The 2008 Statutory Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is underpinned by the positive outcomes of Every Child Matters and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (UN,1989) which places a duty of care on Early Years Practitioners and Managers to Safeguard children and young people and promote their welfare. This is evident in raising a CAF on a child due to observations in setting then working as part of a mulit agency team that acknowledges if children and families' health and wellbeing are affected they may not have the emotional and physical health to learn.
Safeguarding children is a social priority and underpins every aspect of our setting's policy, planning and curriculum. In the last year our setting has developed practices to include ways of prompting the importance of safeguarding through including policy discussion as an agenda item at meetings, devised a policy questionnaire in the setting induction procedure so we can assess the practitioners awareness and understanding of our procedures, at planning meetings including discussion prompts for awareness of the signs and symptoms and now use long and medium term plans to look at ways to encourage an awareness of keeping safe from harm. This related directly to the statutory framework for the EYFS (DCSF 2008) and to the ECM (DFES, 2003) framework. We are working to develop communication with parents to include ways of promoting children's welfare and keeping them safe and healthy.
The Data Protection Act, 1998, sets out lawful boundaries for sharing information, so practitioners must record parental consent before sharing information in a CAF, or any other document with other