Safeguarding

The Safeguarding Due Diligence Assessment identifies positive organisational traits and areas needing improvement. It is a thorough and holistic approach that engages the different levels of the organisation.

This process feeds into the development of a realistic plan of action which can be assessed and reviewed on an annual basis.

The Due Diligence assessment helps to:

• Identify: supports the organisation to identify opportunities for improvement by identifying who is most at risk of harm (risk to people) and what the operational risks are.
• Prevent: prevent harm by reviewing existing policies and procedures, and adjusting them by putting in place strategies to operationalise them in everyday work practices.
• Report: looking at how people internally and externally can raise concerns and identifying the various barriers to reporting.
• Respond: review procedures in place to manage disclosures of abuse or other harm; incident handling and case management (including investigations); and support systems available to those affected.
• Learn: establish an ongoing review system to ensure learning is embedded in organisational culture and systems.

Contact us to learn more about a due diligence assessment on safeguarding for your organisation.

Effective safeguarding has the people who have been harmed, or are most vulnerable to harm, at the heart of its design.

Recognising survivors/victims as knowledge-holders who are core to improving policies and practices, especially in relation to the elimination of SEAH, should be an underlying principle of all safeguarding measures.

As individuals, survivors/victims need their communities to hear, recognise and acknowledge their experiences, with compassion and without blame, to enable a healing process. Complicity, inappropriate reactions, or inaction are the causes of secondary victimisation – the exact opposite of the survivor-centred and trauma-informed approaches.

All people within an organisation need to know how to be part of creating a safe environment, and how to receive and respond to disclosures of workplace harm. All staff members, not only safeguarding/SEAH/Human Resource focal points or case managers, should receive capacity development in this regard.

Ensuring meaningful safeguarding measures are people-centred may therefore include supporting people to practice active and empathetic listening skills, learn how to ask questions sensitively and appropriately, encourage active self-reflection on their own stereotypes and biases, and being aware of what can trigger re-traumatisation.

Contact us to discuss how we can help you to put your people at the centre of your safeguarding process.

Protection from exploitation, abuse, harassment, intimidation and bullying are all part of safeguarding.

ILO Convention No. 190 (C190), first adopted in June 2019, is the first international treaty to address violence and harassment in the world of work. It recognises the right of everyone to a work environment free from violence and harassment, including gender-based violence. The convention applies to all sectors and requires a comprehensive approach to prevent and eliminate such behaviours.

Establishing comprehensive and holistic prevention systems that encompass all different forms of workplace violence is essential to creating a safe workplace.

By adopting an intersectional lens, your organisation acknowledges that people's experiences of workplace violence may vary based on their multiple, overlapping identities, and that addressing these complexities is crucial not only for deeper understanding, but for creating and maintaining work environments where everyone feels safe

Becoming fully aware of the various types of workplace violence, and how they can manifest, is the first step in creating safe workplaces; OSACO can assist you with this.

When prevention and process have not effectively provided a safe workplace, OSACO can also support your organisation with our expert workplace investigations service.

Contact us to learn more about workplace investigations.

Throughout the world, children and young people are encouraged to engage in sport, recreationally and competitively. While this is beneficial in so many ways, it does create a specific environment with a large number of potentially vulnerable participants.

Safeguarding is often used to refer to SEAH, but it also relates to bullying, maltreatment, psychological pressure, discrimination or other forms of maltreatment or harm. In the world of sport, safeguarding primarily focusses on protecting children and young people from abuse, preventing harm and promoting their wellbeing.

Safeguarding within this context means having the right policies and people in place to protect young people from inappropriate pressures and behaviours from those with power over them (coaches, trainers, and even their own parents), as well as other players.

It is important for sporting federations and clubs at both amateur and professional levels to have safeguarding policies covering risk identification; prevention strategies; appropriate training for various stakeholders; safe recruitment; and a complaints response mechanism.

OSACO Senior Consultant Alred Zebi, an investigation specialist into safeguarding cases, has completed the FIFA Guardians™ Safeguarding in Football Diploma and is qualified to support sporting federations and clubs within and beyond football to assess, update or strengthen their safeguarding protocols.

This could include undertaking a review of existing safeguarding policies and processes; risk identification; risk assessment; creating or updates to safeguarding policies; guidelines on implementation, as well as communication and education; how to monitor implementation for opportunities to improve; along with the relevant procedures to implement the above.

OSACO also plan to offer trainings to sport clubs regarding case management and investigation of safeguarding cases. To review and improve your current safeguarding policies and procedures, or to upskill your sports club in effective safeguarding please reach out to start a confidential conversation.

For safeguarding to be effective, it is important to assess each context individually.
Those at risk of harm, and/or survivors/victims, are not a homogenous group and this is why contextualised safeguarding risk assessments are needed.

Each individual experiences and responds to abuse and misuse of power differently, leading to diverging needs; it is vital to understand this when seeking to address and respond to incidents, and design safe programmes. Without a genuine commitment to acknowledge and act on these specific contexts, environments and needs, we will likely fail to protect the very people we are there to support.

This is particularly true of environments such as the aid sector, where additional power dynamics unfold, interact and generate the social hierarchies that shape social and societal attitudes, behaviours and organisational cultures. This may require different or more nuanced approaches relevant to local and cultural contexts.

OSACO has international consultants from a wide range of backgrounds who can support you to create best practice safeguarding frameworks, in collaboration with your partners and communities, in ways that recognise the specific context your organisation operates within.

Contact us to discuss how we can meet your specific safeguarding needs.