Managing Allegations

Overview

Allegations or concerns about adults who work with children require careful, timely, and proportionate responses. Organisations must protect children while ensuring concerns are managed fairly, information is shared appropriately, and safeguarding, employment, regulatory, and multi-agency responsibilities are understood.

📅 Date & Time: 18th September, 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
📍 Live Online via Teams
📢 Early Bird Price: £54 (VAT included) – Register 2+ weeks before
🎟️ Standard Price: £74 (VAT included) – Group Discount available for groups of 5+

This practical course explores how allegations against staff, carers, volunteers, and other adults working with children should be identified, reported, managed, and reviewed. It helps participants understand the distinction between an allegation, a safeguarding concern, a complaint, and a conduct or performance issue, and considers when involvement from the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) is required.

The course supports managers and safeguarding professionals to respond confidently from the point a concern is raised through to investigation, outcome, learning, and organisational improvement.

Course Content

The course explores the principles and processes involved in managing allegations and concerns about adults who work with children.

Key areas include:

• Understanding what constitutes an allegation against a person working with children.
• Recognising the thresholds for referral and consultation with the LADO.
• Distinguishing allegations from complaints, conduct concerns, performance issues, and wider safeguarding concerns.
• Responding appropriately when an allegation or concern is first raised.
• Immediate safeguarding and risk management considerations.
• The role of the LADO and the allegations management process.
• Roles and responsibilities of employers, safeguarding partners, police, regulators, and other agencies.
• Managing information sharing and confidentiality.
• Recording decisions, actions, and professional rationale.
• Understanding the relationship between safeguarding and internal employment processes.
• Managing allegations where the evidence or circumstances are unclear.
• Supporting children, staff, and others affected by an allegation.
• Understanding possible outcomes and next steps.
• Learning from allegations to strengthen organisational safeguarding.

The session also explores common mistakes in allegations management and how organisations can develop systems and cultures that enable concerns to be identified, reported, and responded to appropriately.

Practice Application

Through scenarios, discussion, and practical examples, participants will consider how allegations management operates in real situations.

Participants will explore how to:

• Identify whether information may meet the threshold for an allegation.
• Decide when LADO consultation or referral should be considered.
• Take proportionate immediate action while further information is established.
• Avoid undertaking inappropriate internal investigations before safeguarding processes have been agreed.
• Record concerns, decisions, rationale, and actions clearly.
• Manage communication and confidentiality appropriately.
• Coordinate safeguarding processes with disciplinary or employment procedures.
• Respond when allegations involve senior managers or organisational leaders.
• Maintain appropriate support for the child and the adult concerned.
• Use the outcome of allegations to inform supervision, risk management, policy, training, and organisational learning.

The course encourages participants to work through the complexities and professional judgement involved rather than approaching allegations management as a simple procedural checklist.

Regulatory and Professional Context

Managing allegations forms an important part of organisational safeguarding and safer workforce practice.

The course considers the expectations within statutory safeguarding arrangements for responding to allegations concerning people who work with children, including the role of the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) and effective multi-agency working.

The session also considers the relevance of allegations management across regulated children’s social care services, including Children’s Homes, Supported Accommodation, and Fostering Services, alongside wider organisations and services where adults work or volunteer with children.

Participants will consider the relationship between allegations management, safer recruitment, safeguarding policies, whistleblowing, staff conduct, disciplinary procedures, referrals to relevant professional or regulatory bodies, and organisational governance.

A central theme throughout the course is achieving an appropriate balance between protecting children, ensuring procedural fairness, and maintaining effective organisational safeguarding.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Understand what constitutes an allegation or concern about an adult working with children.
• Recognise the thresholds for LADO consultation and referral.
• Distinguish safeguarding allegations from complaints, performance concerns, and other employment matters.
• Respond appropriately when an allegation is first identified.
• Understand the roles and responsibilities of the LADO, employer, and other relevant agencies.
• Apply appropriate safeguarding and risk management measures while allegations are considered.
• Understand the relationship between safeguarding investigations and employment processes.
• Improve the quality of recording, information sharing, and professional decision-making.
• Recognise common mistakes that can undermine effective allegations management.
• Use learning from allegations to strengthen organisational safeguarding practice and culture.

Intended Audience

This course is suitable for professionals with responsibility for safeguarding, staff management, governance, or responding to concerns about adults working with children.

It is particularly relevant for Registered Managers, Responsible Individuals, Nominated Individuals, Designated Safeguarding Leads, Deputy Managers, Service Managers, Fostering Managers, Supervising Social Workers, HR professionals, senior leaders, safeguarding professionals, and others responsible for managing allegations or making referrals to the LADO.

It is relevant across children’s social care and other organisations where professionals, carers, or volunteers work with children and young people.

Course Facilitator

Andrea Garcia-Sangil is a highly regarded safeguarding leader with more than two decades of leadership experience across a wide range of organisations. She has developed a strong reputation for supporting organisations to create safe and inclusive environments for children and for embedding safeguarding into organisational culture.

Andrea served as a Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) for more than 10 years, overseeing the management of allegations and leading national and local initiatives designed to strengthen safeguarding practice. She has also worked for both a regulatory body and a national governing body, conducting safeguarding investigations and risk assessments. This combination of experience gives Andrea a detailed understanding of allegations management, regulatory expectations, organisational safeguarding, and effective partnership working.

Andrea was part of the task team that developed the LADO Handbook with the Department for Education in 2023 and has contributed to national work aimed at strengthening safeguarding referrals and Position of Trust protections. She has also undertaken safeguarding reviews and scrutiny work during particularly challenging periods for organisations.

Her approach emphasises the importance of balancing doing things right with doing the right thing, supporting organisations to move beyond minimum compliance towards strong, confident, and embedded safeguarding practice.

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