Safeguarding and Consultancy
What do we offer?
ALIGNÂ offers a range of safeguarding services and consultancy to help you and your organisation cultivate a culture of safety and care for all individuals, with a particular focus on children and adults at risk. With our wealth of experience, our services can enhance your capacity, strengthen your safeguarding responses, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
ALIGN Safeguarding include:
·        Align can provide guidance and support to organisations in the development of effective safeguarding governance structures, strategic planning and implementation. This includes advising on governance models and the development of policies and procedures to ensure that safeguarding requirements are met.
·        In addition to advising on governance models and developing policies and procedures, Align can also provide guidance on how to leadership and governance structures can more effectively communicate safeguarding initiatives to employees and stakeholders.
·        Align can review or develop a fit-for purpose safeguarding framework for your organisation to ensure that it is up-to-date and effective in preventing and responding to safeguarding issues. This may include providing recommendations for changes or updates to the framework.
·        Align can conduct a review of an organisation’s safeguarding framework to identify any gaps or areas that require improvement. This may involve reviewing the governance structures, strategic frameworks and their cohesion to ensure they are both evidence-based and fit-for purpose, meeting the contextualised needs of the organisation and those it serves.
·        Align can review existing safeguarding policies and procedures to ensure that they are comprehensive and up-to-date. We can also develop new policies where necessary to ensure that organisations are meeting their safeguarding obligations.
·        In addition to reviewing and developing safeguarding policies and procedures, Align can assist organisations in developing communication strategies to effectively disseminate policies to employees and stakeholders. This may involve developing user-friendly guides or training materials.
·        Align can help organisations to understand and implement relevant standards and regulations related to safeguarding. This includes advising on the implementation requirements and current competency of your policies and procedures to meet these requirements.
·        This may include conducting a gap analysis to identify areas where an organisation may not be meeting the standards and providing contextualised recommendations and the support required to address these.
·        Align can review an organisation’s safeguarding initiatives against relevant external standards in preparation for an audit. This helps organisations to identify and address any gaps in their safeguarding framework before an audit, along with updating, collating and demonstrating the required evidence for an external audit of compliance.
·        Align can provide training and education activities to personnel on safeguarding best practices, along with developing practice tools and supportive resources to help you foster a culture of safety and care within the organization.
·        In addition to providing training on safeguarding best practices, Align can also provide guidance on how to develop a culture of safety and care within an organisation. This may involve developing values and principles that underpin an organisation’s approach to safeguarding.
·        Align can provide expert advice and support to organisations and personnel in responding to safeguarding incidents, including allegations of abuse or breaches of policy.
·        Align can assist organisations in responding to safeguarding incidents by providing guidance on conducting investigations, reporting incidents to relevant authorities, and providing support to victims/survivors and their families. This may also involve providing advice on how to manage the impact of incidents on an organisation’s reputation.
·        Align can provide expert case coordination for safeguarding incidents, including facilitating the involvement of relevant external stakeholders, coordinating external investigators, legal representatives and supporting complainants through the journey of any complaint’s response process.
·        In addition to coordinating external investigators and legal representatives, Align can also provide guidance on how to communicate with victims, their families, and other stakeholders throughout the complaint response process. This may involve developing communication strategies and providing training to employees involved in the process.
Safeguarding Expertise
Align has a combined experience of over 30 years in safeguarding and professional standards, with a particular focus on the faith-based context. Our work includes supporting complex organisations to establish approaches that address their safeguarding and professional standards needs at the national and international levels, often within intricate governance structures.
We have worked with organisations across various sectors, including pastoral ministries, education, community services, health, and aged care. Our experience also includes overseeing complaint response functions both nationally and within specific organisational contexts. These functions primarily relate to allegations of abuse (both historical and contemporary), adult boundary violations, and breaches of codes of conduct.
One of the key components of our expertise is establishing standards and assisting organisations in meeting their regulatory and compliance requirements. We also help organisations implement continuous quality improvement (CQI) strategies to review and update their approaches. We develop and deliver learning and development activities to facilitate this process.
To achieve our goals, we use an action-research module that involves continuous planning, implementation, review, and analysis.
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