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Child protection

Report an emergency

Contact the police on 999, or our Emergency Duty Team on 01443 425012.

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:

Contact

Send child protection referrals to:

Contact

To talk to someone about a child’s welfare, please use the contact information below:

Contact

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

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