SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN
Advice for Children & Young People
Find help here if you are worried about yourself or someone else.
All children and young people have the right to be safe from abuse. Safeguarding is about taking action to make sure that you can grow up safely.
Abuse is anything another person does that’s meant to cause harm. It’s not always easy to know what’s abuse or what to do about it. Abuse might include:
- When someone always puts you down, shouts at you or makes you feel bad
- When someone hurts you on purpose
- When someone forces, tricks or pressures you to do something sexual
- When you’re not getting the important things you need at home like food, clean clothes or protection from danger
Where to get help
If you are worried about yourself or someone else, there are lots of places to get help and advice:
• Speak to an adult you trust such as your teacher, youth worker or sports coach
• Childline or call 0800 1111
• YES Project or call 0800 7350010
• Children’s Commissioner for Jersey or call 01534 867310
• Kooth
• Children and Families Hub or call 01534 519000
• Call the police if you or someone you know is in immediate danger on 01534 612612 (or 999 in emergencies)
Recognising and Reporting Abuse
Child abuse can take many forms:
Physical Abuse
This includes hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating, or otherwise causing physical harm to a child. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent fabricates the symptoms of, or deliberately induces illness in a child.
Sexual Abuse
This includes forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities, not necessarily involving a high level of violence, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including assault by penetration (eg rape or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts such as masturbation, kissing, rubbing and touching outside of clothing. Sexual abuse includes non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, including online and with mobile phones, or in the production of, pornographic materials, watching sexual activities or encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways or grooming a child in preparation for abuse (including via the internet). Sexual abuse is not solely perpetrated by adult males. Women can also commit acts of sexual abuse, as can other children. In addition, sexual abuse includes abuse of children through sexual exploitation.
Emotional Abuse
Emotional abuse is the persistent emotional maltreatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent effects on the child’s emotional development, and may involve:
- Conveying to children that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person
- Imposing age or developmentally inappropriate expectations on children. These may include interactions that are beyond the child’s developmental capability, as well as overprotection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction
- Seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another eg where there is domestic violence and abuse
- Serious bullying, causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger
- Exploiting and corrupting children.
Neglect
Neglect is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance misuse, maternal mental ill health or learning difficulties or a cluster of such issues. Where there is domestic abuse and violence towards a carer, the needs of the child may be neglected.