Safeguarding and Child Protection

Our purpose is to improve the lives of young people through the provision of music activities. We pride ourselves on providing these activities in a warm, supportive, collaborative and safe environment. All our members, including staff, contractors and volunteers, understand this and we share a code of conduct to underpin it.

We recognise that many of the young people we work with may be vulnerable in some way. We all have a responsibility to safeguard the welfare of young people as best we can and to keep them safe.

Grounded Sounds has a comprehensive Child Protection Policy and set of Procedures, copies of which can be made available by request.

Specifically in relation to keeping young people safe, we expect all members:
● to be alert to any signs of abuse amongst any of our participants and, if any suspicions, to act accordingly
● to keep alert to any risks to the health and safety of participants and mitigate accordingly
● to ensure we always have an adequate level of adult supervision when handling groups of children (under 18-year-olds) – at least one adult per 8 children

We will always seek parental or guardian consent for participation in our activities if the participant is under 16. Often this will be through the school. We may also ask for consent if the participant is between 16-17 and we ensure that we have emergency contact details available for all participants in case of an incident. On no account will any member:
● take photos or videos involving children unless we have explicit parental/guardian consent
● initiate contact with an GS participant under 18 via social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)

Members will mainly communicate with GS participants using GS Gmail accounts, which can be monitored. For multi-participant projects (involving ages 16+) requiring shared communications, we may choose to use group WhatsApp and, occasionally, individual texts, phone calls or WhatsApp messages may need to be used. In all cases, messages are restricted to essential information sharing only.

If a GS participant under 18 contacts an SGS member personally via social media, then the participant will be told that this method of communication is inappropriate. If a text, phone message or email sent by a GS participant is deemed inappropriate they will be given immediate feedback.

We recognise that most often physical contact is an entirely natural and healthy way of showing empathy and support, and when this is the case, we consider it acceptable for GS members so long as others are around. However, we discourage GS members from any physical contact in circumstances where the GS member and a child (under 18) are alone without other adults around.