The project
Who built Safe Spaces, the partner organisations, and how this Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership works.
find out moreThe toolkit
Thirty-two documents covering every dimension of safeguarding. Every one of them is a working document: open it, insert your organisation’s details, and use it.
Free to download, adapt and translate. No account needed.
Three things worth knowing
before you download anything
- 1.
Start with the Implementation Guide.
It is the map. It tells you what to open, when, and why — so that you are not reading thirty-two documents to find the two you need today.
- 2.
Most documents come in pairs.
One explains the thinking, the other does the work. The Risk Assessment Guide explains risk assessment; the Safeguarding Risk Assessment Tool is what you actually fill in. The DSL Responsibilities Guide explains the role; the DSL Appointment and Terms of Reference is what you sign.
- 3.
Anything in square brackets is yours to complete.
Names, dates, telephone numbers, your organisation’s details. A document with the brackets still in it is not finished, and a policy that names nobody is not a policy.
If you would rather be told what you need, answer three questions at Where do I begin?
How the documentsare organised
Every document has a letter and a number — F1, P3, R0, I4. The letter says which part of safeguarding it belongs to.
Five documents have no letter — the Implementation Guide, the Glossary, the Quick Reference Cards, the Country Legal Supplement and the Emergency Preparedness Guide. They sit across all six groups.
Where a document is numbered zero, it sits above the others in its group. The Safeguarding Policy Framework (F0) is the authority behind every other Foundations document. The Safeguarding Risk Assessment Tool (R0) is the instrument the whole Risk group serves.
F — Foundations
Your policy and standards: what your organisation commits to
P — People and roles
Who is responsible for what, and how they are appointed, trained and briefed
R — Risk and planning
Everything done before an activity, to stop harm happening
I — Incidents and response
Everything done after a concern arises
A — Activities and settings
Situations that change the risk picture: travel, residentials, online work
O — Organisations and partnerships
Working with others, handling data, and governing yourselves
Safeguarding Policy Framework (F0)
The document every other document answers to. It sets out the principles, definitions, legal context, roles and minimum standards for the whole framework — including the three-tier safeguarding lead model and how concerns are classified as Minor, Moderate or Major.
Use it when you need the reasoning behind a rule, or when you are adapting the toolkit to your own governance. Read by senior management, safeguarding leads and board members. It is not the document you hand to a new volunteer.
Safeguarding Policy (F1)
The core policy template for your organisation: your commitment, who it covers, what people must do, and how concerns are handled. Complete the bracketed sections, take it to your board, and adopt it.
Use it at the start, and review it every year. This is the document funders and National Agencies will ask to see.
Code of Conduct (F2)
The standards of behaviour everyone agrees to: staff, volunteers, trustees, mentors, trainers, contractors and partners. It is signed, not merely circulated, and a breach is a disciplinary matter.
Use it before anyone begins working with participants. Every new person signs a copy and keeps one.
Do No Harm and Non-Discrimination Statement (F3)
Your public commitment to work that does not cause unintended harm, treats everyone equally, and recognises power dynamics rather than pretending they do not exist.
Adopt it alongside your policy and publish it. It is short, but it is the statement participants and partners will judge you against.
Participant Safeguarding Card (F4)
Written for participants rather than for you: what a safe space is, what rights they have, what happens if they tell someone something, and who to talk to. Designed to become a leaflet, a poster, a digital card or a short video, and to be co-created with young people where possible.
Adapt it for every project, and give it to every participant in their own language before the project begins.
DSL Appointment and Terms of Reference (P1)
The paperwork that makes your Designated Safeguarding Lead official. It covers all three tiers, gives you the terms of reference for yours, and includes appointment letters for both the lead and the backup to sign.
Use it when you first appoint, and again whenever your lead or backup changes. Signed copies go into your safeguarding records.
DSL Responsibilities Guide (P2)
What the safeguarding lead actually does — and, just as usefully, what they do not do. It sets out the seven-step response to a concern: receive, assess immediate risk, log, classify, consult, act, then communicate and monitor.
Read it before taking up the role, then keep it to hand. Boards and partners should read the first section so they understand what they are asking of the person.
Staff and Volunteer Induction Pack (P3)
The minimum every person must know before working with participants: who does what, what a safeguarding concern is, how to receive one, and how to report it. It is proportionate — someone helping for a single afternoon receives a thirty-minute briefing, not the full pack.
Use it before anyone’s first contact with participants. It is not optional, and it is not a formality.
Safeguarding Training Plan and Record (P4)
Three parts: a matrix showing what training each role requires, an annual training plan, and individual training records.
Use it to see who still needs what, and to evidence training completion when a funder asks.
Board and Trustees Safeguarding Briefing (P5)
Written for people who are not safeguarding specialists but are accountable anyway. It covers the board’s core responsibilities, the questions to ask at every board meeting, what the annual review should contain, and what happens when things go wrong — including personal liability and the power of funders to reclaim grants.
Give it to every board member on appointment, and revisit it at the annual review.
Safeguarding Risk Assessment Tool (R0)
The main risk instrument, in three parts: participatory questions to use with your team and with young people, an internal risk register scoring likelihood against impact, and a section turning identified risks into an action plan with named owners.
Use it before every project, once a year for the organisation as a whole, and again after any incident.
Risk Assessment Guide (R1)
The short orientation that makes the tool above usable: what a safeguarding risk assessment is, when to do one, the five steps, and how it connects to everything else.
Read this first if you have never done a safeguarding risk assessment. Ten minutes, and the tool stops being intimidating.
Consent and Assent Forms (R2)
Four ready-to-use forms. Form A is parental or guardian consent for participants under 18. Form B is adult participant consent. Form C is photograph, video and media consent. Form D is medical and health information. All include the data protection wording.
