Our Safeguarding Statement

HUC provides a range of health and social care services to babies, children, young people, and adults. We are understanding that we have a key role in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all our patients and service users and the communities we work within.

We fully recognise our legal and moral duty and responsibility to safeguard and protect the welfare of children and adults by working in partnership with and informing, Social Services and other Health Care Partners of any incidents where children or adults are perceived to be at risk. We consider this vitally important and therefore have structures in place to recognise, act upon and monitor our safeguarding standards.

Our legislative responsibilities to safeguard children and young people require us to be vigilant and responsive, every time we engage with service users and families. We continually drive the culture that safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility.

A child is defined as any young person under the age of 18 years including the unborn child. An adult is defined as anyone over the age of 18 years.

Key legislation that underpins safeguarding of Children and Adults

Children

• The Children Act 1989 (as amended).
• The Children and Social Work Act 2017.
• Keeping Children Safe in Education 2019.
• Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018.
• The Education Act 2002.
• The United Nations convention on the Rights of the Child 1992.
• The Equality Act 2010.
• The Children and Families Act 2014.
• The Human Rights Act 1998.

Adults

• The Care Act 2014
• Sexual Offences Act 2003
• Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and the Protection of Freedoms Bill
• Ill-treatment or wilful neglect under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015
• Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998

Under Section 11 of the Children Act, we ensure that all our staff have undergone safeguarding training and provide additional training over and above the mandatory requirements.

HUC will seek to increase staff awareness of matters appertaining to Safeguarding Children and Adults through the provision of information, education, and training programmes.

Safeguarding training is mandatory for all staff regardless of role. Training is mapped to the National Intercollegiate Guidance for children and adults and delivered via a range of blended learning, online and face-to-face. We have robust monitoring arrangements for reporting our compliance with mandatory training and this is reported to the board monthly.

HUC meet its statutory requirements for Disclosure Barring Service checks for staff and how any escalations are managed is documented in our recruitment policy.

HUC have a safeguarding audit programme in place, which provides the Board with the assurance that safeguarding systems and processes are effective.

HUC has several champions in place to support staff with safeguarding concerns.

If you have any safeguarding concerns, please refer to your local authority. For any queries regarding our statement, please email us.