BBC committed to protecting and safeguarding children
Today, the conclusions of GoodCorporation’s review into the BBC’s child protection and whistleblowing policies are being published.
Published: 14 July 2015
The BBC has a clear understanding of what needs to be done to keep children safe; their chaperoning systems in particular would be considered best practice.
The objective of the GoodCorporation review was to evaluate policies and procedures sufficiently to be able to help the BBC to identify areas of strength and areas for action.
Overall, the conclusions of the review are positive and no serious weaknesses are raised in the report.
The report finds that the BBC has strong child protection policies in place and that considerable effort has been made to improve them, stating: “there is a clear commitment and recognition of the importance of child protection and safeguarding in the BBC”.
GoodCorporation’s child protection specialist, Moira Murray, says: “Overall we were impressed with the Corporation’s recognition of the importance of child protection and safeguarding. The BBC has a clear understanding of what needs to be done to keep children safe; their chaperoning systems in particular would be considered best practice. Inevitably, a detailed review such as this will produce recommendations and these centre on ways in which the Corporation can strengthen their systems still further.”
The review produced detailed and actionable recommendations for the BBC. Child protection policies were tested and examined against a total of 49 criteria, while whistleblowing policies were reviewed against another 25.
The report outlines steps for the BBC to take in order to reinforce our current good practice in three key areas:
- reinforcement of existing policies and essential processes, like child chaperoning a key protection, through enhanced communication and tighter documentation
- enhancements to the consistency of application of existing policies and processes
- some changes to formal reporting lines and to external reporting
The BBC has already taken forward many of these recommendations and their implementation has already been internally audited and rated positively.
The BBC’s whistleblowing policy was also benchmarked externally and was ranked 12th in a list of 40 organisations.
In addition the BBC will use future Annual Report and Accounts to ensure appropriate reporting of whistleblowing statistics are published. These steps will ensure employees and stakeholders feel secure that concerns are appropriately handled.
Responding to the Review, BBC Director of Finance and Operations, Anne Bulford says: “Child welfare is vitally important to everyone at the BBC and events of the past can never happen again. We want to make sure that all our processes are as robust as possible which is why we commissioned this review. We welcome the findings that have enabled us to strengthen our processes even further, to make sure we are doing all we can do to protect children. The vast majority of recommendations have already been completed and we will never get complacent.”
Notes to Editor
In light of the changes to the Dame Janet Smith Review publication timetable at the request of Police, the BBC decided in March 2014 to undertake an independent assessment of its current child protection and whistleblowing policies, rather than wait further.
GoodCorporation is a leading company in the field of business ethics and compliance with over 15 years’ experience of testing the strength and effectiveness of management practices and procedures.
BBC Press Office
