Child Protection

Artzone Child Protection Policy

While there are many aspects to providing visual art education services, the most important objective for everyone involved in your franchised Artzone™ business must be the successful delivery of our education model while assuring the safety, protection and care of your students, staff and parents alike.

At Artzone™, we have developed and put in place a number of key policies, procedures and objectives to enable us to achieve this critical objective. Our approach to child safety, protection and care has been strongly informed by the following key documents:

  • Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People in the Arts Sector, published by the Arts Council
  • Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children, published by the Department of Health and Children.
  • The Church of Ireland Code of Good Practice for Ministry with Children, approved by the Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, September 2007.
  • The Arts Council Child Photography Guidelines, published by the Arts Council.

Artzone™ is committed to a child-centred approach to our work with children. We undertake to provide a safe environment and experience, where the welfare of the child is paramount. We primarily adhere to the recommendations of Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children, published by the Department of Health and Children.

As trained and qualified teachers, we build child protection and safety measures into everything we do.  To upgrade our policies and processes in respect of child protection, we have specifically implemented procedures covering:

  • Code of behaviour for all staff.
  • Reporting of suspected or disclosed abuse.
  • A confidentiality statement.
  • Best practice in recruitment and selecting staff.
  • Additional processes for managing and supervising staff.
  • Built in involvement of parents/primary carers.
  • Processes to handle allegations of misconduct or abuse by staff or
  • More accessible complaints and comments facilities.
  • Incident and accident reporting forms and processes.

This policy is reviewed annually by no later than 31 October. The procedures outlined below specify how to report child protection issues to the designated person within the franchised business and details of the panel at our Franchise Support Office that will review and monitor any incident.