The aim of this statement is to maintain a high standard of safety for all children on site, at all times, to ensure all employee’s understand the correct procedures on reporting child protection concerns, how we promote working safely with children, recruiting and managing staff that meet the criteria, Child safeguarding awareness and training, involving parents and children, implementing and reviewing the safeguarding strategies. One of the main objectives of the Children First Act 2015 is to ensure that our organization keeps children safe from harm while availing ourselves of our services. The legislation and this guidance relate to the obligations of relevant services to prevent, as far as practicable, deliberate harm or abuse to the children availing of our services. While it is not possible to remove all risk, our organization has in place policies and procedures to manage and reduce risk to the greatest possible extent.

Our Child Safeguarding Statement has been developed in line with requirements under the Children First Act 2015, Children First: National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children (2017), and Tusla’s Child Safeguarding: A Guide for Policy, Procedure and Practice. In addition to the procedures listed in our risk assessment, the following procedures support our intention to safeguard children while they are availing themselves of our service:

• Procedure for the management of allegations of abuse or misconduct against workers/volunteers of a child availing of our service
• Procedure for the safe recruitment and selection of workers and volunteers to work with children
• Procedure for provision of and access to child safeguarding training and information, including the identification of the occurrence of harm
• Procedure for the reporting of child protection or welfare concerns to Tusla
• Procedure for maintaining a list of the people (if any) in the relevant service who are mandated people
• Procedure for appointing a relevant person

All procedures listed are available upon request.

We recognize that implementation is an on-going process. Our service is committed to the implementation of this Child Safeguarding Statement and the procedures that support our intention to keep children safe from harm while availing of our service. This Child Safeguarding Statement will be reviewed on the 27/04/2026, or as soon as practicable after there has been a material change in any matter in which the statement refers.