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The Concept of Safeguarding

The Concept of Safeguarding

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purpose of this manual as:

  • Protecting children from maltreatment;
  • Preventing impairment of children's health or development;
  • Ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and
  • Undertaking that role so as to enable those children to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully.

Safeguarding Children should therefore not be seen as a separate activity from promoting their welfare, as safeguarding or protecting a child from Significant Harm is an aspect of promoting a child's welfare.

Put another way, all children provided with services and/or subject of an assessment by the Knowsley Early Help and Children’s Social Care Department. Some of these children will be suffering Significant Harm or likely to suffer Significant Harm, and therefore one of the needs of such children will be protection from abuse or neglect.

Effective Child Protection is essential as part of wider work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. However, all agencies and individuals should aim to proactively safeguard and promote the welfare of children so that the need for action to protect children from Significant Harm is reduced.

The threshold that triggers compulsory intervention in family life is when a child is thought to have suffered, or be at risk of suffering, Significant Harm. The term 'Significant Harm' is defined in the Children Act 1989. This is in order to give some clarity to thresholds of intervention. It is acknowledged that abuse is the action and harm is the consequence. Therefore it is harm to children that needs to be measured as part of any assessment (see The Concept of Significant Harm).

Last Updated: March 19, 2025

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