Our network aims to equip faith communities for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. Quarterly events have gathered those with safeguarding responsibilities focusing on:
Our focus is on raising awareness and increasing knowledge of Safeguarding risks for those with safeguarding responsibilities within faith communities. Our vision is that no matter what sector, there should be one standard across all to protect children and vulnerable adults.
Past events from our Safeguarding Networking have included the following topics:
HOW TO SAFEGUARD YOUR JUNIOR AGED CHILDREN – July 2017
Kari Roberts led us in this session with her experience of parenting through her role of Director at Achieving Parenthood. She led a practical session on signs that we can look out for with junior aged children and ways in which we can respond to this.
HOW TO SAFEGUARD YOUR TEENAGER – April 2017
Sue Boniface, Workforce Development Family & Parenting Lead from Southampton City Council led this workshop. Sue has experience both professionally and personally in mentoring and coaching young people and adults as well as a foundational qualification in counselling. She led a practical session on signs that we can look out for with teenagers and ways in which we can respond to this.
ADULT MENTAL HEALTH – February 2017
Annie Clewlow, Manager at CommuniCare, shared the work of what her organisation are doing to help prevent Adult Mental Health in the city. With a quarter of their service users being effected by Mental Health issues, their aim is to help mental health and well-being by providing practical support, transportation and a befriending service to stop loneliness and isolation across the city.
SUICIDE PREVENTION – October 2016
Jacqui Missen from The Red Lipstick Foundation spoke about her experience of dealing with a suicide in her family. The Red Lipstick Foundation offers support to those who are grieving a loved one who has tried or has committed suicide.
CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION – June 2016
Laura Tanner, Southampton Children Services and Sukhdev Rathore, Barnardos, spoke about the effects of CSE, the impact it has on children and young people and what we can do to try and see the signs before a child is exploited.
CHILD MENTAL HEALTH – April 2016
We were joined by Jo Spicer, an Independent Social Worker, who discussed her passion for helping children who suffer Mental Health issues. We were asked to think of ways in which they relax, how we can use our experiences to help and support those who need a stable lifestyle with good tools and good practice for day to day struggles.
MANAGING OFFENDERS – October 2015
Tracey Swainston and Sharon Hargreaves from the Offender Management Team spoke about their experiences of dealing with offenders, what they do specifically in their roles, how they work, the sentences given to offenders, about the offender, about the offender’s family or partner and how the community can help both parties.
SOCIAL MEDIA – June 2015
Especially for teens, social media is becoming a growing issue. We were joined by two Youth Leaders from St Thomas’ Church in Hedge End to discuss the implications of social media on our youth and how we as leaders can interact with them safely via the internet.
DOMESTIC ABUSE – February 2015
Domestic Abuse is such a big issue and it one that is very hard to know who is being effected by it because the majority of domestic abuse happens behind closed doors. We were privileged to be joined by Josephine Wakeling from Restored and Debbie White from City Life Church who gave tremendous insight into this topic: the effects it has on women and men, how everyday culture can support the inequality of women skewing their view of what healthy relationships looks like and how to be aware of those that may be effected by this. This event progressed into a training event lead by Restored and an initiative which can be read more about in our specific project for Domestic Abuse.
MASH – December 2014
The Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) spoke about their role within the city and how faith groups can connect in to use their service effectively. Abdiwali Elmi, the Voluntary Sector Navigator from MASH, presented on what his role was specifically.
For any further information or notes on the events listed above, please email Megan on: admin@aldertrust.org.uk.
