Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is:
- Protecting children from maltreatment
- Preventing the impairment of children’s health or development
- Ensuring children grow up in circumstances that allow them to receive safe and effective care
- Enabling children to have optimum life chances and to enter adulthood successfully.
The outcomes that safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children aim to achieve are specified in the Every Child Matters Five Outcomes which state that children should:
Be healthy:
This means children are physically, mentally and emotionally healthy, sexually healthy, living healthy lifestyles, and choosing not to take illegal drugs.
Stay safe:
This means children are safe from maltreatment, neglect, violence and sexual exploitation, safe from accidental injury and death, safe from bullying and discrimination, safe from crime and anti-social behaviour, and have security, stability and are cared for.
Enjoy and achieve:
This means children are ready for school, enjoy recreational activities and achieve good personal and social development. School age children attend and enjoy school, and achieve stretching national educational standards at primary and secondary school.
Make a positive contribution:
This means children and young people engage in decision making and support the community and environment, engage in law-abiding and positive behaviour in and out of school, develop positive relationships and do not bully or discriminate, develop self-confidence and successfully deal with significant life changes and challenges and develop enterprising behaviour.
Achieve economic well-being:
This means young people engage in further education, employment or training on leaving school, are ready for employment, live in decent homes and sustainable communities, have access to transport and material goods, and live in households free from low income.
To achieve these outcomes, services that support children cannot be separated from services that investigate and protect children from deliberate harm. The concept of safeguarding embraces all children including those who are defined as children in need and those who are suffering or are at risk of suffering significant harm and are in need of protection
Children in Need are defined under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 as those whose vulnerability is such that they are unlikely to reach or maintain a satisfactory level of health or development, or their health and development will be significantly impaired, without the provision of services. This is a wide definition which ranges from disabled children to children at risk of community based violence.
Children in need of protection are those who are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm and require a multi agency plan to safeguard their best interests.
