Safeguarding Allegations

What is Safeguarding?

Safeguarding is about protecting children, young people and vulnerable adults from abuse or neglect.

If you are an employer in the Health and Social Care Sector, providing services to vulnerable people you are responsible for the standard of care that your employees provide whether they are on your premises or a service user’s premises. There is lots of professional information available to service providers about training staff about safeguarding, and what you should do to report a safeguarding concern; but there is little that tells you what to do if you have concerns about the practise of an employee where you can’t reach the burden of proof that the police need to charge someone, the burden of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

The result may be that you, the employer, are left with the unenviable dilemma of either keeping the employee, an employee that your gut tells you is not safe, or taking the decision to dismiss and risk a successful unfair dismissal claim because you haven’t followed an appropriate procedure to investigate and fully consider the allegations facing the employee. You are, I’m sure, comfortable and competent at the operational safeguarding bit (that’s your specialist area not mine) but you are unlikely to be a specialist in managing the apparent tension between employment law, your duty of care, natural justice obligations towards your employee and the lesser burden of proof, the ‘on balance’ burden that is used in employment law.

Take advice from an HR Consultancy Service based on 30 years’ experience of juggling the sometimes conflicting advice you will get when dealing with Safeguarding Allegations Against Staff. Your initial confidential consultation is at no charge to you. Call us now on 01706 565 332 or fill in our contact form and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Recruiting for staff to provide services to vulnerable people? Read our advice on Safeguarding in Recruitment

Metis HR is a professional HR Consultancy based in the North West of England supporting clients across the country. We specialise in providing outsourced HR services to small and medium sized businesses. Call us now on 01706 565332 to discuss how we may help you.