CHILD SAFEGUARDING STATEMENT

Ireland’s Fossil Heritage: SFI 23/DP/11771

August 2024

1. About this statement

This statement was prepared by Prof. Maria McNamara and Dr Jess Franklin, with reference to the Science Foundation Ireland Child Safeguarding Statement (available here) and the University College Cork Child Safeguarding Statement (available here).

2. About Ireland’s Fossil Heritage

Ireland’s Fossil Heritage is a public engagement project funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and based at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork. The overarching aim of the project is to increase public awareness of Irish fossils, and of palaeontology more broadly, among the Irish public. The project is committed to safeguarding the wellbeing of children while they are participating in project events. The project aims to always create a safe, creative and fun environment where children can engage with project staff and volunteers and where their welfare is paramount. The project adheres to the requirements of the Children First Act 2015 (“CFA”) and the National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children, 2017 (“Children First Guidance, 2017”) developed by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. The project is also compliant with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

This Child Safety Statement and associated risk assessment apply to staff employed at UCC for the purposes of working on the above project, and volunteers associated with the project.

Some of the activities carried out in the course of the above project fall within the meaning of the term ‘relevant service’ under the CFA. Schedule 1, paragraph 5 of the CFA describes relevant services. The project has specific legal responsibilities under the CFA, including to prepare a risk assessment of any potential for harm to a child while engaging with the project, to prepare a ‘child safeguarding statement’ and to appoint a person to be a first point of contact in respect of SFI’s child safeguarding statement (a ‘relevant person’). Details of the relevant Designated Liaison Person for child safeguarding for this project are provided in Section 5 below.

3. List of services being provided

This project engages in a range of activities that engage children, as summarised below:

• Public events
  • Delivery of activities at public events hosted by a third party
  • Delivery of activities hosted by the project
• In-class workshops
  • Delivery of workshops solely by project staff and volunteers
  • Delivered primarily by external consultants to the project
• Public walks as part of public events managed by a third party
• National campaigns, e.g. National Fossil Art Contest, National Fossil Photo Competition
• Interactions via email and with the project website

Details of Relevant Services delivered by the project

1. Public events. Most of the public events in which the project participates are hosted by a third party. These events include the Lifelong Learning Festival, Dingle Arts Festival, Cork Carnival of Science, Heritage Week, Culture Night, National Ploughing Championships, European Geoscience Day and Science Week. This is not an exhaustive list. Less commonly, the project hosts independent public events. At public events the project staff often recruit and coordinate the attendance of non-employee volunteers in order to assist in hosting a stand with interactive activities. This involves guiding visitors around the stand, guiding visitors through hands-on activities, speaking to children and their guardians about palaeontological topics, and evaluating the visitor experience. These events are not targeted specifically at children.

2. In-class workshops. The project directly manages in-class activity in primary and secondary school classrooms. This involves delivering presentations to schoolchildren in primary and secondary schools and guiding children through a range of interactive lessons. Project staff often recruit and coordinate the attendance of non-employee volunteers in order to assist in delivery of the workshops. This involves guiding pupils through hands-on activities, speaking to pupils about palaeontological topics, and evaluating the pupil experience. A discrete subset of project workshops are delivered primarily by external consultants to the project and have a distinct focus on science-art collaborative work. These events are targeted specifically at children and their teachers.

3. Public walks. The project hosts public walks as part of regional and national events managed by a third party, e.g. the Lifelong Learning Festival and Heritage Week. This involves guiding members of the public around natural or urban locations, highlighting specific fossil content and speaking about palaeontological topics, and evaluating the participant experience. These events are not targeted specifically at children.

4. National campaigns. The project manages a number of national art-science campaigns, e.g. the National Fossil Art Contest and the National Fossil Photo Competition. The former is targeted specifically at children; the latter is not, but children may accompany adults to the event launch. Most participants in these campaigns engage with the project primarily via email; only the event winners and their families will usually engage directly with project staff and volunteers in person at the launch of the event.

5. Interactions via email and project website. Queries from the general public are directed to the project website (https://www.ucc.ie/en/fossil-heritage/) and to the email addresses of the project team. Most queries are from teachers and guardians, but some may be received from children. Where further contact is required, a standard reply is formulated to request the child to engage their teacher/guardian to contact SFI on their behalf. Where a general query is received from a child, links to relevant websites may be sent from the general email. As part of the promotion of the project in the media, photographs/video footage of children can be used if parental consent has been obtained. Where a child’s image or footage of a child is taken, children will be identified by their full name or, if children are named alongside their school name, only their first name is provided.

Project responsibilities as an SFI-funded project:

SFI wants to help people to consider, question and debate the key issues in science and society and in support of this, provides funding through a range of SFI research grants. This includes the SFI Discover Programme, which provides funding specifically for education and public engagement projects. SFI explicitly requires applicants for grants or funding from SFI to comply with the provisions of the CFA and guidance on child safeguarding issued by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and Tusla in SFI’s grant terms and conditions. Compliance with the CFA is specifically highlighted to all SFI Discover Programme award holders at the annual partners meeting. Attendees are required to confirm attendance at the session. All Funded Bodies are asked to confirm compliance with CFA in writing in advance of receipt of SFI funding. All Funded Bodies are also required to notify SFI of any complaint in relation to applicable child welfare and safeguarding law that has been made or upheld against any member of the Project Team either prior to the award of funding, or during the lifetime of the project.

4. Risk assessment

Section 11 of the CFA mandates that providers of relevant services must prepare a risk assessment of any potential for harm to a child while availing of such services.

Section 2 of the Act defines harm as follows:

“harm means in relation to a child –

• (a) Assault, ill-treatment or neglect of the child in a manner that seriously affects or is likely to seriously affect the child’s health, development or welfare, or
• (b) Sexual abuse of the child, whether caused by a single act, omission or circumstance or a series or combination of acts, omission or circumstances or otherwise.”

Under Section 2 of the Child Care Act 1991 a “child” means a person under the age of 18 years other than a person who is or has been married.

The risk assessment for the project is provided at the end of this document. The primary mitigation actions (in addition to the current controls described overleaf) are:

(1) Annual review of the Child Safeguarding Statements for the project, UCC and SFI;

(2) Attendance of Annual SFI Discover partner meeting to ensure that project staff are aware of any updates to relevant policy;

(3) Debrief for project staff following each event should consider child welfare

5. Designated Liaison Person

RISK ASSESSMENT