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Our policies

Child Safeguarding Policy

The purpose of this policy statement is:

  • To protect from harm, children and young people who are supported through Taylor-Made Dreams services
  • To provide staff and volunteers, as well as children and young people and their families, with the overarching principles that guide our approach to child protection.

This policy applies to anyone working on behalf of Taylor-Made Dreams, including senior managers and the board of trustees, paid staff, volunteers, sessional workers, agency staff and students.

We believe that:

  • Children and young people should never experience abuse of any kind.
  • We have a responsibility to promote the welfare of all children and young people, to keep them safe and to practice in a way that protects them.

We recognise that:

  • The welfare of children is paramount in all the work we do and in all the decisions we take
  • working in partnership with children, young people, their parents, carers and other agencies is essential in promoting young people’s welfare
  • All children, regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation have an equal right to protection from all types of harm or abuse
  • Some children are additionally vulnerable because of the impact of previous experiences, their level of dependency, communication needs or other issues
  • Extra safeguards may be needed to keep children who are additionally vulnerable safe from abuse

We will seek to keep children and young people safe by:

  • Valuing, listening to and respecting them
  • Appointing a designated safeguarding lead (DSL) for children and young people, a deputy designated safeguarding lead and a lead trustee member for safeguarding
  • Adopting child protection and safeguarding best practice through our policies, procedures and code of conduct for staff and volunteers
  • Developing and implementing an effective online safety policy and related procedures
  • Providing effective management for staff and volunteers through supervision, support, training and quality assurance measures so that all staff and volunteers know about and follow our policies, procedures and behaviour codes confidently and competently
  • Recruiting and selecting staff and volunteers safely, ensuring all necessary checks are made
  • Recording, storing and using information professionally and securely, in line with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and guidance - more information about this is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office: www.ico.org.uk/for-organisations
  • Sharing information about safeguarding and good practice with children and their families via leaflets, posters, group work and one-to-one discussions
  • Making sure that children, young people and their families know where to go for help if they have a concern
  • Using our safeguarding and child protection procedures to share concerns and relevant information with agencies who need to know, and involving children, young people, parents, families and carers appropriately
  • Using our procedures to manage any allegations against staff and volunteers appropriately
  • Creating and maintaining an anti-bullying environment and ensuring that we deal effectively with any bullying that does arise
  • Ensuring we have effective complaints/whistleblowing measures in place
  • Ensuring that we provide a safe physical environment for our children, young people, staff and volunteers, by applying health and safety measures in accordance with the law and regulatory guidance
  • Building a safeguarding culture where staff and volunteers, children, young people and their families, treat each other with respect and are comfortable about sharing concerns.

Definitions of abuse (Working together to Safeguard Children 2023)

Abuse is a form of maltreatment of a child. Somebody may abuse or neglect a child by inflicting harm, or by failing to act to prevent harm. Harm can include ill treatment that is not physical as well as the impact of witnessing ill treatment of others. This can be particularly relevant, for example, in relation to the impact on children of all forms of domestic abuse, including where they see, hear, or experience its effects. Children may be abused in a family or in an institutional or extra-familial contexts by those known to them or, more rarely, by others. Abuse can take place wholly online, or technology may be used to facilitate offline abuse. Children may be abused by an adult or adults, or another child or children.

Neglect is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and /or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter (including exclusion from home or abandonment), failing to protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger, failure to ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate care-givers), the failure to ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment or the failure to provide suitable education. It may also include neglect of, or irresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.

Physical Abuse may involve hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating, or otherwise causing physical harm to a child. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of, or deliberately induces illness in a child.

Emotional Abuse is the persistent emotional ill treatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent adverse effects on the child’s emotional development. It may involve conveying to children that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only so far as they meet the needs of another person. It may include not giving the child opportunities to express their views deliberately silencing them or “making fun” of what they say or how they communicate. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children. These may include interactions that are beyond the child’s developmental capability as well as over protection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction. It may involve seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another. It may involve serious bullying (including cyberbullying) causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger, or the exploitation or corruption of children. Some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, though it may occur alone.

Sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities, not necessarily involving a high level of violence, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including assault by penetration (for example rape or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts such as masturbation, kissing, rubbing and touching outside of clothing. They may also include non-contact activities such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of sexual images, watching sexual activities, encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways, or grooming a child in preparation for abuse. Sexual abuse can take place online, and technology can be used to facilitate offline abuse. Sexual abuse is not solely perpetrated by adult males. Women can also commit acts of sexual abuse, as can other children.

Prevention

  • Safeguarding training

    Taylor Made Dreams is committed to on-going safeguarding training and development opportunities for all workers, developing a culture of awareness of safeguarding issues to help protect everyone. All workers involved with children and young people through TMD are required to complete the following training:

    • Introductory safeguarding training
    • Refresher safeguarding training every 2 years
  • Safer recruitment Policy

Practice guidance: allegations or reports of abuse

Responding

When a child or young person shares information with a staff member/volunteer regarding abuse/harm to themselves or someone else (current or historic), the staff member/volunteer should

  • Listen carefully and try to manage their own emotions;
  • Take what the child says seriously and reassure them that they were right to tell.
  • Tell the child it’s not their fault
  • Never promise to keep the child’s report of abuse a secret.
  • Explain to the child what they are going to do with the information that has been shared and that they have to do this to ensure the child is kept safe.
  • If at all possible, arrange to meet the child again
  • Not talk to the alleged abuser until the report/allegation has been shared with children’s social services and a plan has been agreed.
  • At this stage consideration should be given to informing the parent/guardian IF they are NOT the person who the allegation is against and IF this won’t increase risk of harm to the child. This would allow the parent/carer to appropriately support the child following their report and they can then subsequently be updated. This should be discussed with the child and also the DSL if the staff member is unclear.

If urgent medical attention is needed the member of staff should call an ambulance and police to attend. Where appropriate and safe to do so whoever holds parental responsibility for the child should be notified. If harm has been caused by the parent or carer they should not be spoken to and all information passed to the police.

If it is believed that the child is in immediate danger, or you suspect a crime has been committed the member of staff should call the police.

Recording

  • When a child or young person shares information with a staff member/volunteer regarding abuse/harm to themselves or someone else (current or non-recent), OR when a member of staff receives information which relates to harm of a child they should:

    • Record the conversation immediately afterwards detailing what was said using the child’s own words, including what the staff member asked and said. This record should also include date, time and context of the interaction and anyone else who was present.
    • This record should then be typed up if not done so already onto the TMD form - Safeguarding Children Incident Report Form (PDF).
    • If handwritten notes were made, keep these in addition to the typed-up version.

Reporting

When a child or young person shares information with a staff member/volunteer regarding abuse/harm to themselves or someone else, OR when a member of staff receives information which relates to harm of a child they should:

  • Inform Suzanne Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) (DSL) immediately. Suspicion may arise as a result of an observed injury or reporting of information but may be because of more indirect concerns.
  • If the CEO is not available, the staff member should report to the deputy DSL - Becca Bowen.

  • The DSL or Deputy DSL will immediately discuss the situation with the person who has raised the concerns and decide with the member of staff if a referral to safeguard the child or other person needs to be made.

    If there are grounds for making the referral, the DSL or Deputy DSL should ensure that the local authority children’s services are informed on the same day. (Please see contact details for making a safeguarding referral for details of how to contact each local authority).

  • The member of staff who received the disclosure or allegation should where possible take responsibility for making the referral into the relevant county’s integrated front door. The DSL or Deputy DSL will support them in this process.
  • The referral should be made the same working day and as soon as possible.
  • If there is no acknowledgement of the referral within three working days Children’s Services must be contacted again.

  • When there are concerns that there is a serious risk of harm to the child a strategy discussion must be held by the Local Authority. The referrer and DSL will need to attend this.

