Faithful Safeguarding Podcast with Petros

Ep 10 Closing Loopholes: Beyond DBS Check w/ Isabelle King (Part 2)

• Madison Clarke • Season 1 • Episode 10

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How do you transform volunteers into safeguarding champions? In this eye-opening conversation with Isabelle King, we unpack the critical role volunteers play in creating robust protection frameworks within faith communities.

Forget the dangerous notion that "a bad volunteer is better than no volunteer." Isabelle shares her belt-and-braces approach to recruitment, revealing why thorough screening matters and what red flags to watch for. With host Madison Clarke, she expertly dismantles the misconception that DBS checks alone create safety, walking us through a comprehensive volunteer recruitment process that closes dangerous loopholes.

The most powerful revelation? Treating volunteers as an integral part of your workforce rather than a "bolt-on" completely transforms safeguarding effectiveness. Isabel shares a remarkable case study where one organization evolved from having a single safeguarding officer supporting 250,000 volunteers to developing a network of trained volunteer safeguarding champions who proudly declared: "We are a safeguarding organization."

Whether you're managing a handful of volunteers or hundreds, this episode provides actionable strategies to build a unified safeguarding culture where everyone - from paid staff to occasional helpers - understands their role in creating safety. 

You'll walk away with a clear roadmap for empowering your volunteers to become the eyes and ears of your safeguarding framework.

Ready to strengthen your organization's safeguarding through volunteer engagement? Subscribe now and share this episode with fellow faith leaders committed to creating safer communities for all.

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Madison Clarke:

Welcome to Faithful Safeguarding, the podcast dedicated to promoting safety and well-being within faith communities. I'm your host, madison Clark from Petrox, a not-for-profit dedicated to safeguarding and protecting those most vulnerable in our communities. Each episode will bring you expert insights, real-world experiences and practical advice to help you implement effective safeguarding practices in your faith organization. Together, we can create environments where everyone feels safe, valued and protected. Thank you for joining us on this important journey. Now let's dive into today's episode. Welcome back to Faithful Safeguardinging.

Madison Clarke:

In part two, with Isabelle King, we focus on strengthening volunteer engagement. Isabel shares best practices for recruiting, screening and retaining volunteers, especially in youth and education settings. She explains how volunteers can work together with professional safeguarding teams to create a unified culture. Isabel also discusses how volunteers bridge critical gaps in safeguarding. She offers clear, practical advice for faith communities to help build an inclusive and rigorous safeguarding framework through volunteer engagement. Join us for these key insights. The views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are solely that of the guests and do not represent the opinions and beliefs of the Petros organisation. Isabel, it is so exciting to have you back for part two. I've got a really important question for you to start. What best practices can organisations use to recruit, screen and retain volunteers in safeguarding positions, particularly within youth and further education sectors.

Isabelle King:

Well, that's actually a really good question, maddy. In the UK over the last decade, there's been extensive legislation and guidance in this area, because I think we've all recognised, at both strategic and operational level, that not only are volunteers our lifeblood, but also you've got to have some control at the door. I'm a big supporter of the DBS system. It's something that we use extensively, but when it first came in, there was a massive reliance on it.

Isabelle King:

We don't need to do any more recruiting or any more interviewing because we have the DBS checks. They go off, they come back, all is good and everything is right with the world. Well, actually, we very soon realised that interviews and recruitment of volunteers is on many levels. There are still an awful lot of loopholes that very determined people can navigate, and our job is to make sure that as many of those loopholes are closed, that we have the processes and procedures in place to be able to evidence that we have done everything in our power to prevent people coming in who shouldn't be working with children, young people or even vulnerable adults, and we've also got a duty on the organisation to continue that learning journey. So I've pulled together some bits and pieces that I think will be useful. Now I would just say I'm very much a belt and braces person, so I do like to make sure that I throw as many hurdles as I possibly can in the way of getting these people in, and I am extremely good at actually raising questions and saying thank you for volunteering, but on this occasion, no thank you, and I know an awful lot of charities really struggle with that, because I know that finding a volunteer is as rare as hen's teeth, but actually to say goodbye to one before they even start is heartbreaking. But I'm afraid we do have to be very, very good in this area.

