ABSTRACT
In all areas of work with children and young people, both in the UK and elsewhere, there are laws, statutes, and policies as well as ethical guidelines governing specific areas of that work. Many of these laws are enshrined in the policies of statutory agencies, and those practitioners who have worked in settings such as education or the health service are likely to have come across them in their daily working lives. When working in a school, for example, counsellors will need to have knowledge of the relevant safeguarding policy as well as know who the designated member of staff is for when concerns need to be reported. In turn, the school policy will have been originally drawn up, and continue to be amended, in response to government guidelines on the law relating to matters of safeguarding children in educational settings.
