Child Safety Week 2025 – Legislation for Your Business
Overview
Child safety week, as set up by the Child Accident Prevention Trust, focuses on preventable accidents and raising risk awareness. The CAPT share many resources aimed towards protecting young children at home or school.
However, child safety can have a much wider scope, that may apply to your organisation even if it doesn’t directly involve working with children. In this article, we will discuss some important legislation that applies to a wide range of businesses, designed to protect children and young people from a variety of safety concerns. This can be in the workplace, at home or online.
Child Safety in the Workplace
The Health and Safety (Young Persons) Regulations 1997 protect young people (those below 18 years of age) in the workplace. You should consider these Regulations if you employ or consider employing anyone under the age of 18.
Employers typically carry out tasks such as conducting a risk assessment to identify associated risks, discussing needs and expectations with the young person’s guardian, ensuring the young person understands OHS rules to keep themselves and others safe, and regularly communicating with the young person to ensure they meet the requirements.
Beyond businesses hiring young people, there is plenty of legislation for working with children, such as teaching or childcare. A significant piece of legislation in this area is the Protection of Children Act 1999. This legislation requires a list to be kept of persons considered unsuitable to work with children. Childcare organisations must therefore undertake checks against any lists when employing individuals to work in childcare positions.
Child Safety at Home
If your business creates products used by children or in households, your organisation may need to follow child safety-related legislation. For example, the Toys (Safety) Regulations 2011 requires manufacturers ensure toys do not cause harm when used in the intended manner, and that warnings are clearly provided in relation to any potential hazards.
There are also the Processed Cereal-based Foods and Baby Foods for Infants and Young Children (England) Regulations 2003. These Regulations enforce provisions on processed cereal-based foods and baby foods for infants and young children, protecting their health and safety.
Child Safety Online
It is becoming increasingly important to protect the safety of children online. An increasingly digital world presents many safety risks that legislation must address.
The Online Safety Act 2023 regulates online services and content within the UK. This legislation applies to businesses with online platforms and services. This includes social media platforms, search engines, and any other interactive service that allows user-generated content.
Many requirements protect all users, young and old. These include a duty of care for users that platforms must exercise and the need for service providers to remove prohibited content. Platforms especially consider the safeguarding of children when dealing with user-generated content, setting guidelines and moderating content to keep the platform safe for all ages.
Lawmakers have created a wide range of legislation to protect child safety. We can expect to see more, too – especially in the way of online safety. It’s important to make sure your business takes child safety seriously, and adding relevant legislation to your compliance registers is a great way to do that.
On the ISO Compliance Register platform, you can find all the legislation above and more! Easily add applicable legislation to your registers and view pre-prepared typical tasks to help with compliance.