Isabelle King:

So the first thing I would say to people is don't just recruit, prepare to recruit. Really. Think about what you're going to say, what their roles and responsibilities are going to be. How are you going to support them? And, most importantly, tell people in the advert that you've got very high safeguarding standards that they'll have to go through a process. Why? Because then you're laying down the gauntlet. From day one. You knew when you came to this interview that we were going to be really, really tough, and that's what we're wanting, and hopefully that will put people off. I think the second thing is if you get a lot of applications and that is a huge assumption, particularly with volunteers but if you do then you need to prepare for it. You need to shop shortlists, you need to read through their CV very, very carefully. Don't let them wiggle out by not having an application process. You need to say no, no. This is going to be an integral part of our team and we want it done properly Check references, check the CV, look for gaps, and the thing that I'm saying at the moment although there is a lot of discourse around this in the UK at the moment is look at their social media presence, and that's a subject for another day, but that is something that you do need to do a lot more of, but there are different procedures for that. So now we're getting to the interview.

Isabelle King:

I always say minimum of two people interviewing. If you're a small organisation small organization, you know it might be that a trustee can come and sit with you. It might be that you work with another charity and they can come and sit with you, but really, good practice says two people, preferably not knowing the individual. That's hard in small communities. I get that. So try and have somebody who does know them and somebody who doesn't know them. Don't stick to just them. Don't stick to questions that are already answered on the CV. Ask them more challenging questions, what we call behavioural questions. Ask them why do you want to work with children? What are your motivations? A, because they can't learn that. That's a really open question. And B, because it will start to give you some idea as to the motivations behind and, in some cases, the values. Again, you then make a decision yes, we'd like this person to come and work for us.

Isabelle King:

Then you do your vetting and barring checks. Please make sure that you read them. In the UK there are plenty of courses that you can go on where you are taught how to read DBS check responses. Make sure you're very clear about the legislation, but equally, on the other side of that, don't just look at it and go they've got this offence or that offence. Look to see if you can give a second chance. Think about your own organisation, do the risk assessing and think carefully.

Isabelle King:

So, moving into the organisation I think, just some key points here. When you've got them past the recruitment process, you then need to put the same amount of energy in terms of onboarding them, In other words, actually inducting them, making sure they're clear from day one, making sure that if there's any allegations or inappropriate behaviour, you record it and you manage it. Make sure there's a volunteer code of conduct in place. I think the other things I would say is make sure that you do your DBS checks every two to three years and your organisation can make that decision, but certainly in the UK we'd be looking at every two to three years.

Isabelle King:

And also the final thing and something a lot of charities really forget, Maddy and it's one of my little bugbears is if somebody in their family is arrested or is under suspicion for abuse or domestic violence, or maybe they themselves are laid off from their substantive role because of allegations, they need to tell you. So tell them from day one. They have a duty and responsibility to keep you informed. I can't tell you the number of times I've had volunteers come to me after there's been an issue and said you know, my son or my daughter has had X, Y and Z happen and it's now landed them in trouble and we've had to ask them to leave. I think that's pretty much everything. I mean a huge subject, Maddy, so that's just the basics that's incredible.

Madison Clarke:

Thank you for breaking that down into such actionable steps. I want to recap a little bit for our listeners. So and correct me if I get any of this wrong but sort of the first step is making sure that safeguarding is really clearly highlighted in the role of amortization so people who maybe want to join an organization with ill intent are then deterred because they know it's something they're going to be asked on. Making sure there's a really set application process that shortlist can be conducted. Making sure there's behavioral questions in the interview and even before that, checking references. Making sure you check their social media presence you mentioned in the interview. Be good if they didn't know the candidate, but if that's not avoidable, at least two people doing the interview.

Madison Clarke:

And then the importance, like you said, of DBS checks.

Madison Clarke:

And just for our listeners who may not be aware, a DBS check is a criminal record check or I know in Australia it's called a working with children check, just to make sure you haven't got any previous criminal convictions.

Madison Clarke:

That can mean that you're know able to work with children or with vulnerable people. And also thank you for highlighting the importance of onboarding and that continued relationship in a way making sure that volunteers can come to you if there is abuse in their family, if there's something they need to alert to you. And it's really great to keep this all in mind, because I've heard before the phrase a bad volunteer is better than no volunteer, which I'm sure will make your skin cringe, as it does mine. So I think if organisations can keep all these steps in mind, then they're making sure they're just having good volunteers and no bad volunteers can enter the organisation and moving on. I guess once you've gone through that whole process you've shortlisted candidates, they've gone through the interview process, they've had the DBS check, they're now a volunteer, they've had their onboarding how can organisations then better align the contributions of that volunteer with those of professional safeguarding teams to create a more cohesive safeguarding culture?

