Today marks Childhood Day, with a focus on keeping children safe.

Child safety and safeguarding – promoting the welfare of children, protecting them from harm and taking action to ensure that they have the best possible outcomes – are always our top priority as we transform young people’s lives through tutoring.

At Tutor Trust, we seek to establish an environment in which the children we work with are protected, safe and are treated with dignity. It is our legal obligation, as a charity working with children, to have a safeguarding policy in place. However, we also recognise that good safeguarding policies and procedures are of benefit to everyone involved with our work, including our staff and our tutors, as they can help protect them too.

We are committed to providing a safe environment for children where:

• The child’s welfare is paramount.
• All children, whatever their age, culture, disability, gender, language, racial origin, religious belief and/or sexual identity, have the right to protection from abuse.
• All suspicions and allegations of inappropriate behaviour will be taken seriously and responded to swiftly and appropriately.

Safeguarding training for our tutors is an incredibly important pillar of what we provide as it ensures that they understand the key role they play in safeguarding our tutees and helps in keeping them safe too.

As a minimum, our tutors complete a training programme supplied by TES/Educare, which also covers radicalisation, extremism and Prevent Duty. Annual refresher training is compulsory for all tutors, with the training incorporating all relevant changes to Keeping Children Safe in Education (the Government’s statutory guidance for schools and colleges on safeguarding children and safer recruitment) for that academic year.

Our Safeguarding team provides updates/refreshers in our monthly tutor newsletter, and on our tutor learning platform Thinqi, so that they can keep abreast of the latest trends and recommendations. This supports our tutors to know what is required of them, making them more alert to the possible signs of abuse and able to follow the correct procedures in safeguarding the pupils with whom they work.

Our Safeguarding Team at the Tutor Trust is led by Jason Heaford, the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), with Deputy DSLs, Jo Meredith and Lewis Howell. Jason is responsible for dealing with any concerns about the protection of children, with Jo and Lewis taking on these responsibilities in his absence, with all three trained in safeguarding to the same high level. Both Jason and Jo have also led on Safeguarding in previous educational roles/settings, and between them the three have a wealth of experience on which to call. Alongside the day-to-day team, our Trustee Lucy Crompton has responsibility for overseeing safeguarding across the charity.