Safeguarding

What is safeguarding?

In the UK, safeguarding in research is defined as “preventing and addressing any sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment of research participants, communities and research staff, plus any broader forms of violence, exploitation and abuse…such as bullying, psychological abuse and physical violence (UKDCR, February 2020).”

HFACT Safeguarding Statement 

The NIHR Global Health Research Unit HFACT believes that everyone we come into contact with, regardless of age, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation or ethnic origin has the right to be protected from all forms of harm, abuse, neglect and exploitation. HFACT will not tolerate abuse and exploitation by staff or associated personnel. 

The HFACT Safeguarding Policy is available as a separate document and addresses the following areas: 

• Child safeguarding
• Adult safeguarding
• Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse

In addition, these key areas of safeguarding may have separate polices and procedures associated with them from the individual project partner organisations. 

HFACT commits to addressing safeguarding throughout its work, through the three pillars of prevention, reporting and response. 

Project Partner Responsibilities

The Project Partner organisations will:

• Design research activities in accordance with their institutional Research Ethics policies
• Ensure that, where primary data collection is required, the research adheres to the relevant institutional Ethical Review process and that no research activity takes place before the review is duly considered and approved. 
• Conduct relevant Due Diligence checks on any external organisations performing primary data collection on their behalf and that the external organisation is able to comply with any actions/recommendations highlighted in the relevant Ethical Review. 

Individual Staff Responsibilities

Child Safeguarding

Project Partner staff engaged in work on the HFACT project (and other associated personnel) must not:

• Engage in sexual activity with anyone under the age of 18, even if the age of consent in the relevant country is lower
• Sexually abuse or exploit children
• Subject a child to physical, emotional or psychological abuse, or neglect
• Engage in any commercially exploitative activities with children including child labour or trafficking 

Adult Safeguarding

Project Partner staff engaged in work on the HFACT project (and other associated personnel) must not: 

• Sexually abuse or exploit at-risk adults
• Subject an at-risk adult to physical, emotional or psychological abuse or neglect 

Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse

Project partner staff engaged in work on the HFACT project (and other associated personnel) must not:

• Exchange money, employment, goods or services for sexual activity. This includes any exchange of assistance that is due to research participants.
• Engage in any sexual relationships with research participants, since they are based on inherently unequal power dynamics. 

Additionally, Project Partner staff engaged in work on HFACT (and other associated personnel) are obliged to:

• Contribute to creating and maintaining and environment that prevents safeguarding violations and promotes the implementation of the Safeguarding Policy
• Report any concerns or suspicions regarding safeguarding violations by an HFACT project partner staff member, or associated personnel, to the appropriate staff member

How to report a safeguarding concern

Staff members who have a complaint or concern relating to safeguarding should report it immediately to their Safeguarding Focal Point (if such a person has been nominated within their organisation) or Principal Investigator (PI). 

If the staff member does not feel comfortable reporting to their Safeguarding Focal Point or PI (for example if they feel that the report will not be taken seriously, or if that person is implicated in the concern) they may report it to any other appropriate staff member. For example, this could be a senior manager or a member of the HR team. The contact details for these individuals for each project partner organisation are listed below.