Child protection
Report an emergency
Contact the police on 999
Report a child at risk
To make a full report, please use our form in Appendix F of ‘Corporate Safeguarding Policy: Protecting Children, Young People and Adults at Risk’.
Corporate Safeguarding Policy, and Request for Help Form.
Send forms for early help to:
Email:
earlyhelp@bridgend.gov.uk
Send child protection referrals to:
Email:
mashcentra@bridgend.gov.uk
To talk to someone about a child’s welfare, please use the contact information below:
Telephone:
01656 642320
Emergency Duty Team (out of hours office)
Telephone:
01443 743665
NSPCC
Telephone:
0808 800 5000
The process of safeguarding
Safeguarding means protecting health, wellbeing and human rights. It enables people to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. Safeguarding children and their welfare includes:
- protecting them from maltreatment, or bad things for their health or development
- making sure they grow up with safe and effective care
Definitions of child abuse
A child is abused or neglected when somebody inflicts harm, or fails to prevent harm. Children may be abused in a family, institutional or community setting by people they know or, more rarely, by a stranger. Abuse or neglect may affect children or young people up to 18, who would need protection via an inter-agency child protection plan.
Abuse can be:
- physical such as hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning, scalding, drowning, suffocating, or other physical harms including inducing illness
- emotional such as the persistent emotional ill treatment of a child which would cause severe, persistent adverse effects on their development
- neglect by failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to seriously impair the child’s health or development
- sexual by forcing or enticing a child or young person to engage in sexual activities, whether or not the child knows what is happening
- child sexual exploitation where children are sexually exploited for money, power or status
- financial, which could include misuse of a child’s direct payment, or education maintenance allowance (EMA)
Read more about abuse in Appendix B of our Corporate Safeguarding Strategy.
Cwm Taf Safeguarding Board
Child safeguarding is undertaken by Cwm Taf. This organisation is a partnership of:
- Wales Community Rehabilitation Company
- Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council
- Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council
- South Wales Police
- Cwm Taf University Health Board
- Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust
- Interlink Rhondda Cynon Taf
- Voluntary Action Merthyr Tydfil
- National Probation Service Wales
Elsewhere on the web
Documents
- Corporate Safeguarding Policy (PDF 1438Kb)
- Safeguarding in Education, Welsh Government Guidance (PDF 937Kb)