Safeguarding at IMC Worldwide
Safeguarding means taking all reasonable steps to prevent harm, particularly sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment from occurring; to protect people, especially vulnerable adults and children, from that harm; and to respond appropriately when harm does occur.
IMC and our partners must have a zero-tolerance stance on exploitative and abusive relationships. Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) and child protection come under this umbrella term.
As safeguarding means taking all reasonable steps to prevent harm, it applies consistently and without exception across our programmes, partners and employees. This means IMC must work closely with our partners to achieve this. Together we must proactively identify, prevent and guard against all risks of harm, exploitation and abuse and have mature, accountable and transparent systems for response, reporting and learning when risks materialise (including between organisations).
Systems must take all steps to put the needs of the survivor first (be survivor-centred) and also protect those accused until proven guilty.
IMC’s Safeguarding Policy can be found
here.
Our Whistleblowing Policy can be found
here.
DFID procurement – Safeguarding measures are now part of the DFID compliance requirements. Please see the
Procurement at DFID page for more details, in particular the
DFID Terms and Conditions of Contract and the
Supply Partner Handbook.
2018 International Safeguarding Summit
IMC was recently involved in the DFID Safeguarding Summit here in the UK. Read about it on our
LinkedIn page.
On 18 October, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) hosted a key summit in London to drive collective action to address and prevent sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual harassment. IMC sat on the summit steering committee as a representative of the private sector alongside Oxford Policy Management. As such, we developed a series of commitments to four strategic shifts that DFID had set out related to wider reforms to improve safeguarding.
For IMC, there are
four key priorities that the private sector must get right to ensure these commitments can be brought to life.
To read the UK private sector commitment document it can be found on the DFID website
here.
Post – Summit, IMC will continue to be involved in a private sector group that meets to discuss Safeguarding challenges and lessons learned and has a continued dialogue with the rest of the steering group from the Summit. British Expertise International and the Centre for Development Results will also have a key role in supporting the safeguarding private sector group.
Our IMC Safeguarding Team
Adele Monk - Safeguarding Manager
Adele.Monk@imcworldwide.com
Kat Hancock - Key safeguarding contact for overseas operations
Kathryn.Hancock@imcworldwide.com
Suraj Rana - Director Responsible for Safeguarding
Suraj.Rana@imcworldwide.com
Lee-Anne Browne - Safeguarding Deputy
Lee-Anne.Browne@imcworldwide.com
To Make a Report
Please note if any employee or member of our programme personnel has concerns or suspicions about unethical behaviour of another employee, director, independent consultant, partner, supplier or clients then please raise it immediately via the steps below or through our independent confidential 24/7 Whistle Blowing hotline (below).
Employees should report any concerns in the following order:
- To your line manager (or, if not appropriate);
- To the IMC HR Manager (or, if not appropriate);
- To another member of the senior management team (or, if not appropriate);
- To the IMC independent Whistleblowing service.
Programme personnel should report any concerns in the following order:
- To the IMC Team Leader or Project Manager (or, if not appropriate);
- To the IMC Project Director or Regional Director (or, if not appropriate);
- To IMC Worldwide’s Managing Director (or, if not appropriate);
- To IMC’s independent whistleblowing service.
Members of the public can use our independent whistleblowing service:
The international number can be found
here.
What to do if you receive a report?
We have prepared a template to assist if you received a report. You can access it
here. Download the template and complete using a pdf reader.
Helpful resources
BOND guidance, templates and training
CHS Alliance Approved Trainers Scheme
