Safeguarding policy

1. Our commitment

Every child has the right to be safe, online and offline. When we teach children, train adults, or respond to a young person who asks us for help, the child's welfare is our first concern.

This policy applies to everyone who works or volunteers with ShieldKid, and to anyone who delivers sessions or activities on our behalf.

2. Our principles

• The welfare of the child always comes first.
• Every child deserves equal protection, whatever their age, disability, gender, background, religion or beliefs.
• We listen to children and take what they tell us seriously.
• We work with parents, carers, schools and other organisations to keep children safe.
• We never promise to keep a child's worries secret when they may be at risk, and we share information only with people who need it to keep the child safe.

3. Safer recruitment and training

Before anyone works with children for ShieldKid, we check that they are suitable to do so and train them in our safeguarding procedures, including how to recognise signs of harm and how to respond if a child tells them something worrying.

Nobody delivers sessions to children on our behalf until they have been checked and trained.

4. Limited contact with children

We keep individual contact between children and our team or volunteers very limited. We work with children in groups, and our team and volunteers must not:

• arrange to be alone with a child
• contact a child privately, online, by phone or through social media
• ask for or keep a child's personal contact details
• take or share photos or videos of children without permission from the school or the child's parent or carer

5. Keeping children safe online in our work

• Our lessons and resources teach children to stay safe online without frightening them, and never ask them to share personal information.
• We do not collect personal details from children in our sessions.
• When a young person contacts us through our Get help page, only the team members who handle these requests can see what they tell us, and we use it only to help them. Our Safety Lead oversees every request.
• We never ask for, save or forward images or videos of a child. If a child shares one with us by mistake, we report it to the right authority and delete it.

6. If a child tells you something worrying

This is what everyone working with ShieldKid does when a child shares a concern:

• Stay calm, listen and let the child speak in their own words.
• Reassure them that they did the right thing by telling you. Don't promise to keep it a secret.
• Don't investigate, ask leading questions, or confront anyone the child mentions.
• Write down what the child said, in their own words, with the date and time, as soon as you can.
• Tell the Safety Lead the same day. If the child is in immediate danger, call the emergency services first.

7. How to report a concern

If you are worried about a child in connection with our work, or about the behaviour of anyone working with ShieldKid, contact our Safety Lead. Email hello@shieldkid.com with "Safeguarding" in the subject line, or call +234 902 421 5847.

If you are worried about a child but it isn't connected to ShieldKid, our Get help page lists the emergency number, police and child helpline for your country.

If a child is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number now.

8. Concerns about our team or volunteers

We take every concern about the behaviour of someone working with ShieldKid seriously. The Safety Lead will look into it, and, where needed, the person will be stopped from working with children while we act on it. If the concern is about the Safety Lead, contact our Founder and Executive Director through the same email address, marked "For the Executive Director".

Where the law or a child's safety requires it, we refer concerns to the police or child protection services.

9. Records and confidentiality

We keep records of safeguarding concerns securely and share them only with people who need to know in order to keep a child safe. Our privacy policy explains how we handle personal information.

10. Reviewing this policy

We review this policy at least once a year, and sooner if the law or our work changes.