The new Working Together to Safeguard Children  2013 sets out the specific statutory duties organisations and professionals working with children and families have in relation to the welfare of children.   The guidance specifies the duties for Early Years and Child care providers as:

Early years providers have a duty under section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 to comply with the welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Early years providers should ensure that:

• staff complete safeguarding training that enables them to recognise signs of potential abuse and neglect; and
• they have a practitioner who is designated to take lead responsibility for safeguarding children within each early years setting and who should liaise with local statutory children’s services agencies as appropriate. This lead should also complete child protection training.

We have recently updated our Child Protection Training for Childminders course to ensure it reflects the latest guidance.  The on-line course is suitable for childminders and their assistants and covers: different types of child abuse, how to recognise abuse and neglect, child protection policies and procedures, identifying concerns, handling allegations and complaints, the roles of statutory bodies, working with other agencies and how and when to make referrals.

For further details on this training please click here.

If you work or volunteer in Sports we have an Introduction to Child Protection course written specifically for you.  The Sports version of our child protection training course, which can be selected at the start of the course,  includes current guidelines and legislation applicable to the sector.  The course also has case studies and questions throughout which are relevant to people involved in sports to make the learning relevant and the knowledge easily transferable to your situation.

To find out more about the Introduction to Child protection training course please click here.

The latest government guidance Working Together 2013 states that all organisations are required to have a Designated Professional for safeguarding (or, for health provider organisations, named professionals) as part of their safeguarding provisions, which also includes safe recruitment practice, policies and procedures, in relation to safeguarding, and suitable training and supervision for staff.

The Designated Professional role is described as:

Their role is to support other professionals in their agencies to recognise the needs of children, including rescue from possible abuse or neglect. Designated professional roles should always be explicitly defined in job descriptions. Professionals should be given sufficient time, funding, supervision and support to fulfil their child welfare and safeguarding responsibilities effectively.

The ChildProtectionCompany.com has a Further Child Protection training course designed for the designated professional.  This course has a module on the role of the Designated Professional which includes information on:

• Being a central contact point in the organisation for safeguarding children 
• Seeking support and advice from other key professionals and agencies
• Completing an organisational safeguarding health check
• Ensuring that the organisation takes steps to operate safe and robust recruitment processes
• Informing workers of the necessity to undertake basic level learning/training about safeguarding
• Undertaking to update their knowledge of safeguarding every two years as a minimum
• Promoting good practice in recording and reporting concerns
• Offering  support to staff involved in safeguarding and child protection
• Making representation on behalf of the organisation
• Ensuring the organisation has promoting welfare and safeguarding related policies and procedures that are fit for purpose and up to date

For further information click this link for details of the Further Child Protection training course.

Emotional abuse, sometimes called psychological abuse, is probably the category of abuse which is the most difficult to define and also to recognise that it might be taking place. Working Together 2013 states that “some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, though it may occur alone”.  Emotional abuse is defined in the 2013 document as “persistent emotional maltreatment to cause severe and persistent adverse effects on the child’s emotional development.”

The characteristics of emotional abuse are varied and may include the following:

• Conveying to a child that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person.
• Not giving the child opportunities to express their views, deliberately silencing them or ‘making fun’ of what they say or how they communicate
• Age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children
• Interactions that are beyond a child’s developmental capability, as well as overprotection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction
• Seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another
• serious bullying (including cyber bullying), causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger,
• the exploitation or corruption of children

To learn more about child abuse and how you can safeguard the children you work with click here to see details of our online child protection courses.

Childminders play a key role in the welfare of  the children they look after; they are ideally placed to spot any early signs of abuse or neglect.  Some of Statutory guidance applicable to childminders includes:

Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 places a statutory duty on childminders as “key persons and bodies to make arrangements to ensure that in discharging their functions, they have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.”

The Early Years’ Foundation Stage Statutory Framework 

Working together to safeguard children 2013

Childminders can take the Child Protection for Childminders training course to learn more about the safeguarding law and guidance which applies to their work. The training course also provides  the child protection knowledge required, by childminders, to  fulfil their safeguarding role and responsibilities. The Child Protection for Childminders course has been written in association with a leading
childminders association and uses sector specific case studies and questions to make the learning relevant and meaningful.

