The umbrella body for development charities, Bond has launched a toolkit, Developing and Modelling a Positive Safeguarding Culture, urging a “step up” in the protection from abuse of both beneficiaries and staff.
The toolkit, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is designed to help leaders assess how their organisation approaches questions of safeguarding and develop plans for preventing “all types of harm, including sexual exploitation, abuse and sexual harassment”. It identifies six “foundations” to building a stronger safeguarding culture: accountability; policies and processes; safer programming; a survivor-centred approach; awareness-raising; and safer recruitment and HR processes.
Bond said “It isn’t enough to meet minimum compliance standards. Organisations need to live and breathe a strong safeguarding culture”. It hopes that the tool will help guide leadership teams and staff through the process of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their own organisational culture.
