Charity Safeguarding
Safeguarding is a key governance priority for all charities, ensuring the safety and protection of everyone engaged with your organisation.
Effective safeguarding goes beyond traditional definitions, it is about creating a safe, trusted environment for beneficiaries, staff, and volunteers alike.
Since 2017, following high-profile cases where charities failed to address abuse allegations, the Charity Commission has made safeguarding a key area of regulatory focus.
The regulator now makes it clear that protecting everyone who comes into contact with your organisation is essential. This duty goes beyond beneficiaries - it extends to staff, volunteers, and anyone involved with your charity.
While many charities have statutory obligations when working with children or vulnerable adults, trustees are also responsible for managing other risks such as bullying, harassment, health and safety issues, discrimination, and the abuse of positions of trust.
All charities are expected to have robust safeguarding policies and procedures in place that reflect their specific activities. Whether operating online, internationally, or with partner organisations, policies should be tailored to your charity’s work.
It’s not enough to have policies on paper - they must be regularly reviewed, and trustee boards must ensure they have proper oversight to manage safeguarding effectively.
Our expertise
Our charity safeguarding lawyers bring together expertise in charity safeguarding law and regulatory compliance, including the Charity Commission’s safeguarding requirements and the statutory bodies responsible for regulating the protection of children and adults at risk. This combined knowledge ensures we can offer pragmatic, commercial advice tailored to your organisation’s needs.
We help clients develop charity safeguarding policies and procedures that align with their unique activities and broader governance frameworks. Our support also extends to managing sensitive situations, such as allegations of abuse, ensuring your charity’s response is both effective and compliant.
Our team advises on the following areas:
We review your charity's safeguarding governance to ensure it meets the requirements of the Charity Commission (as well as any other regulator relevant to your charity's work). We will ensure that your safeguarding governance is effectively integrated into your wider governance framework including your charity's constitution and any supplementary rules, policies and procedures, facilitating effective oversight and delegation.
We assist in preparing bespoke best practice charity safeguarding policies, procedures and codes of conduct tailored to your charity’s activities, ensuring compliance and a clear, practical approach to protection.
Our training sessions equip trustees, staff, and volunteers with the knowledge and skills to understand their duties, responsibilities and other obligations and to ensure safeguarding matters are managed confidently and effectively.
We understand the importance of the timely and thorough management of safeguarding allegations and provide expert guidance on how to handle safeguarding allegations, ensuring your response is sensitive, legally sound, and aligned with best practice.
We provide guidance on serious incident reporting to the Charity Commission and the reporting requirements of other external regulators, helping you navigate complex regulatory requirements and safeguarding concerns. We can prepare reports on your behalf or support you to make your own report directly.
We conduct thorough reviews of safeguarding incidents, identifying key lessons to improve future practices and strengthen your charity’s safeguarding measures and generally ensuring effective safeguarding culture within your charity.
VWV has a strong charity practice, working with a large number of large and high-profile charities in the region. Their depth of experience in the charity sector is valuable.
Our work highlights
We advised a charity supporting vulnerable individuals to review and update their safeguarding governance arrangements, including preparing a detailed and bespoke policy confirming the charity's safeguarding commitment, practices and procedures.
We supported a charity to manage safeguarding allegations including to establish a safeguarding committee with tailored terms of reference and to prepare terms of reference for a specific safeguarding trustee, and to prepare a serious incident report to the Charity Commission.
We deliver regular training to charities on the Charity Commission's expectations of charity trustees in relation to safeguarding matters and best practice in safeguarding governance generally.
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