Safeguarding Children in Charities Conference

Charities are clearly becoming more open to discussing safeguarding issues and acknowledging the risks that they pose which is a massive step in the right direction.

That's why Forum Training is delighted to be running the annual Safeguarding Children in Charities Conference - to help charities understand their legal obligations. That's alongside providing practical guidance to ensure that staff and volunteers are safely recruited, aware of their safeguarding responsibilities and fully compliant with your charity’s duty of care obligations.

Liz is a specialist safeguarding consultant with 15 years’ experience in social care across children and adults services in local government and the voluntary sector. She also acts as a Specialist Adviser to the CQC and has acted as Safeguarding Lead on a number of inspections.

Liz has led safeguarding reviews at a number of organisations including the Alzheimer’s Society, The City of London and a group of early years childcare providers. In this work she has examined organisational safeguarding policies and procedures, safer recruitment practices, training provision and materials, response to incidents, organisational culture and governance arrangements, made recommendations and helped organisations to formulate improvement plans.

Liz has also worked with housing associations, CCGs and NHS Trusts to examine quality assurance processes and organisations’ investigation of, response to and learning from serious incidents. Liz has frontline experience of working in child protection and safeguarding adults and a strong academic background with a Master’s degree in Social Work, from Royal Holloway, and a Master’s degree in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Ann Marie is safeguarding practitioner and has been a qualified social worker since 1996. She has worked for various local authorities on the front line, in management, Local Safeguarding Children Board Trainer, LADO, Safeguarding advisor to schools, school improvement advisor, Designated Safeguarding Lead trainer and Designated Safeguarding Lead coordinator. She held half termly meetings with the DSL’s and shared updates, local themes and support at these meetings.

She is well known amongst her peers and is very passionate about keeping children safe and sharing her knowledge about child abuse and violence against women. Ann Marie has specialised in safeguarding from 1992 and specialised within education and childcare settings since being a school-based social worker in 1999. She went on to manage social workers in schools for a Local Authority.

In 2003 she managed a Child Protection Team for a Local Authority and supported 75 local schools with child protection advice, training and consultancy. In 2010, she became an independent social worker and provides associate consultancy and training to various organisations including NSPCC, Local Authorities, , ISI Consultancy, Early Years Teams, Youth Justice Teams, Boarding School Association, The Key for Leaders, Optimus Education, Council of International Schools, AEGIS, IAPS, Insurance companies, Charities, Faith organisations, Premier League, Multi Academy Trusts and more. She writes articles and contributes regularly to Head Teachers Update, SEN Magazine and Nursery World. Ann Marie frequently delivers workshops and keynotes at National & International conferences. She raises the awareness of child abuse and promotes child protection internationally and over the last few years delivers training and keynotes in Dubai, Singapore, Jamaica, Japan and Armenia.She was’ Highly Commended’ and received an award at the Win Trade Awards 2019 for ‘Woman in the Public Sector’ and nominated in 2018 & 2019 in the NSPCC Child Protection Trainer of the Year.

Lydia Bennett has worked within statutory local government for over 11 years as a safeguarding and child protection Social Worker, manager and Group Manager and currently as Head of Service at London Borough of Bromley.

She has gained a wealth of experience across all areas of risk and has also managed several cases where allegations have been made against staff who work with children.Her experience in local government has involved a focus on developing policy, strengthening capacity and learning and improving the quality of the environment in which children have access to. Her recent successes include joining local government following a poor OFSTED inspection where she was quickly able to grasp the key challenges and risk areas that required immediate development and formulate strategies to address these.

This resulted in a 'Good' outcome following a subsequent OFSTED inspection; the quality of decision making was recognised as a key strength and inspectors were confident that “no risk was being missed”.

Christina is an experienced Head of Safeguarding and subject matter expert within safeguarding children and adults who has held senior strategic roles within large, complex organisations serving vast demographic populations.

A strong leader, Christina has delivered and embedded robust safeguarding systems, processes and procedures through the provision of sound expertise, knowledge and direction. She has positively driven transformational change, dynamism, pace and passion, whilst motivating, innovating and empowering the wider workforce, public and society to make sure every contact counts, striving for excellence in safeguarding.

Fiona commenced her career in Health as a Health Care Assistant working in hospitals in North Devon, specialising in acute Geriatrics.Fiona gained extensive practical nursing experience delivering care to adults in need of care and support in the community with dementia, physical disabilities and long term illness, this experience was invaluable in recognising the importance of providing dignity in care.Fiona moved on health and joined the Devon and Cornwall Police where she became Detective.

Her ability to investigate serious and complex Adult and Child Safeguarding were quickly recognised when she worked on specialist teams. Fiona later in service qualified as a trainer, developing a variety of training courses including Sexual Offences Liaison Officer and Achieving Best Evidence Courses to the police and other Agencies.

From a National Perspective on behalf of the home office, Fiona developed an E- Learning Package called First Response to Rape. This package was used across the country by police forces in England and also training Safeguarding Agencies in Estonia. Since retiring from the police Fiona became one of the founder company directors for SAFE, and her own company Safe-guarding.co writing and delivering an extensive range of training to public and private organisations.

Dramatic increase in the number of charities citing safeguarding as one of their biggest concerns