Thirtyone:eight has been awarded the national quality standard for ‘outstanding’ helpline provision for both our Safeguarding and Disclosures Helplines for the second time. This national accreditation has been awarded by Helplines Partnership (the national body for helpline providers) and has been specifically developed for the helpline sector to recognise excellence and best practice in service delivery.
The Helplines Standard identifies the quality and practices that enable an organisation to deliver a helpline service which is ‘consistent, relevant to the needs of its stakeholders and effective in what it is trying to achieve’. In granting the award, Helplines Partnership said “We recognise your dedication to providing a high-quality service and best practice for the benefit of your callers, funders, staff and everyone impacted by your service. This is an important commitment to raising standards in the sector. Helplines Partnership would like to congratulate those involved."
Our Safeguarding Helpline is open to anyone, and provides a free advice and support for all safeguarding related concerns. We regularly receive over 500 calls and emails a month and this figure is increasing year on year. In a recent survey of our members our Safeguarding Helpline was voted the second most relevant service next to DBS checks, with over a half of our members saying they had called our helpline at least once in the previous 12 months. As one caller explained, “knowing you can pick up the phone and get access to a dedicated team of professional safeguarding advisors, who understand the specialist context in which you are working is hugely significant for us.”
Our Disclosures Helpline is for our Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) users. The helpline team can answer questions on all matters relating to processing DBS checks. Both helplines form part our complete safeguarding solution for churches, charities, and faith-based organisations.
Justin Humphreys, our joint-Chief Executive said “We are extremely proud that both our Safeguarding Helpline and our Disclosure Helpline have been recognised in this way for a second three-year term, as this continues to recognise the high quality of our teams and the advice we give. We know what a huge difference it can make to the people that call about a range of issues, often for the first time. While we provide this service free of charge at the point of delivery, it costs the charity £62 on average to respond to each call to our Safeguarding Helpline, so we also remain grateful for any donations we receive that allow us to keep this vital service open to all who need it.”
Find out more about our helplines on our website.
You can all our safeguarding helpline on 0303 003 1111
