Developed for Derby and Derbyshire schools to support them to complete their annual safeguarding audit and planning.
To support schools to ensure their safeguarding processes and practices are effective, and to fulfil the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (DDSCP) statutory functions, the DDSCP Education subgroup has updated, and signed off, a joint annual Safeguarding Children Audit Tool for schools for the academic year 2024-2025.
The audit tool and guidance has been sent directly to school designated safeguarding leads and should be completed as soon as possible.
Information on annual safeguarding audit
The safeguarding audit tool enables you to:
- assess your establishment’s safeguarding processes and practice, identify any gaps, and move on to develop an action plan and a review process to address these
- ensure that key people within the school, including the governing body/trustees, know how the school is working to keep children safe. This will support strategic challenge to help test and provide assurance that policies, procedures and processes are effective and support the delivery of a robust whole school approach to safeguarding
- demonstrate that you have taken appropriate steps to audit your safeguarding arrangements, and taken action to safeguard children and young people
- assemble your evidence of impact of safeguarding processes and practice ready for any Ofsted inspection.
In the tool you are provided with the following
- Introduction to the audit tool which explains how the tool is to be used; this is also incorporated into the audit tool itself
- An Excel safeguarding children audit tool, split into 11 sections, along with a summary action plan
- Confirmation of audit completion, for the designated safeguarding lead, headteacher/ principal, designated governor/trustee and chair of governors/trustees to confirm that they agree the contents; this is also incorporated in the audit tool itself.
The headteacher/principal, designated safeguarding lead and designated child protection governor/trustee should work on this audit together to consider and agree, for each section and its associated questions: the evidence, RAG rating (red, amber, green) and any actions required.
The audit tool will pull together a summary of the identified RAG ratings and an action plan to support the safeguarding planning process and review cycle.
The findings of the completed audit must be discussed at senior management meetings as well as a full governing body/trustee meeting; any further actions and their timescales must be formally recorded in the minutes.
Please email any feedback to: DDSCP@derby.gov.uk
Please Note: For the academic year 2024-2025, the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (DDSCP) and Local Authority do not require schools to confirm audit completion or provide a copy of their completed audit.