Isabelle King:

I think you have to start from the point of view of that. Your volunteers are part of your workforce. They're not a bolt-on like we used to see. They are an integral part of your organisation. They are the eyes and ears, as we've said earlier in part one, but equally they are very much your extension of your brand, your values and the whole ethos of your organisation. So I put as much into the volunteers probably plus plus than I would do to an employed member of staff, and this mainly is because you usually have them for a shorter amount of time and you need to pack more in.

Isabelle King:

There are several strategies organisations have adopted over the years. Again, what I've tried to do for the listener is to sort of bullet point it with just a couple of extra little thoughts all the way around. I think I would say really clearly that I've used a combination of these in the many charities and organisations that I've worked with and when I've been in a national role where I've been working with further education colleges and independent training providers, I've tried to get people to think about all these stages. It has to be proportionate to your organisation and your size. Obviously, the larger you are, the more you're going to have more of this structure in, and the smaller, obviously, the less. So I think my guiding rule for all always is they're part of your workforce, don't see them as a bolt-on. So, in the same way that we have a job description for a member of staff that's a legal, contractual requirement we have role descriptors. So they're not a role description, they're a descriptor. I know that sounds really weird, but basically they're more around telling the staff about what their roles will be. They talk about boundaries between their involvement and when they should defer to the expertise of the professional team. Now I have an example later on where actually the professional team are the volunteers. So that's an interesting one that we can explore later. An interesting one that we can explore later. So, for example, volunteers can observe and report potential concerns, whilst professionals, or the fully paid members of staff, shall we say, are responsible for the initial inquiries. So there's a demarcation line between the two and it's being very clear. Staff do this, volunteers do this, but they basically are all working in the same space.

Isabelle King:

The second thing I think is really important is integrated training. So you don't assume, just because a volunteer is a volunteer, that they only need a quarter of the training, because they may be in any situation at any time when they need 100% of the training. We talked about that in part one. It's about making sure that when you take volunteers on board, that you're very clear about what training they actually do require and that training has to be with the people they're going to be working with, so that staff and multi-agency if, for example, you're working alongside the police or social services or education or whatever you need to have that training with them so that everybody can hear and see what everybody should be knowing.

Isabelle King:

Clear communication lines and reporting channels are absolutely key. Flow diagram images are by far the best way of putting that information across. You need to foster and collaborate a collaborative and supportive environment. So things like regular team meetings, volunteers and staff together, peer support, mentoring, allowing well, I should say allowing possibly even enabling volunteers to provide information into that team meeting in a two-way, equal way is really good practice and I've seen that work time and time again, so that's a really big one for me. I think.

Isabelle King:

What's also really important and something, maddy, that a lot of people forget is I've seen organisations that have had separate policies for volunteers to staff. Well, if they're doing the same job in the same space and for the same organisation. That is just a nonsense. You need to make sure that there is a shared safeguarding policy and practice, but with very clearly defined demarcation lines in terms of roles and responsibilities within that policy. Supervision and support for volunteers again, which we covered a lot more in part. One really, really important. But with volunteers, I think sometimes they aren't necessarily or can be slightly older and so therefore you need to spend a little bit more time explaining to them things like what is supervision, how to get the best out of it and I'm afraid I am fast joining that older age range a little bit of reticence around IT and software. A lot of older volunteers perhaps get really stressed with that and it puts them off. So always make sure that there is that understanding within the IT support team, I think.

Isabelle King:

Finally, for me, as I talk about a workforce development team across volunteers and across paid staff, it's about having a clear understanding of a culture of safeguarding throughout the organisation, and this has to come from leadership.

Isabelle King:

It doesn't matter how small your organisation is or how big.

Isabelle King:

Leadership must emphasise the importance of safeguarding, set the tone for how volunteers and staff should work together of safeguarding, set the tone for how volunteers and staff should work together.

Isabelle King:

They should be incorporating volunteers and staff into all organisational discussions, particularly on safeguarding issues, concerns and strategies. Volunteers I've worked before with groups of volunteers who've spent time going through hundreds, probably thousands, of safeguarding referrals and actually looking for themes and looking for errors in the processes and things like that, because we've used their skills and their knowledge and their ability to sit down and do this more laborious work while we're out and about. But it is about them coming to the table and giving that information as well. I think the final thing that I would say is that there are going to be different types of volunteers that we're all going to be recruiting. It goes right back to that question you asked me at the beginning. You've got to recruit the right skills, the right expertise and the right knowledge, and you then need to augment that and support that by making sure they understand what you're doing and what your values are as an organisation. Perfect.

Madison Clarke:

And the key message I think for me there was just how volunteers are an integral part of the organisation and that's how they should be considered, and they're actually so crucial, arguably, that they can not only be part of safeguarding and the safeguarding culture, but they can improve and enhance it. As you said earlier, they can be the eyes and the ears of an organisation. In your experience, how do volunteers help bridge gaps in safeguarding and what strategies have proven effective in empowering them to make that difference within a safeguarding culture?

Isabelle King:

of an organisation that I worked with. I went in as a head of safeguarding for a large international charity within the UK and I realised very quickly we had one safeguarding officer at headquarters and that one safeguarding officer needed to support 250,000 volunteers and half a million young people on a yearly basis and I was absolutely struck with the enormity of the responsibility on that one individual and I went out. I spent the first month within the organisation and I have to give my hat off to the organisation because they were unbelievable. I went round and I started talking to the vast collection of volunteers and I realised very quickly there were some seriously qualified volunteers who were safeguarding officers, social workers, police officers and educationalists in their day job and then they were coming along in the evening to do this volunteering role. And we also had a large number of people who were what I call keen beans. They were really enthusiastic and they were fantastic communicators, but they didn't have a message to communicate. So the first thing that I did was I basically sit down with about 60 of them that we managed to identify across all the regions and we started to say what does the safeguarding culture look like? We talk about a safe space, what is a safe space in our organisation? And we had one member of staff and within the first year I managed to get it to three members of staff and when I left three years later we got it to 10 members of staff.

Isabelle King:

But the volunteers remained as between 60 and 100 in flux across the organisation and we moved from being an organisation that had child protection procedures to an organisation that very proudly went out and said we are a safeguarding organisation and you can bring your children to us and they will be safe. Everybody in the organisation was able to articulate what a safe space was. Everybody in the organisation knew and understood what their role was, because we rolled out, I have to say it was written by volunteers. So again, that's another example of harnessing the power of volunteers. We wrote a structured training programme from entry through to area and district management, the structure that we had, and many have gone on and continued their development in the safeguarding space. I think two things that came out very, very quickly is we identified, get the information at local level up quickly to a structured response network of volunteers and they were able to turn to the central team for advanced support and for reporting. So we very quickly worked out those demarcation lines, those boundaries across the organisation all done with volunteers.

Isabelle King:

Initially we had some reluctance because they felt that they wanted to do all the fun bits of volunteering and this was too much like employment. And we had long conversations, funnily enough, with trade unions and with a variety of people and we decided that it wasn't about the job role, it wasn't about the roles and responsibilities and all the legal stuff. It was about what was best for the children, what was the best mechanism for us to support the children. And then we worked our way back up from there, seeking advice and guidance all the way along. We eventually, at the end of three years, managed to get 250,000 volunteers fully trained to the right level. We had a tremendous positive force. We did an awful lot of work with other charities because what we did was we realised very quickly that young people don't just go to our charity, they go to multiple charities and it would be better for us to expand our network of knowledge and expertise at local level to bring in some of the smaller charities. And this, maddy, is where I was saying in the previous section that you know, sometimes your partners, your charities within your local community can be your best friends because you can work together. I think one of the things that was really important was that we brought all the volunteers together who had a safeguarding role and we did have a structure. We brought them together and, in the same way that we trained our central staff, we trained the 60 plus volunteers who were safeguarding leads in their area. We trained them all together. So we did CPD, so continuous improvement, development opportunities we encouraged them. For those that were retired and had the space, we encourage them to go to conferences. We encourage them to do talking and to talk about what we were doing. And we worked in partnership and I think that was absolutely key. We worked in partnership and we led from the front. So I went round to every single region every single year and spoke to not only the safeguarding leads but I also spoke to the volunteers who've been in process. So maybe they had some engagement, but we were also open to the children and we were open to the parents to engage with us also. So that's a really big example.

Isabelle King:

But let me just very quickly go through a smaller example, where you don't have that level of volunteers and that sheer volume to be able to build a structure of any length. It's very flat. So my advice here is to have someone who is a designated safeguarding lead for the organisation. Could be the chief exec, could be the director, it could be a trustee whoever it is that's best on that lead to make sure that they have a very clear roles and responsibilities they they're very clear about that and to give them that the training that they need in terms of engaging a volunteer. Obviously, within charities, a volunteer can also be a trustee, obviously, but they can also be someone who is leading safeguarding for the paid staff that might be working in that organisation.

