Section 11 Safeguarding Self-Assessments

Undertaking Section 11 compliance audits to seek assurance that local organisations and commissioned providers fulfil child safeguarding responsibilities under the Children Act 2004 is a key task of the Local Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP).  These organisations include schools and early years settings, voluntary sector organisations and faith groups, sports clubs and statutory bodies, such as Health, Police and Council departments. This assurance is coordinated by the Partnership. We do this assurance work via the Section 11 process. This is mirrored in Sections 157 (Independent Schools) and 175 (State maintained schools) of the Education Act 2002.

Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 places duties on a range of organisations, agencies, and individuals to ensure their functions, and any services that they contract out to others, are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. If your organisation provides a service to children and/or young people, or comes into contact with them, you need to ensure you have effective arrangements in place to safeguard and promote their welfare. 

Please use our online Section 11 Self-assessment Form (below) to reflect on your safeguarding arrangements, to identify your areas of strength and how you can take action to develop practice.

We use the information that you supply to monitor safeguarding arrangements across the borough. This allows us to identify areas of strength – which can be replicated as good practice. It also allows us to determine what resources or targeted support we can offer to address areas for development. This might include, for example, training courses.

How to use the Self-Assessment Form

The form is not designed to be a tick-box exercise. Instead, each section requires reflection on how your safeguarding arrangements are working well and what actions you could take to make them work even better.

If you do not complete the form in one sitting, you have two options: you can keep your browser open and return to it later, or you can submit the incomplete form and edit it after submission. If you would find it useful to see the form in its entirety and make notes before completing the online form, please download the MS Word version.

Section 11 Safeguarding Self-Assessment Form (DOCX, 59.55 KB)

Self- Assessment tool for sports organisations

 The NSPCC has a:

• tool and guidance for sports and
• safeguarding self-assessment evaluation.

Self- Assessment tool for Voluntary Sector organisations 

Self- Assessment tool for Voluntary Sector organisations

This assessment provides a step-by-step guide to help voluntary and community organisations best meet safeguarding and child protection practices. The assessment is based on the NSPCC safeguarding and child protection standards for the voluntary and community sector (2019) and has been developed for people working with children and young people from 0-18 years old. You should use the tool at least once a year as part of your ongoing child protection work.

Standards

The tool is organised into six topics or standards:

1. recruitment, induction and supervision
2. protecting children and young people
3. preventing and responding to bullying
4. running safe activities and events
5. recording and storing information
6. sharing information and working with other agencies.

Organisations working primarily with adults

For organisations working primarily with adults, there are also some safeguarding self-assessment tools.

• Third Sector Support Wales has a good tool you can download from their website. This tool is based on the Charity’s Commission’s 10 actions Trustee Boards need to take to ensure good safeguarding governance.
• The Hear by Right Self-Assessment Tool makes it easy and practical to map evidence of current participation in your organisation and then develop your strategy to build on it. It has been produced with Participation Works for Voluntary, Community and other Third Sector organisations to help you measure and improve participation in your organisation and show evidence of this to funders and commissioners of services. More details are available by visiting the National Youth Agency website