What is safeguarding?
You may have heard people talk about 'child protection'. Child protection is when people are worried that a child may be being hurt by someone. A social worker's job, with the help of other workers like the police, health visitors and teachers, is to stop children from being hurt.
Safeguarding is the word we use when we want to stop young people from being hurt. Safeguarding looks at what needs to happen to keep children and young people safe.
How do we do this?
There is a group of people who meet regularly to look at what things can be done in Liverpool to safeguard children. These people have different jobs including: police, doctors, social workers, and teachers - some of who you will know about.
There are also other people who work in jobs that perhaps you have never heard of, like immigration. This group of people is called the Local Children Safeguarding Board (LSCB).
The job of LSCB is to try hard to make sure agencies are working to safeguard children and make them safe. It is our job to work hard to make sure that Liverpool is a safe place for children and young people to grow up. We do this by trying to make sure that all children:
- Are healthy and choose a healthy lifestyle.
- Stay safe and are protected from harm and abuse.
- Enjoy and achieve, enjoy life and prepare for growing up.
- Make a positive contribution, not behave badly or commit crimes.
- Achieve economic well-being, are happy in a job in the future and earn enough money.
Why do we have to do this?
In 2000, a little girl called Victoria Climbie died whilst being looked after by her aunty and her partner. Her parents had sent her to England for a better life, but sadly the people she lived with were cruel and hurt her. Lots of people were worried about her but they did not talk to each other enough.
The government did not want this to happen to anybody else so they asked a man called Lord Laming to look at what had happened and say what might stop it from happening again.
The government believes that every child matters and that every child should have help so it won't happen again. They changed the laws as well so that everybody has a responsibility to look after children and to make it easier for people to talk to each other when they are worried. They called this law the Children Act 2004.
To see what else the government is doing visit www.everychildmatters.gov.uk.