Young Somerset
Author: Suzanne Lawrence, Young Somerset's Designated Safeguarding Lead
Young Somerset is the largest youth work charity in Somerset. They work with vulnerable children, young people, and parents to improve emotional well-being and provide mental health support in many varied environments.
Their educational mental health & community well-being practitioners provide help in schools and community settings. The charity works closely in partnership with the NHS, delivering much-needed help to young people aged 5-18 with low mood, anxiety, and stress as well as those who have attempted to take their own life.
The Challange: Managing Multiple Safeguarding Environments
Young Somerset has a legal duty of care for the health, safety, and well-being of all staff, children, and young people they work with.
What the charity needed was a safeguarding solution that could monitor and manage the complexity of all the different environments and agencies that they are involved with and provide that duty of care.
The Solution - MyConcern®
Being able to have everything in one place, all safe and secure was seen to be key and MyConcern was chosen.
Everyone working for Young Somerset can record and report a concern, providing an overarching central view of every operational area. As a low-level concern can add up to a serious concern, it was necessary to have all the data, allowing the analysis to identify issues and trends for everything for the weekly review.
“This prompts referrals and notes which is particularly important in our role. All line managers then know what is happening in their areas. Nothing can be overlooked as new concerns stay until they are dealt with and the dashboard is a great support,” said Suzanne Lawrence, Young Somerset’s Designated Safeguarding Lead
The Results and Key Benefits
What the charity has found very effective when bidding for grants, is to demonstrate the value being provided using MyConcern’s anonymised reporting to illustrate the complexity of interaction with other agencies, through the breadth of categorization of the referrals made.
For Concerns about Children and Young Adults
Easy-to-use, centralised, secure record-keeping and case management for all types of safeguarding concerns
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