All organisations providing services to children and young people must ensure that all staff and volunteers (paid, unpaid, casual, agency, third party and self-employed workers) are suitable to work with children and young people.
Safer Recruitment and Safe Practice procedures and code of conduct policies are a core part of ensuring the ongoing suitability of the children’s workforce.
When does the Local Authority’s Designated Officer (LADO) need to be involved?
Seek a conversation with the LADO when any of these thresholds may have been met:
- Harm threshold: a person working with children has behaved in a way that has harmed a child, or may have harmed a child
- Criminal threshold: a person working with children has possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child
- Risk/Transferable Risk threshold: a person working with children has behaved towards a child or children in a way that indicates they may pose a risk of harm to children
- Suitability threshold: a person working with children has behaved or may have behaved in a way that indicates they may not be suitable to work with children
Please note that the threshold for those working with children is harm, not significant harm. LADO thresholds apply to behaviours of concern within the work context, as well as concerns in personal life.
Examples of concerns in personal life that must be reported to LADO (and should be a matter of staff policy) are:
- when workers’ own children become the subject of safeguarding concerns
- when concerns are raised about the worker perpetrating domestic abuse, coercive control (note that this relates to concerns rather than convictions/arrests/cautions)
- when concerns are raised about the worker perpetrating sexual assault (note that this relates to concerns rather than convictions/arrests/cautions)
Burden of Proof
The LADO process is a civil law process, and operates on a balance of probabilities rather than beyond any reasonable doubt as in criminal law.
The LADO process oversees multi-agency partnership investigations, assessments and decision-making. The wide body of research and the evidence base should be consulted when considering types of evidence against one another.
Referring to LADO
Where concerns arise regarding the behaviours of a person acting in a position of trust with regards to children, it is the legal duty of the employer/supervisory authority (or the individual themselves if they are a sole trader) to refer the concern to LADO.
Any concerns related to the harm or possible harm of a child by a member of staff or volunteer must be reported to LADO within 24 hours, or sooner:
Following an initial conversation, you must complete a LADO referral form (Word, 100KB) and return it to lado@haringey.gov.uk.
Procedures and statutory guidance for LADO
For more information, please see the Haringey LADO Procedures and the regional London Child Protection Procedures – Chapter 7.
Haringey Procedures are in line with the statutory guidance:
- Working Together to Safeguard Children
- Keeping Children Safe In Education – for education settings