    It is important to note that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) makes clear that ‘Data protection law allows you to share information when required to identify children at risk of harm and to safeguard them from harm. It can be more harmful not to share information that is needed to protect a child or young person’ (ICO GDPR Guidance).

Suspected abuse by a staff member or volunteer

Responding

  • Anyone who has concerns about or has received an allegation of abuse by a member of staff, volunteer or carer, needs to report the concerns immediately to the DSL.
  • If the CEO is the subject of the allegation, concerns must be raised to the Safeguarding Trustee - Dr Jane Willis.
  • The DSL will liaise with the Local Authority Designated Safeguarding Officer (LADO) as appropriate.
  • The safeguarding trustee will take on the liaison if the allegation is made against the CEO.
  • The LADO is involved in the overall management and oversight of individual cases. They will provide advice and guidance to the DSL, liaise with the police and other agencies and monitor the progress of cases to ensure that they are dealt with as quickly as possible, consistent with a thorough and fair process.

Recording

  • The person who receives the complaint must make a careful note of the allegation. Hand-written notes made at the time of the incident should be retained. Notes should also be typed up. Where possible record the exact words of the person making the allegation or the child’s own words.
  • Record the time, date and place and names of people present when the allegation was made or concerning behaviour was observed. Record the time, date and place of alleged incidents, persons present and what was said, if these were mentioned by the person making the allegation.
  • Some clarification may be required but it is not the duty of Taylor-Made Dreams to undertake an investigation and they should first seek guidance from the LADO.

Reporting

  • The DSL must refer directly to the Single Point of Advice (SPOA) in East Sussex. The allegation should be reported on the same working day.
  • After consultation with the LADO, and ONLY when advised to do so, the DSL should inform the accused person about the allegation.
  • In principle, the DSL should inform the parents or carers of the children involved about the allegation. The LADO should be consulted first to ensure that this will not impede any investigation or disciplinary process. In some cases, the parents or carers may need to be informed right away, e.g. if a child is injured and needs medical attention.
  • The parents or carers and the child, at an age-appropriate level, should be helped to understand the process and kept informed about the progress of the case and the outcome if no criminal prosecution will take place

Managing risk during the investigation

The perceived level of risk during the investigation needs to be considered and managed. In some situations the level of risk may require the staff member not to be working with specific children or all children until the investigation is completed.

There are several options open to TMD, including:

  • Redeployment so as not to come into direct contact with one or more children;
  • Refraining (agreeing that the person will not work with children during the investigation);
  • Suspension. Suspension should be considered only in cases where there is cause to believe children accessing the charity are at risk of harm or the allegation is so serious that it might be grounds for dismissal.

Decisions about risk are best made in a multi-agency forum such as the strategy discussion. The LADO will canvass the views of the agencies participating and inform the DSL. However, only the employer has the power to refrain or suspend. Possible risks to the children involved and any children in the accused staff member’s home, work or community life will be evaluated and managed by the local authority.

Careful consideration should be given to the kind of support the staff member/volunteer concerned and other colleagues might require both during and after the investigation. This might include counselling.

As soon as an enquiry by police or local authority children’s services has been concluded, regardless of outcome, the CEO will place the facts before the Trustees. At this point decisions will be made regarding any further action in respect of the staff member/ volunteer concerned.

The staff member/volunteer concerned will be informed of these deliberations.

Contact details

Designated Safeguarding lead - Suzanne Mitchell, CEO

Phone: 07806 460311

Email: ceo@taylormadedreams.org.uk

Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead - Becca Bowen

Phone: 07442 398157

Email: becca@taylormadedreams.org.uk

Safeguarding Trustee - Dr Jane Willis

Phone: 07813 677965

Email: drjanewillis@gmail.com

Review

We are committed to reviewing our policy and good practice annually.

This policy statement & accompanying procedures were last reviewed on 17th August 2026 by Suzi Mitchell, CEO and DSL for TMD, and Dr Jane Willis, Safeguarding Trustee.

Child Safeguarding Policy and Practice Guidance version 1.3. This policy statement and accompanying procedures were last reviewed on 17 August 2026.