Review safeguarding and whistleblowing policies and procedures that reflect current legal, national and local requirements.

For this assessment criterion, you will be required to provide evidence of how your organisation’s policies and procedures to support safeguarding and whistleblowing reflect national and local requirements and how they are reviewed to ensure that they are current.

We have already discussed legislation and national and local policies and guidelines related to safeguarding and whistleblowing within care settings. These should form the basis of your organisation’s policies and procedures to ensure compliance.

Sample policies and procedures can provide an outline for your own organisation’s policies and procedures (for example, those from Quality Compliance Systems – QCS). These will be in line with current national requirements but will need tweaking to incorporate the requirements of your organisation and local systems and processes.

Ultimately, however, it is down to you to ensure that your organisation’s policies and procedures adhere to current legal requirements. Therefore, you should ensure that you have processes in place to keep up to date with any changes to national and local guidelines so that you are able to quickly and efficiently incorporate them into your internal policies and procedures.

You should also review policies and procedures on a regular basis (at least annually) to ensure that they are current.

Assessment Criteria

Learners provide evidence of how their policies and procedures to support safeguarding and whistleblowing reflect national and local requirements and how these are reviewed to ensure currency.