Charities release joint statement on commitment to improving safeguarding standards
Melanie May | 21 March 2018 | News
International aid charities and sector organisations have released a joint statement with DFID and the Charity Commission, setting out their commitment to improving safeguarding standards.
Published on the Bond site, the letter is signed by charities including ActionAid, VSO, Save the Children UK, Oxfam GB, and TearFund as well as by Bond, DEC, ACEVO, the Foundation for Social Improvement and others.
In it, they state:
“We commit to always putting beneficiaries first, to concrete steps to improve the effectiveness of safeguards, to meet our duties and responsibilities and to lead a system-wide process of improving standards and restoring trust.
“We commit to improving the standards and delivery of safeguards, including a culture of zero tolerance to sexual exploitation and abuse in all we do.”
They also state that they have all agreed on five key commitments:
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- To demonstrate accountability to beneficiaries and survivors
- To demonstrate a step change in shifting organisational culture
- To ensure safeguards are integrated throughout the employment cycle
- To ensure full accountability through rigorous reporting and complaints mechanisms
- To ensure that concerns are heard and acted on
The signatories commit to defining and proposing implementable solutions to these five key commitments through a set of working groups. Progress on these delivering these commitments is to be monitored and the groups will report to DFID, charity regulators in the UK, relevant devolved authorities and the sector with a review to be presented at a safeguarding conference to be held this autumn.
The organisations say they are also committing to a set of immediate actions that they will take individually and jointly and which they will publish within two weeks.
The statement can be read in full on Bond’s site.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.