The legislation on Safeguarding has implications for faith communities: it is our responsibility to take action (which will usually mean making contact with someone in Oxfordshire Social & Community Services) if we see or suspect that a child or a vulnerable adult is at risk of harm.
A vulnerable adult is defined in ‘No Secrets’ (the Government’s Guidance on Adult Abuse) as: – ‘a person aged 18 years or over, who is in receipt of or may be in need of community care services by reason of ‘mental or other disability, age or illness and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation‘.
At the recent OxCoF open meeting on the implications of the safeguarding legislation, we were told:
Anybody who has regular, unsupervised charge of children for more than three hours a week should have safeguarding training;
Within each organisation, there should be a child protection lead, who has had specialised safeguarding training.
For more details: http://www.oscb.org.uk/