The information in this article is taken from Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2023.
Who can it be?
A senior board level (or equivalent) governor should take leadership responsibility for safeguarding.
Multi-academy trusts: You must appoint a member of your trust board to be responsible for safeguarding.
This comes from paragraph 80 of KCSIE 2023 and the Department for Education (DfE).
The safeguarding link governor must be:
- A full governor (either elected or appointed) – they can't be an associate member
- Separate from the designated safeguarding lead (DSL) – this is to make sure there's sufficient challenge to your school's safeguarding arrangements and performance
The DfE told us this.
Their role
Monitoring your school's systems and procedures
Child protection policy – they'll find our child protection checklist and model policy helpful for this Staff code of conduct Policy for handling allegations of abuse against staff and volunteers, including allegations that don't meet the harm threshold (low level concerns) Safeguarding response