Charities Urged to Review Safeguarding Arrangements
On 10 April we issued the Schools Law Brief Stop Press on 'Charities Urged to Review Safeguarding Arrangements', reporting on the Charity Commission's revised regulatory approach towards safeguarding in charities.
Since then the scale of the issue has become clearer, with the Commission publishing an update on 19 April on the work of its interim safeguarding taskforce. The update confirms a marked increase in serious incident reports relating to safeguarding issues from charities since the taskforce was established in February 2018.
In February and March 2018, the Commission received 532 serious incident reports on safeguarding incidents, compared to 176 during the equivalent period in 2017. From these, the Commission has opened 440 cases relating to safeguarding concerns (which were brought to their attention by serious incident reports from charities, complaints and whistleblowing reports). These are being prioritised according to risk and could lead to requests for information, formal investigations or statutory enquiries.
There have also been uncorroborated press reports of more Commission investigations into management and safeguarding in charitable independent schools in the past four months, than in the last two years combined.
Read our updated article for more details.