Trustees of charities which work with children and vulnerable adults have a duty of care to their charity which will include taking the necessary steps to safeguard and take responsibility for those children and vulnerable adults. They must always act in their best interests and ensure they take all reasonable steps to prevent harm to them. Trustees also have duties to manage risk and to protect the reputation and assets of their charity.

The Commission is not responsible for safeguarding matters or dealing with incidents of actual abuse and we do not administer the legislation on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. However, as the regulator of charities, we aim to ensure that the trustees of charities which work with or provide services to vulnerable beneficiaries comply with their duties as trustees, protect beneficiaries as best they can and minimise the risk of abuse. Our strategy - Dealing with safeguarding children and vulnerable adults issues in charities (also in summary form) sets out our role and approach in dealing with safeguarding issues connected with charities.

Links to some of our key guidance on protecting vulnerable beneficiaries

• Safeguarding Children - Protecting Children in your Organisation
• Reporting Serious Incidents - guidance for trustees
• The Essential Trustee: what you need to know (CC3)
• Registering a Charity (CC21) (in particular the section on vetting and trustee eligibility checks)
• Finding new trustees - what charities need to know (CC30)
• Guidance on registering a new charity - finding trustees

External sources of advice and information

We are not experts in child or adult safeguarding/ protection and cannot provide specialist advice to charities in this area. However, there are a wide range of other sources of information and advice available. Our guidance Safeguarding Children provides links to external expert advice.

Disclosure and Barring Service: Under the provisions of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) has now been established. This new, non-departmental public body merges the services of the Independent Safeguarding Authority and the Criminal Records Bureau. Further information can be found on the Disclosure and Barring Service website.

Safe Network, a partnership between the NSPCC, Children England and the Child Accident Prevention Trust, provides child safeguarding advice, information and resources to the voluntary and community sector in England.