Isabelle King:

But it is about having that total clarity. You need to think about how the role of the safeguarding lead is going to work in practice and I think the thing just to end up on here, above everything else, is to remember that if you've got one person in the organisation that's taking up the slack in terms of being that designated person, they strangely enough need holidays and days off and important stuff like that. So never just have one person. You may have one person that's the designated lead, but have a deputy or someone who can stand in. And if you're in a smaller organisation, it makes it even more important that all your processes for safeguarding child protection, adult protection are written down and clearly explained from the moment that they come into your organisation and refreshed. So I think that's probably a good point at which to break that one.

Madison Clarke:

They were very lucky to have you clearly as head of safeguarding, because it's just wonderful to hear that story of how the organisation moved from kind of having some practices on child protection to then sort of shifting into having this strong safeguarding message that involved all the volunteers and worked in partnership with organisations, also enabled, like you said, volunteer heads of safe safeguarding to have holidays because someone could stand in and they're sort of contributing to that healthy culture. I actually am a volunteer for the Alzheimer Society in a couple of roles and I've been really impressed about the strong presence that safeguarding has across all of their training, in their messaging. It's everywhere and I think it like what you said and how you transitioned your organization to sort of have that strong message. It's so important because you also feel protected as a volunteer, because you're also included in that safeguarding even though you may not identify as someone who's vulnerable. You know the organization has these in practices. They're going to look after the people and look after you as your volunteer.

Isabelle King:

I think that's a really good point, maddy, and actually one that I would go back and say. It is crucially important for organisations, whatever the size, to work together. So you know, you've been a volunteer in Alzheimer's. Many of those volunteers will work in many other different charities and it's really important that safeguarding standards are the same in all the organisations.

Isabelle King:

Okay, they might brand them differently, they might do things slightly differently, but it's very distressing for volunteers to go in one organisation where they do it one way, and then another organisation they do something else or, worse still, they don't do anything and the volunteer starts to assume this role based on what's happening in another organisation. I would say that when I was in this previous role, I set up a national safeguarding forum for leads who are, or heads of, or directors who are in large to medium-sized organisations, because it's a very lonely position and it's one of those areas where people sitting down and talking, as we are now, we're transferring so much information, experience and knowledge that there isn't a lot of places where you can go, where you can get that information, because it's so experiential. So a forum is a fantastic place and literally the forum grew from about 22 organisations initially to over 400 very, very quickly, because people started to realise actually it's easier if we work together and we can learn and grow together than working on our own.

Madison Clarke:

That's definitely a message I've had as well from safeguarding needs that I've worked with specifically in religious organisations how sometimes there isn't that knowledge sharing and therefore you're putting a lot of work in where there could be, you know, a framework or a practice already out there that you could use and share, and I think that's something that in probably all areas of safeguarding but I know specifically within faith communities, could really be improved upon having that knowledge sharing space. It be a forum, even a whatsapp group chat, just something where safeguarding leads can share knowledge. And thinking about faith communities, is there sort of any practical advice that you would offer them? Looking when faith communities are looking to strengthen their safeguarding frameworks through volunteer engagement, also keeping in mind that the approach needs to be inclusive and rigorous?

Isabelle King:

Well, I think if you've listened to the last well, to the previous podcast and this one, you'll realise quite quickly I'm massively pro-involving volunteers at every level of the organisation and I think it's absolutely critical that we do so. And one of the things that I've had many long and heated conversation with certain chief executives around. Safeguarding is not just a process in the corner of the organisation that you go and dust off every once in a while. In fact, I would say that you know some organisations still struggle with the difference between safeguarding and child protection, but that's for another day. What I would say is you need to see safeguarding as a whole. It's a foundation stone of your organisation and if you're working with children, young people or vulnerable adults and that's the core purpose of your organisation you should be able to see safeguarding in everything. So my practical advice would be I would always do.

Isabelle King:

Whenever I go into an organisation or whenever I decide as a trustee board or whatever, I would always say the most important thing is do a safeguarding review. Ask yourself is what we're doing working? Is it effective and, most importantly, how are we communicating this? So once you've done that and it needs to be robust so I would always say and not because I go in and deal with organisations as a consultant, I would also say I actually go in and I volunteer sometimes to do the work because they're so small. I feel also say I actually go in and I volunteer sometimes to do the work because they're so small. I feel as if I just need to give them a helping hand. It's always a good idea to bring someone in. It doesn't have to be paid. It could be a critical friend, it could be someone who's in an organisation that you partner with and you say to them look, can you just do a review? Because we can't see, because we're within the organisation. Obviously, how you do that and keep your confidentiality etc. Is important.

