The Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance from the government has recently been updated. You can find a handy summary of the changes here: Working together to safeguard children 2026: summary of changes - GOV.UK and the full guidance here: Working together to safeguard children 2026: a guide to multi-agency working to help, protect and promote the welfare of children.
On a day-to-day, operational basis you don’t need to do anything differently. You will need to update the legislation section of your Child Safeguarding policy when you next review it to make sure you include the link to the 2026 version of the guidance. The policy has some specific sections in chapter 3 for organisations that support the following groups, that you might want to look at if they apply to your organisation:
- Supporting babies (including unborn children)
- Supporting disabled children and their carers
- Supporting young carers
- Supporting children suffering or likely to suffer harm outside the home
- Supporting children in secure youth establishments
- Supporting looked-after children
- Supporting children in mother and baby units in prisons
- Supporting children at risk from people in prison and people supervised by the Probation Service
We have updated our Working Together to Safeguard Children training to reflect the updates. Details of future training courses can be found here: Training and Events | Salford CVS
Please contact Liz Atkinson, our Safeguarding Development Worker, if you would like support to review your Child Safeguarding policy.