Use them once you know who is taking part. Form C is the one most projects forget until the photographs are already online.
Child Protection Measures (R3)
The additional measures that apply whenever anyone under 18 takes part: consent, criminal record checks, supervision ratios, rules on one-to-one contact and communication, photography, and accommodation.
Use it alongside your policy and code of conduct for any activity involving children. The supervision ratios are the section people look up most often.
Safeguarding for Adult Participants at Risk (R4)
Adults are not children, but distance from home, economic dependency, disability, mental health, isolation and language barriers all raise risk. This explains how to identify that, how to hold a confidential needs assessment, and what to put in place afterwards.
Particularly relevant for European Solidarity Corps volunteers and long-term placements.
Safeguarding in Specific Contexts (R5)
Awareness-level guidance on four things international youth projects occasionally encounter: radicalisation, human trafficking, female genital mutilation and honour-based harm. For each: what it is, the warning signs, the referral route, and what not to do.
Your role in all four is to recognise and refer, never to investigate or intervene. Use it for team awareness before it is needed, not afterwards.
Incident Form and Log (I1)
Three parts with three different levels of access. Part A is the incident form, completed by whoever received the concern, within twenty-four hours. Part B is the case log, kept by the safeguarding lead. Part C links reference codes to real names, and is stored separately from both.
Use it the moment a concern is received. The three-part structure is what keeps your records lawful.
Safeguarding Reporting System (I2)
How to set up the channels through which concerns reach you: direct report to the safeguarding lead, a written incident form, a genuinely anonymous route, and emergency services. It also covers what to do when a concern arrives informally — a conversation in a corridor, a message late at night.
Set all four channels up before any project begins, not once one is running.
Response Flow Charts (I3)
Four charts for the four situations that actually occur: someone tells you something, you observe something, the concern involves a member of staff, or the concern arises during travel or at a partner’s site. Each gives the steps for the first critical minutes.
Print these, laminate them, and keep them visible — in the staff area, in the project folder, and at every residential.
Internal Investigation Guide (I4)
When an internal investigation is appropriate, how to run its stages, and — the section to read first — when you must not investigate internally at all, because a crime may have been committed or a statutory investigation is already under way.
For the safeguarding lead, after the decision on how to handle a concern has been taken. Most concerns never need this document.
Safe Travel, Transport and Accommodation (A1)
A checklist across three phases: before departure, in transit, and at the accommodation. Insurance, documents, medical information, the named first aider, emergency contacts, and who is reachable when.
Complete it before every trip. The pre-departure section doubles as your evidence that the trip was properly planned.
Safeguarding on Trips and Residentials (A2)
Overnight activities change the risk picture: less visibility, informal settings, unsupervised time. This covers supervision and the two-adult rule, overnight duty, curfews, room protocols and daily wellbeing check-ins.
Use it for any activity involving an overnight stay, alongside the travel protocol.
Safeguarding in Online and Hybrid Activities (A3)
Acceptable use, the pre-session checklist, ground rules agreed with participants, having a named moderator, session timing, media consent, and how to respond to a concern raised online.
Use it for any online or hybrid component — including the sessions people assume are too informal to need it.
Partnership Safeguarding Agreement (O1)
The minimum standards every partner commits to before any activity happens: shared principles, a named safeguarding contact in each organisation, reporting routes, and who leads the response when a concern arises at someone else’s site.
Sign it before activities begin, not afterwards. It does not replace each partner’s own policy; it makes sure a common floor exists.
Monitoring Safeguarding in Partnerships (O2)
A compliance checklist covering each partner against defined standards, together with a partnership incident log.
Use it at the start of the project, at the mid-point and at the end — not only when something has gone wrong.
GDPR and Safeguarding Data Handling (O3)
What counts as safeguarding data, why it is special category data, the lawful bases for processing it, who may access it, how long to keep it, and how to share it across organisations and borders.
Read it when setting up your records, and again before sharing anything with a partner or a statutory service in another country.
Annual Self-Assessment and Review (O4)
Twelve safeguarding standards, each rated Met, Partially met or Not met, with space for what is missing and what you will do about it, and a summary page for board sign-off.
Complete it once a year, before the board meeting.
Safe Spaces Implementation Guide
The navigator for the whole toolkit. It answers four questions: what do we need, in what order, who does it, and where do we find it. It includes the complete document reference, the eleven-step setup sequence, a pre-project checklist, and what to reach for when a concern arises.
Read this first. It is the shortest route to knowing which of the other thirty-one documents you actually need.
Glossary of Key Terms
Plain-language definitions of every term used across the toolkit, in alphabetical order, each pointing to the document where the concept is explained in full.
Keep it open beside whatever else you are reading, and share it with your team.
Quick Reference Cards
Three cards, one for each role. Card 1 is the safeguarding lead’s first hour. Card 2 is for staff and volunteers: listen, reassure, do not investigate, write it down, tell the lead. Card 3 is for participants.
Print all three, laminate them, and put them where people will see them. These are memory aids for moments when nobody is going to open a forty-page guide.
Country Legal Supplement
Safeguarding law differs in every country. This gives you the prompts to complete your own national section — child protection law, mandatory reporting, criminal record checks, referral routes, whistleblower protection — with worked examples for Romania, Lithuania and Belgium.
Complete it for your own country when you adopt the framework, and consult it before travelling or making a referral abroad. Laws change: check with a national adviser before finalising it.
Emergency Preparedness Guide
A standalone guide for participants and coordinators on international projects: what to pack in an emergency bag, what to do in the first seventy-two hours, response cards for specific emergencies, how 112 and EU-Alert work, and a pre-departure checklist.
Give it to participants before they travel. Print the response cards and keep them with the flow charts.
