Unit 3: Prevention
3.7 Codes and standards
There is an expectation that all staff will adhere to certain standards of behaviour. These standards should be laid down in every organisation’s Code of Conduct.
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Recruitment needs to be backed-up by safe working practices and an expectation that all staff will adhere to certain standards of behaviour. Collectively, these will normally be enshrined in a ‘Code of Conduct’ which everyone in the agency must sign up to.
In this section, you will explore why establishing such working practices are important, be introduced to international standards and consider how these issues can be made relevant to your own organisation.
Why do we need rules around behaviour?
To understand why such rules are so essential it is important to understand the behaviour of those who will be looking to take advantage of any weakness in your organisation’s safeguarding cycle.
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Activity 3.6 Why do we need a code of conduct? After reading the transcript below, consider the following questions. Reflect and record your answers in your learning journal:
Tim: “I volunteered to help out with the disabled kids in this project I know… it’s usually really easy to get at these types of kids because you can touch them and be pretty confident that they can’t speak out. It turned out though this set up had some kind of code of conduct with all these rules about what I could and couldn’t do and how I should behave. Worse still, when I eventually got into the project, they never left me alone with them, not even for a minute. Although none of the children could speak, the staff had this way of communicating with them to check they were OK. I left there pretty quickly. I’ll find somewhere else that doesn’t have all these rules, you know… it should be easy.” |
Want to find out more?
For further examples of Codes of Conduct, follow the links below: