Collaborative safeguarding and gas safety services

The project will look to collaborate with the NSPCC with GDN's - Cadent, Wales and West, SGN and NGN to ensure the safety and well being of children and their families that are reached via this project.

This will be done through 3 sub-projects. The first will tackle carbon monoxide risks and provide fuel poverty support. This will be done through:

• Sharing information about carbon monoxide risks and fuel poverty support through the wide reach of the NSPCC's family and GCP2 programmes and its integration into various services and tools. This will provide benefit to the customers reached via this sub-project through increasing awareness on the CO dangers, signs, symptoms and preventative measures.
• Providing access to free carbon monoxide detectors for families identified through the NSPCC and GCP2 programmes. This will provide additional protection to at risk families supported through the project that are unable to purchase an alarm through their own means.
• Creating a training video of carbon monoxide risks for the relevant NSPCC employees, giving them a deeper understanding of the issue and allowing the support they offer to be more effective. This will ultimately ensure that NSPCC practitioners are vigilant to the signs of CO when supporting families across all networks.

The second will provide access to training to 18,635 GDN staff to increase their awareness on spotting the signs of child neglect/abuse. This will be done through:

• Educating all engineers, sub-contractors and contact centre employees via NSPCC e-learning to recognise and report signs of possible abuse and neglect. This will give GDN staff the confidence to report instances of concern and will ultimately provide greater support to children and families across all networks.

The third sub-project will involve implementing safeguarding standards across the GDNs. This will be done through:

• Working with each GDN to develop safeguarding standards and provide bespoke training for staff in the designated safeguarding roles. This will ultimately provide benefit to customers through ensuring GDNs are equipped to manage instances of child neglect and/or abuse that they come across in their BAU roles throughout GD2.