To make a referral for early help or social work support for a child in Hillingdon please contact the stronger families hub 01895 556 006
To make a referral for early help or social work support for a child in Hillingdon please contact the stronger families hub 01895 556 006
Hillingdon Safeguarding Partnership is committed to supporting professionals in working with children and young people in Hillingdon. The following pages provide useful guidance, policies and procedures in key areas of safeguarding.
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is when a child is persuaded or forced to take part in sexual activities online or in person. It can include contact (touching genitals) or non-contact sexual activities (showing pornography to a child).
Child sexual exploitation (CSE) is a type of sexual abuse. It occurs when an individual or group takes advantage of a power imbalance to manipulate a child into sexual activity.
Contextual Safeguarding is an emerging approach to understanding, and responding to, children’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families. It recognises that the different relationships that children form in their neighbourhoods, schools and online can feature violence and abuse. Parents and carers have limited influence over these contexts, and children’s experiences of extra-familial abuse can undermine parent-child relationships.
Domestic abuse is a pattern of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse by one person against another within a personal, intimate or family relationship.
Safeguarding children and adults is a complex process that requires collaborative working across a range of professions and disciplines. At times there may be disagreement about the best course of action to take, and the need to resolve professional differences through proportionate use of escalation.
Hillingdon Council's Stronger Families Hub enables teams to intervene early and ensure that local families have fast access to a wide range of support services around the clock.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a procedure where the female genital organs are injured or changed for non-medical reasons.
Harmful practices are persistent practices and behaviours that are grounded on discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, age and other grounds. This incorporates multiple and/or intersecting forms of discrimination that often involve violence and cause physical and/or psychological harm or suffering.
Modern slavery and human trafficking affect children and adults. There are particular issues and characteristics that can make children and adults more vulnerable to exploitation than the wider population. Having care and support needs and disabilities can increase the risk of all forms of trafficking and modern slavery.
The Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) manages and has oversight of allegations across the children’s workforce. Each organisation working with children should have a designated lead manager who is responsible for reporting any allegations to, and liaising with, the LADO when there are allegations against people who work or volunteer with children.
The Hillingdon Safeguarding Partnership issues newsletters to support practice with adults and children. You can find all issues here.
Neglect is defined in Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) as 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.
Preventing radicalisation is an important aspect of safeguarding children and adults at risk because children and adults with care and support needs can be particularly vulnerable to being drawn in to, violent extremism and radicalisation and exploited by terrorists.
Private fostering is when a child or young person under the age of 16 (or under 18 if disabled) is cared for by an adult who is not a close relative. It is different to fostering arrangements set up by the council. Private fostering must be reported to the council.
Hillingdon Safeguarding Children Partnership is committed to ensuring that children and young people are appropriately safeguarded in their schools and colleges.
The presence of a disability increases the vulnerability of children to abuse and neglect. This is a position that is well evidenced in research and reflected across the breadth of legislation, statutory guidance, and agency policies and procedures.
To make a referral for early help or social work support for a child in Hillingdon please contact the stronger families hub 01895 556 006