Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) – what are your duty of care and safeguarding responsibilities?

Education 12th February 2018 Return to News

Even if you only volunteer for the school PTA, you have responsibility for keeping children safe.

According to the Department for Education (DfE) statutory guidance Keeping children safe in education safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children and young people is everyone’s responsibility.

Even if your PTA volunteering role does not involve work or volunteering activity directly with children, the importance of understanding safeguarding and child protection is essential because the school or college whom you are volunteering for obviously does.

As a volunteer, you may be seen to be in a position of power and trust. For this reason, safe working practices must be adhered to at all times, as a duty of care to the children, yourself and the staff around you. Children have a right to be safe and should be protected from all forms of abuse and neglect. You should be aware of, and understand, the school’s child protection policy, arrangements for managing allegations against staff and staff behaviour policy.

Download our resource

We have written a guide which contains further advice and guidance for people who are volunteering in a school environment. The free resource includes:

Safe working practices
Remaining vigilant
How to respond when you have a concern or if a child confides abuse to you

PTAs – what are your duty of care and safeguarding responsibilities?

Download our free resource >>

Parentkind and EduCare can help

We have recently formed a partnership with Parentkind to provide a suite of essential courses to their members at a heavily discounted rate.

The membership team at Parentkind were increasingly being contacted by PTAs who were being asked by their schools to undertake training that went beyond running fundraising events – such as Risk Assessment – to the broader areas around child safety and protection. They want to make sure that every PTA has resources available to best support the school community.

A selection of our bestselling online training courses are now available to Parentkind members at a fixed price of £6 per course (plus VAT) which is a saving of between 30% and 85% on normal rates.

To view the courses in more detail go to our Parentkind webpage.