Isabelle King:

So what's happening now? Look at any near misses that you might have had. Talk to your partners about what do they do? What are the lessons learned? Most governments these days provide really good places. I know in England it's sorry. In the UK it's the NSPCC both England and Wales and NSPCC equivalent in Scotland and in Ireland. They do a lot around lessons learned. Talk to your staff, talk to the young people, talk to families. So a lot of talking, but every year to two years do this review really get a sense of what's happening?

Isabelle King:

Then start to look at your guidance and legal frameworks. It's amazing how they all sneak up. This year we've got the online safety actors coming in. We've got martin's law coming in la la la, loads, loads happening. Are you completely up to date? Do you need to go back through all your policies and check that they're all actually correct?

Isabelle King:

And I want you to start thinking about using things like a SWOT analysis or a PESTEL analysis. Now, a SWOT analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. So ask yourself what are the strengths of our organisation in safeguarding? What are our weaknesses or areas for improvement, because I don't like the word weaknesses. I like to talk about areas for improvement more positive. Think about the opportunities that are coming along and think about the threats that are coming along. Obviously, ai has got to be up there If you're not looking at AI now, you need to Okay.

Isabelle King:

So what does a PESTLE analysis stand for? And this sounds very businessy, sorry to Okay. So what does a PESTL analysis stand for? And this sounds very businessy. Sorry about that, maddy, but I think sometimes it's important to look at it through this lens. So PESTL stands for political. So what's happening politically in your country? What is happening economically, what's happening socially? They will also give you hints as to where your issues and problems are going to be moving forward in safeguarding, like deprivation, neglect, mental health abuse, alcoholism. But all of those things are the ones, the things that you're going to see Now.

Isabelle King:

Think about technology. Look at it positively. What is out there now that will help me identify? Do we, for example, need to link with other organisations in the area and share data? If so, you then need to look at that whole area of information sharing. Or are we saying that actually there's a threat from technology like AI potentially could be a threat? Certainly, there's been elements of that already. Think about any legal changes. I know in the UK they're talking the government's talking about making reporting mandatory. It might be that you're in a country where that already happens, but I know that certainly within the UK that's going to be quite interesting, particularly for volunteers. And I think, finally, the Eon Pestle stands for environmental, so you need to think about that as well. So that is a massive whistle-stop tour. I think through what I would do from a practical point of view I'd just reiterate mainly, don't see your workforce as paid and volunteers.

Isabelle King:

See them as one. It will be so much easier. Your focus is less about what the staff, what they can do, and not do, more about what needs to be done and what do you need to do to build into your organisation the ability to do it. Have, for example, have you got the right skills and the right experience in the right place for the needs? And after you've defined a framework, a safeguarding framework, go through it with a variety of different lenses. So, for example, go through safeguarding framework. Go through it with a variety of different lenses. So, for example, go through safeguarding procedures Are they fair? Are they inclusive? Are you providing staff from? Are you providing volunteers and staff who've got the correct sort of culture, competence that they need to do to be able to interact? And then check that it all hangs together by doing lots of scenarios in your training and I think those are the main things and constantly be open to challenge, because we are living in a very dynamic, fluid and challenging world.

Madison Clarke:

I love that. What a good note to end on. And I just want to also sort of go back to your point about the importance of reviews, and also not only internal reviews but having some form of external review, like you said, whether it's even a friend, you come in and check your procedures. And at Petros we actually offer a safeguarding self-assessment that lots of organisations use to review, sort of give an overview of their safeguarding not only their policies, but mostly their practices how actually is safeguarding happening within the organisation and what are people's perceptions of it. And that can be a really nice start to understand where you can improve your safeguarding, where there are those potential vulnerabilities I agree with you, I don't like the word weaknesses but potential areas for growth and improvement, because we all have them and we all need to stay open to improving our safeguarding and being challenged as well. So thank you so much, isabel, for your wonderful knowledge. It's been great to feel like I've learned so much and looking forward to catching up soon, my pleasure.

Madison Clarke:

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Faithful Safeguarding. We hope you found our discussion insightful and inspiring. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people dedicated to safeguarding of faith communities. If there is a person or organisation who you think would benefit from this episode, please hit the share button. For additional resources and information, visit our website at petrosorguk. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll continue to explore important safeguarding topics with leading experts. Until then, stay safe and keep making a difference.