qualified as an assessor, an internal and external verifier and a quality checker for the Department for Education & Skills of the work of other external verifiers. He wrote the special report on 'Fraud in the NVQ System' for QCA just as that organisation was starting up. He was asked by the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre to convert the Army Intelligence Training Courses so that they matched NVQ standards and this was completed over a two year consultancy. He then joined the Training Standards Council and became associate inspector and then had experience as a lead inspector where he completed about 100 inspections. His current work has been to support FE colleges with consultancy advice and also writing guides on OFSTED Inspection, Diversity, Barriers to Learning and Safeguarding. He is a consultant to the Association of Learning Providers (ALP). David's website is: http://www.daviddennis.me