For over 150 years we’ve supported children, young people, and their families to be safer, happier, healthier, and more hopeful. We provide specialist safeguarding consultancy to help other organisations do the same.
About Barnardo’s Consultancy work
Barnardo’s Consultancy is our UK-wide consultancy service that provides independent safeguarding consultancy to a wide range of organisations in the private, voluntary and public sector.
Our team brings a wealth of experience and skills from their extensive experience working with children and families and advising on and managing safeguarding matters.
All of the fees paid for our Consultancy are used to cover our costs and support the work of our charity. The income we generate goes directly back to Barnardo’s to support our work with children, young people, and their families.
We pride ourselves on really understanding the specific challenges and requirements of each commissioner. We believe we have the greatest impact when working in partnership together and will seek to really understand your particular needs.
We have an experienced and skilled team of Safeguarding Consultants ready to provide safeguarding consultancy support. We have substantial experience in supporting other organisations with improving their safeguarding arrangements and driving-up safeguarding standards and practice.
Julie Dugdale
Head of Business Training and Consultancy
Our key areas of consultancy work
Independent reviews of safeguarding arrangements
Our safeguarding reviews involve working alongside organisations to assess the effectiveness of their safeguarding arrangements designed to protect children and adults at risk from harm. Our experienced Safeguarding Consultants assist in identifying where safeguarding measures and systems work well and where improvements would help minimise risk and strengthen these arrangements even further.
Safeguarding audits
Our safeguarding audits provide high quality evaluation about the extent to which an organisation discharges its safeguarding responsibilities and meets accepted standards of best practice. These audits include an in-depth and extensive examination, testing and verification of safeguarding policies and procedures to ensure that practice is of a high standard and is effective in keeping children and adults at risk safe from harm or abuse.
Case reviews including case file sampling and reviews of practice
We undertake case reviews which involve evaluating practice around work with children, families, and adults at risk. The process can involve periodically dip-sampling case records and offering advice about case management and record-keeping. Alternatively, it may involve a specific review of the handling of an in-depth case.
Policy development and review
Safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures are key components in protecting children and young people. Our work in this area ensures that robust policies and systems are in place to ensure that when safeguarding concerns arise people know how to respond promptly and in line with best practice. We also ensure there are good safeguarding systems and governance in place to ensure policy sign off.
Independent supervision
Our experienced and qualified safeguarding consultants can provide regular ongoing supervisory sessions to individuals whose safeguarding responsibilities are integral to their role in an organisation. Offering a safe space for reflection and deliberation, these sessions can be used to replace or supplement internal supervision.
Strategy development and support with governance arrangements
Strategic development and accountability are crucial in safeguarding as they ensure that clear leadership, robust oversight and a culture of transparency are embedded throughout an organisation. We work with trustee boards and senior leaders to ensure that safeguarding responsibilities are understood, and risks are proactively managed.
Historic reviews of safeguarding practice
Reviewing safeguarding practice, even from years gone by, can be crucial in helping us understand what happened then and why. ‘Historical’ reviews, which examine cases where children were seriously harmed or died can be key in preventing future harm. Our team has considerable experience in undertaking these reviews and supporting organisations to respond to the learnings that emerge.
Barnardo’s have been invaluable to our service, offering support and practical safeguarding advice but also offering robust challenge and identifying improvements needed. In offering professional supervision, again Barnardo’s have been supportive whilst requiring a high level of accountability. Barnardo’s work with our organisation is regularly shared with Trustees and is used to evidence compliance with safeguarding requirements.
Archdiocese
We asked Barnardo’s to help us review our safeguarding policy and deliver training on our behalf and experienced nothing but a first-class professional service. Highly competent and knowledgeable. The service we received was tailored to meet our exact needs and provided real value for money. I will seek their help again if the need arises and would recommend their services without hesitation.
Charity
We commissioned Barnardo’s to undertake a sensitive research report to inform our understanding of past practice and assess our cultural approach. A detailed and thorough report was produced that has helped us to learn and to plan our future direction. The quality of the relationship with Barnardo’s was excellent and highly professional, and the recommendations included in the report were extremely valuable to us.
Head of Service, Local Authority
Our guiding principles for our Consultancy work
Our principles lay the foundations for respectful and impactful work.
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We are independent - We provide an independent perspective and influence to drive-up standards.
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We are person centred - We focus on the needs of children and any adults at risk, learning from those we support to deliver more effective services for those that need them.
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We are confidential - We understand the importance of managing confidentiality both during and after our work and invest in dedicated resources and systems to achieve this.
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We are respectful - We show respect to those who are engaged in our work, especially when tackling difficult issues.
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We are trauma informed - We embed trauma informed practice principles in all the work we do. We are mindful of this in our work and are sensitive to potential triggers, taking care in our approach.
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We work from a strengths-based approach – We reflect the strengths and progress of individuals and organisations, whilst always using integrity to honestly outline any areas for improvement. We are confident about explicitly naming priorities and risks.
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We are always learning - We strive to continuously learn and share our insights through our work.
Underpinning all our work is our commitment to ensuring children are safeguarded at all times, and our commitment of working together to achieve greater impact.
Contact us
We are committed to ensuring we have a good understanding of your needs to get the best out of our work together. The best place to start is always a conversation.
If you want to talk to us about a potential consultancy opportunity, get more information about our consultancy work, or commission us, please contact us and we will be in touch shortly to arrange a call:
Contact the Consultancy team
Other areas of our work:
Training
Whatever your organisation, we’ve got the training course for you. From group sessions to training for individuals, there are so many ways to learn and develop your skills with our experts.
Commission us
When working with us, you can be confident we will bring our passion and expertise to help you improve your practice, policies, and systems so they really work for all children and young people. Find out more about the breadth of our commissioning work below.
Our impact
In 2023-24 we reached 356,200 people, running 760 services and partnerships across the UK. Read more about the impact we had on children, young people and their families below.
