Child Protection Procedures

The procedures of the British and International Federation of Festivals, adopted by this festival. They apply to everyone working with children at the festival, paid or unpaid.

Looking to report a concern? Everything you need is on the safeguarding page, including who to contact at Cheltenham and how to reach the council directly.

If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.

On this page

Purpose and aim of these procedures

These procedures apply to all staff and volunteers working with children, in whatever capacity or setting at our festivals, either paid or unpaid.

BIFF and our member festivals are committed to promoting the welfare of children and young people and keeping them safe. We are also committed to equality, valuing diversity and working inclusively across all our activities.

We aim to ensure those children who attend our festivals, and any other children who may come to our attention, receive the protection and support they need if they are at risk of abuse.

These procedures give clear direction to all staff and volunteers at BIFF member festival events on how to provide safe environments for the children and young people attending and performing at our member festivals. They also explain how to respond if they have concerns that a child needs protection or concerns about the conduct of a member of staff or volunteer.

Roles and responsibilities

Child protection is everybody’s business. All staff and volunteers working at our festivals need to have an awareness of our policies and procedures and to understand their responsibilities to safeguard children and young people.

The best practice advice provided in BIFF’s Safe Working Practice and Festival Child Protection leaflets must always be followed.

Each of our festivals carries responsibility for safeguarding at their own events and will appoint at least one Festival Safeguarding Officer to take a lead role in this. The responsibility for safeguarding within BIFF lies with our board of trustees and their appointed Head of Safeguarding.

Head of Safeguarding

The role takes the lead in ensuring the best, most up to date safeguarding guidance and practice is available to all staff and volunteers of BIFF and its member festivals. Duties are to:

  1. Provide best practice guidance to all member festivals to ensure compliance with BIFF’s child protection policy and procedures.
  2. Promote our child protection policy and procedures to all participants at BIFF member festival events, being performers, teachers, parents, guardians, carers, staff, volunteers and audience members, and to the general public through the BIFF website.
  3. Provide support, guidance and training to all Festival Safeguarding Officers as required.
  4. Manage any allegations raised against festival staff or volunteers.
  5. Receive completed copies of the festival’s Reporting Concerns Form from Festival Safeguarding Officers and, after discussion with the relevant officer, refer these concerns to statutory child protection agencies if appropriate.
  6. Provide regular safeguarding reports to the board of trustees.
  7. Annually review the child protection policy and procedures and redistribute updates as required.

Festival Safeguarding Officer

Each individual festival must appoint at least one Festival Safeguarding Officer to take the lead role in ensuring that appropriate arrangements are in place for keeping children and young people safe when attending and performing at BIFF member festival events. Duties are to:

  1. Make sure that the festival adopts BIFF’s child protection policy and procedures, including compliance with child licensing regulations.
  2. Incorporate BIFF’s recommended best practice into local festival procedures.
  3. Ensure that all staff and volunteers working at the festival understand their responsibilities to safeguard children and young people and have received a copy of the latest Safe Working Practice and Festival Child Protection leaflets from BIFF, including an explanation of how to recognise signs of abuse and what they should do if they have a concern about a child or about the behaviour of an adult.
  4. Ensure all issues concerning the safety and welfare of children and young people who attend the festival are properly dealt with in accordance with the child protection policy and procedures.
  5. Make sure that all participants at the festival know who the Festival Safeguarding Officer is and how to contact them.

Recruitment and induction

We recruit and induct our staff and volunteers by:

  1. Highlighting the organisation’s commitment to safeguarding when advertising any work or volunteering opportunities.
  2. Providing an application pack with relevant information for anybody who expresses an interest in the opportunity.
  3. Ensuring that all applications for both paid and volunteer positions are made using our Federation of Festivals application form for recruiting staff or volunteers.
  4. Conducting a formal face-to-face interview with anyone we may want to recruit.
  5. Obtaining two references and two pieces of ID from candidates.
  6. Using a self-disclosure form where appropriate.
  7. Carrying out the required Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) or other national equivalent checks for candidates in line with DBS and national guidelines.
  8. Ensuring that all new staff and volunteers are made aware, during their induction period, of how to keep children and young people safe at BIFF member festival events.

All new staff and volunteers will receive a copy of the latest Safe Working Practice and Festival Child Protection leaflets from BIFF with an explanation of how to recognise signs of abuse and what they should do if they have a concern about a child or the conduct of a staff member or volunteer.

What is child abuse

Child abuse is the term used when an adult harms a child or a young person under the age of 18. There are four main kinds of abuse, all of which can cause long term damage to a child.

Physical abuse

This may involve hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating or otherwise causing physical harm to a child. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of, or deliberately induces, illness in a child.

Emotional abuse

This is the persistent emotional maltreatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent adverse effects on the child’s emotional development. It may involve conveying to children that they are worthless and unloved, inadequate or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person.

It may include not giving the child opportunities to express their views, deliberately silencing them or making fun of what they say or how they communicate. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children. These may include interactions that are beyond the child’s developmental capability, as well as overprotection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction. It may involve seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another.

It may involve serious bullying, including cyber bullying, causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger, or the exploitation or corruption of children. Some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, though it may occur alone.

Neglect

This is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse.

