Safeguarding Children declaration
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) works hard to ensure that all patients including children are cared for in a safe, secure and caring environment. As a result a number of safeguarding children arrangements are in place.
These include:
GOSH meets statutory requirements in relation to Criminal Records Bureau checks – all staff employed at the Trust undergo a CRB check prior to employment and those working with children undergo an enhanced level of assessment.
All the Trust Child Protection policies and systems are up to date and robust and are
reviewed on a regular basis, ultimately by the Trust Board. The last review occurred in November 2010 and the next review is scheduled for November 2012.
The Trust has a process in place for following up children who miss outpatient appointments within any speciality to ensure their care and ultimately their health is not affected in any way. In addition the Trust has a system in place for flagging children for whom there are safeguarding concerns.
The Trust has a robust strategy in place with regard to delivering safeguarding training.
89% of staff have received a minimum of level 1 safeguarding training in last 3 years (level 1, 2 and/or 3). This figure provides a useful overview for the Trust. It equates to 3092 members of staff out of 3497 eligible staff having received some level of child protection training. Therefore the Trust is performing above the national requirement of 80%
We can break the overall figures down into specific levels. The numbers will equate to a larger number than the overall figure as staff may have attended training in more than one level during the period covered.
- Level 2 training - 1167 out of 1977 eligible staff = 59 %
- Level 3 training - 451 out of 1977 eligible staff = 22.81%
Adding the numbers for level 1, 2 and 3 shows that 4009 places have been taken up on training. 451 out of 1,977 eligible staff have completed level 3 training achieving 22.81% and is on target for achieving 20% CQUIN target to achieve 80% over the next 3 years. It is also on target to meet the national target of 80%.
Following a successful SIT (Safeguarding Improvement Team) visit we have created a training strategy for 2011-2012 that provides a variety of learning activities to support staff in meeting level 2 and 3 of the national safeguarding standards. This strategy has also been informed by a training needs analysis completed in relation to staff’s confidence in their safeguarding knowledge.
The training strategy is continually reviewed by the Child Protection Training Group which reports into both the Child Protection Management Group and the Trust's Education Governance structure. The actions from these groups are cascaded up to Management Board.
The Trust has named professionals who lead on issues in relation to Safeguarding. They
are clear about their role, have sufficient time and receive relevant support, and training, to undertake their roles, which includes close contact with other social and health care
organisations. The total number of professionals in these roles are 5 and are broken down by discipline as follows:
- Nurse 1 x full time post (WTE)
- Doctor 1 x 2 days a week (0.4 WTE)
- Managerial 1 x full time post (WTE)
- Administration support 2 x full time posts (WTE)
The Chief Nurse/Director of Education is the Executive Director lead for Safeguarding Children and chairs the Strategic Child Protection Management Group meeting which reports to the Board on safeguarding children.
The Trust Board takes the issue of safeguarding extremely seriously and receives an annual report on safeguarding children issues.
The last Annual Report occurred on the 25 May 2011 and the board paper relating to this can be found here.
The Trust Board has robust audit programmes to assure it that safeguarding systems and processes are working. Local audits are shared within the Child Protection Management Group (CPMG). Local audit information is fed to the Camden Safeguarding Children Board via the CSCB Quality and Safety sub-group annually as part of the GOSH CP Annual Report.
