Safeguarding

Safeguarding covers a wide range of practices and responsibilities. We all share a responsibility to be respectful to our colleagues; and to behave towards them in a way that we would want to be treated ourselves. This means that we must always act in a way that is best for the individual - not for our convenience or the convenience of our organisation.

The key message is that safeguarding is everyone’s business. We expect all staff, partners and collaborators (paid or unpaid) to promote good practice by being an excellent role model, contribute to discussions about safeguarding and to positively involve people in developing safe practices.

How to ensure a safe environment for the Catalyst network

To ensure a safe environment for all Catalyst partnership network as well as user, research and testing participants, we all need to actively contribute to creating a safe environment, where people feel supported to raise concerns and worries.

We expect network partners to have clear and strong safeguarding practices in place, driven by an up-to-date safeguarding policy. For organisations who currently don’t have a safeguarding policy in place, we have developed a Safeguarding Policy template to help you create your own policy.

Our DigiSafe guide will help you build safeguarding measures into the design and delivery of digital services. A helpful resource for you and the organisations you work with.

We also have collated a suite of resources to support you to build a robust safeguarding culture.

Any safeguarding concerns raised in relation to the Catalyst activities, network partners or Collaborators, should be raised and assessed in line with CAST's organisation’s policies on Serious Incidents and Safeguarding.

To raise a concern with CAST, use this webform with CAST’s Safeguarding Lead (Dan Sutch), providing as much objective information as possible, reflecting the events.

Catalyst (CAST) has a duty of care, a legal obligation to ensure the safety or wellbeing of others. Cases will be assessed individually and if needed to ensure safety of a person or safety of others action will be taken outside of standard confidentiality procedures.

We further ask that Digital Teams internally share the name & contact details of their Safeguarding Lead to enable quick, efficient responses and handling of concerns. All parties are expected to commit to informing all partners of the nature of a safeguarding concern raised in relation to the project and to update on the outcome. More detailed information should only be shared on a need-to know basis.

Sharing data when raising a concern

Confidentiality is critical to carrying out safeguarding work. Catalyst (CAST) and its partners are committed to responding to safeguarding reports and supporting survivors and complainants in a safe and confidential manner. All data linked to a concern should be treated as sensitive and only shared on a need to know basis, All partners agree that data and records will be stored in line with data protection and GDPR laws.