The course is an online child protection training course making it ideally suited to, and appreciated by, childminders as it can be taken at their convenience and can be stopped and started as many times as required – always taking the learner back to where they were. To see a full course breakdown of what is covered in the training please click here

We often get asked how long does is take to do an online child protection training course.  The answer is that it does vary  depending on the individual learner; their previous level of knowledge, how quickly they read and process information.  Some of our courses do take longer than others and we recommend allowing 1-2 hours for:

• The Introduction to Child Protection courses
• The Child Protection for Equestrian Volunteers course

and 2-3 hours for:

• The Leading on Child Protection courses
• The Child Protection for Childminders course
• The combined Adult/Child training courses – both introductory and lead levels

One very useful feature of all our courses is that they can be stopped and started as many times as you like so you don’t have to do the training all in one sitting.  You can always pick up from where you left off at a later date; by just logging back in to your account and clicking on the course title in the My Account box and you will be right back where you were last time.

It’s straightforward to purchase an online child protection course from the ChildProtectionCompany.com.  If you’ve ever purchased anything online from any of the major retailers you will be familiar with the process but for a step by step guide follow the outline below:

• Select the course you wish to buy from the Online Training page
• Click on the Add to Basket button to take you to the shopping basket screen.
• Select the Checkout button
• You will be asked to Sign in or Register.  If you’ve not a already registered a ChildProtectionCompany.com account you will need to do so now by selecting Register and completing the details requested. If you do already have an account select Sign in and enter your username and password.
• Now check the order in your basket is correct and then select the Buy button
• You will then be asked to select your payment method; major credit cards are accepted, or for larger orders an invoice can be requested.
• Courses purchased are immediately available for use and will appear in red on the My Account  box on the Home page.

Further information and assistance is available via the Help button on the website.

” Not being familiar with the site I used the ‘help’ section and immediately found what I was looking for.  What efficiency!”

Dan Sayers, Deputy Head teacher 

What are the benefits of doing child protection training on line?

All the child protection training courses from the ChildProtectionCompany.com are available online and all give the following benefits:

• It’s convienient – you can do it at a time and pace to suit you
• It’s flexible – you can stop and start as many times as you like
• It’s straightforward to buy and use the training – there is a easy to use help feature on the website.
• Never loose your certificate – Your personalised certificate can be downloaded as many times as required so you will always be able to put your hands on it.
• Refresh your knowledge – You can access the course content and downloads the whole time your certificate remains valid; check facts, get a reminder, look up more details at any time.
• It’s excellent value – in terms of both time and money.

The ChildProtectionCompany.com are delighted to have been working in association with the British Equestrian Federation to produce a child protection training course for equestrian volunteers.  The new online course is due to be launched on 18th March and will help those volunteering at Pony Clubs, Riding stables, Equestrian events etc. to fulfil their safeguarding responsibilities.

This sector specific course adds to the ChildProtectionCompany.com’s portfolio of courses designed and written for people working or volunteering in specific  areas.  Currently course are available for those involved in education, sports, childminding and dentistry.  Each course contains sector specific guidelines, case studies and questions to make the training  relevant and meaningful to the participant.  For further details on all these course click here.

A fantastic feature of our online training courses, which we believe differentiate our courses, is that all customers who take our child protection courses can access all the course content, downloads and links at any time until their certificate expires.  This means that at any time you can refresh your knowledge, or check back on information, by just logging back into your ChildProtectionCompany.com account and looking back at the course in full.

So unlike a workshop where you might have a two page handout, a few brief notes, or a copy of the power-point (6 slides to a page you can hardly read!) with our online course you have everything in the exact same format and detail.  Going back into a completd course you can jump back and forwards from module to module, using the menu bar, so no need to go through the whole course page by page you can quickly jump to the section you want to refer back to – brilliant!

I thought it was very useful to have the full range of documents immediately available for reference. MM, National Foundation for Educational Research

All of the information was well presented, but the sheer amount of information available does seem daunting. It is good, however, to know that I am able to access the relevant information when required. LS, Stephenson Academy