Once a child is born it may involve a parent or carer failing to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter, including exclusion from home or abandonment, failure to protect a child from physical harm or danger, failure to ensure adequate supervision, including the use of adequate care takers, or the failure to ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment. It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.

Sexual abuse

This involves forcing or enticing a child or children to take part in sexual activities, not necessarily involving a high level of violence, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening.

The activities may involve physical contact, including assault by penetration or non-penetrative acts. They may also include non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of, pornographic material or watching sexual activities, or encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways, or grooming a child in preparation for abuse, including via the internet.

Sexual abuse is not solely perpetrated by adult males. Women can also commit acts of sexual abuse, as can other children.

Staff and volunteers should, in addition, be aware of new and emerging methods of abuse such as sexual exploitation, child trafficking and abuse linked to culture or belief. Bullying and different types of discrimination are also forms of child abuse. Like other kinds of abuse, they can harm a child physically and emotionally.

How to recognise abuse

Signs of abuse may be obvious and sudden:

  • an injury
  • a child tells you they have been ill-treated
  • a child is showing concern about the way an adult is behaving towards them
  • a child tells you about another child who is being mistreated
  • an adult tells you they are concerned about the abuse of a child.

Or they may be more subtle and part of a bigger picture:

  • a child who is regularly dirty, unsuitably clothed or hungry
  • a child who is showing unusual behaviour for their age
  • a child who is isolated, distressed or angry.

Reporting an allegation or concern

If you have concerns about a child you must:

  • report any concern about the safety of a child immediately to your Festival Safeguarding Officer
  • record what has been noticed or said on the festival’s Reporting Concerns Form, then sign and date the form and give it to your Festival Safeguarding Officer
  • keep what has happened confidential to as few people as possible who need to know
  • be aware that it is not your role to investigate or talk to any parents or carers that may be involved.

If a child tells you about abuse

You must:

  • treat what the child tells you seriously
  • reassure the child they have done the right thing by telling you
  • not question the child or put words in their mouth
  • not promise to keep what they have said a secret
  • tell the child you will have to pass on what they have said
  • not speak to the child’s parents
  • immediately report the information to the Festival Safeguarding Officer
  • record what the child has said in their own words as far as possible on the festival’s Reporting Concerns Form, then sign it, date it and give it to your Festival Safeguarding Officer.

What happens next

  • The Festival Safeguarding Officer will decide whether to refer the matter to Children’s Social Care or the Local Authority Designated Officer, and will make the referral if that is the decision.
  • The social work team or local authority will then decide on further action.
  • The Festival Safeguarding Officer should let you have some feedback.
  • If you feel you cannot report the concern to the Festival Safeguarding Officer, you must still take action. Report your concerns directly to Gloucestershire County Council’s Local Authority Designated Officer.
  • The Local Authority Designated Officer is also available to advise the Festival Safeguarding Officer.

If you have concerns about the conduct of a member of staff or volunteer

You must:

  • report any concern that a member of staff or volunteer may be a risk to children to Gloucestershire County Council’s Local Authority Designated Officer
  • be aware that this applies whoever the concern is about, including the Festival Safeguarding Officer, a trustee or the festival chair. You do not need anyone’s permission and you do not have to raise it inside the festival first.

The Reporting Concerns Form

  • Use the Reporting Concerns Form to record any concern and how it is dealt with. The relevant sections of the form should be completed and signed at each stage of the procedure. It can be used to forward information to the Local Authority Designated Officer and other statutory child protection authorities where necessary.
  • The form should be signed and dated by all those involved in its completion and kept confidentially. The name of the person making the notes should be written alongside each entry.

Helping a child in immediate danger or in need of emergency medical attention

In an urgent situation you may initiate contact to prevent an accident or harm to a child.

  • If the child is in immediate danger and is with you, remain with them and call the police.
  • If the child is elsewhere, contact the police and explain the situation to them.
  • If they need emergency medical attention, call an ambulance and, while you are waiting for it to arrive, get help from the festival’s first aider.
  • If the first aider is not available, use any first aid knowledge that you may have yourself to help the child.

Once any immediate danger or emergency medical need has been dealt with, you must contact the Festival Safeguarding Officer to let them know what is happening and to report any child protection concerns that may be related to the incident. The officer will then refer on to the Local Authority Designated Officer or other statutory child protection agencies as appropriate.

When to involve the Local Authority Designated Officer

The Festival Safeguarding Officer should report the allegation to Gloucestershire County Council’s Local Authority Designated Officer within one working day if the alleged behaviour suggests that the person in question:

  • may have behaved in a way that has harmed or may have harmed a child
  • has possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child, or has behaved towards a child in a way that suggests they may be unsuitable to work with children.

Useful contacts

Each Festival Safeguarding Officer keeps these contacts available during all festival events.

Festival Safeguarding Officer Lesley Hendrie, safeguarding@cfpa.org.uk
Local Authority Designated Officer Gloucestershire County Council, 01452 426994, amadmin@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Children’s social care Gloucestershire Front Door, 01452 426565
Police 101, or 999 in an emergency

Related documents

Published by the British and International Federation of Festivals, April 2026, and adopted by the Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts. If you need these procedures in another format, email info@cfpa.org.uk and we will send it.