Child safety information for parents

Keeping girls safe is at the heart of everything we do in Girlguiding

You can rest assured that when you wave your daughter off to a camping trip or her weekly meeting, she’s in safe hands.

Girlguiding has an excellent reputation for keeping girls safe that comes from carefully checking our volunteers and following some good practice procedures.

We check our volunteers

We carry out compulsory recruitment checks for leaders, assistant leaders and residential helpers who work directly with our young members. This process includes:

• a criminal record check known as a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check
• two personal references
• a discussion between the potential volunteer and a senior volunteer who is responsible for the management of adult volunteers.

Volunteers are only accepted into Girlguiding if they pass our checks.

We follow a Code of Conduct

We expect all adults in Girlguiding to follow our Code of Conduct, whatever they do. This is a promise that all volunteers make to keep our membership safe and to act as a role model for girls and young women.

We carefully train our volunteers

As part of their Leadership Qualification, all our adult leaders and assistant leaders are trained about safety and safeguarding including how to carry out risk assessments, respond in emergencies and handle child protection concerns.

We keep girls safe in and outside of the meeting place

We make sure there are enough adults to look after girls while they’re doing activities. We carry out risk assessments in the meeting place and on trips and residentials, to make sure we’re as safe as possible.

All adventurous activities – such as climbing, abseiling or kayaking – are run by qualified instructors. And volunteers also have to do a qualification before they take girls away for a residential trip.

We keep girls safe online

Girlguiding has its own digital safeguarding policy. We also monitor our social media channels and respond quickly to questions and concerns. We get our Safeguarding team involved immediately if there’s a problem.

If you have concerns

If you are unhappy with anything about your daughter’s participation in guiding, please talk it through with her leader so that the situation can be resolved as quickly as possible.

If you feel unable to raise your concerns with her leader, you can contact the local Commissioner in your area, use our online form or email the County Commissioner for Girlguiding Kent Weald County at countycommissioner@girlguidingkentweald.org.uk.