Investigation

[natel]

At work I have been called into an investigation meeting. I have been told not to talk to colleagues. It is said the Code of Conduct has been breached and a number of people will be spoken to about a safeguarding issue.

At work I usually pick up the team emails and do the Safeguarding referrals. It is not actually my role to do safeguarding referrals this but when all my team left new members of staff were lazy and reluctant to do referrals even though it was their job to do it. So I picked it up so it’s not missed.

Someone has blamed me and said as I monitor the team inbox a referral that needed to be done has been missed. We all get the emails sent to us. I had done the safeguarding referral for the child in question a few months ago and social services told my higher level colleague who manages the cases that they closed it down so my colleague closed the case down.

The same enquiry come through again months later. The customer services team sent an email through while our team was at a Staff Way Day all afternoon. The Code of Conduct says it’s everyone’s responsibility to handle Safeguarding so why the person who knew we were off for the afternoon did not deal with and has got out of being investigated I don’t know. The next day I had to get through backlog of work as I had been behind with my work.

I assumed the higher level person’s who job it is would deal with it as I thought the case was still open and they knew all the history after investigation. I didn’t know they closed the case as social services closed it down before and my colleague had all the information they should have dealt with it. I know I should have checked to see who was picking it up.

The Safeguarding procedure doesn't actually say whose role it is to do referrals. I am stressed out as the Code of Conduct says they can take disciplinary action against people who don’t follow procedures.

Do you mean because it came through again you assumed it must still be open and was being dealt with?

To be honest the wider issue here is that there's no specification about who monitors these. This is about processes not being set up properly and hopefully this can now get rectified.

I completely agree. It’s always seems to be where everyone seems to pass the buck and expect someone else to deal with it. There is no set written procedure and just a flow chart of what happens when a report comes in but doesn’t specify if it is when it initially comes in or when someone just decides to pass it on to another team.

Agree, the outcome of the investigation must be that the policy is re-drafted to clarify exactly who is responsible for which tasks.
You aren't the safeguarding lead I assume?
I would just very clearly explain the exact facts on what actions you took each time.

It's likely you may be asked 'Why did you do it (subtext: if it should have been someone else's job)?'
It may be useful to prepare a good answer to that. I was asked this when circulating a choice of meeting dates to a large group even though it should have come from another source. There was often very little chance of getting anything for a long time if it wasn't done smartly. Seemed inconsequential but an investigation probed quite deeply about it, so there may have been more to it.

I’m not the Safeguarding lead and lower down a few ranks. I’m just shocked I was dragged into all
of this. I go above and beyond my job role as it is. I will just state the facts.

I will have to tell the meeting person I only did the referrals because the people responsible for doing them ignored them and it’s not right to ignore something urgent. I think my team have always been too heavily reliant on me and now this new manager above my manager has decided to try and put part of the blame on me.

Did you ever raise that no one was doing it, or did you just start doing it without saying anything?

I did with my former line manager but he was very unprofessional and ignored my concerns. He always used my one to one to moan about the company. He handed his notice in not long after as the company realised he wasn’t following procedures.

Did you raise it with anyone else? And how long ago was this?