Keeping the children we work with safe

Who may work with our learners

Every adult who works with a child in our programmes is screened against the National Child Protection Register through a SAPS police clearance, and completes a two-hour safeguarding induction before their first session. We apply for the clearance on the volunteer’s behalf.

This is enforced by the system, not by memory. A mentor cannot be assigned to a learner unless their clearance is recorded as current — an expired clearance blocks the assignment outright, and clearances are checked against today’s date every night so that a lapse is visible the morning it happens rather than at the next audit.

How a concern is handled

Any mentor or staff member can flag a concern about a learner from their own screen. When they do, three things happen:

1. The concern is routed to whoever is competent to act on it — a mentoring matter to the mentor lead, an attendance or transport matter to the programme manager, and anything touching a child’s wellbeing, home or safety straight to our designated safeguarding lead.
2. It becomes invisible to the parent and the learner, and to the mentor who raised it. Only the designated safeguarding lead can read it. That is not secrecy for its own sake: a concern may be about an adult in the child’s life, and it has to be able to reach somebody who is not that adult.
3. It cannot silently stop. If a concern cannot be routed to anybody, the system refuses to save the note at all and tells the person reporting it to phone instead. A concern that looked filed but reached nobody would be the worst failure we could have, so we made it impossible rather than unlikely.

Our designated safeguarding lead is not a programme staff member, and there is exactly one of them — the system will not allow a second, so there is never any doubt about who is responsible.

Learners talking to each other

Our app has a study-buddy feature, because working with somebody helps. It also has three rules built into it:

• A learner can request a study buddy. Only a mentor or a staff member can approve one.
• There is no private messaging between learners anywhere in the app. Not restricted, not moderated — it does not exist.
• Peer groups are created and approved by staff, and joining one is also approved rather than automatic.

Learners are shown to each other by first name, surname initial, grade and suburb — enough to recognise somebody from a Saturday session, and not enough to identify a stranger’s child.

What parents can always see

A parent or guardian can see their own child’s attendance, marks, badges, mentor notes and the permission forms awaiting their answer — and nothing about any other child. That boundary is resolved against the guardian record our staff created at enrolment, not against a claim made by the person signing in.

Photographs

We do not publish a learner’s photograph or name on this website. Learners appear on our Sponsor a Child page as a reference code only. Where we photograph an event for our own newsletter, we do so with written consent recorded against the child’s record, and that consent can be withdrawn at any time.

Reporting a concern

You do not have to be certain, and you do not have to be a parent. If something concerns you about a child in our programmes, tell us and let us look into it.

Related: our privacy policy, which sets out exactly what we hold about a learner and for how long.