The following outlines reasons to recommend adopting the Jigsaw Risk Management System to a Board or equivalent leadership.
Why Adopt the Jigsaw Risk Management System for Sexual Abuse Risk
Our organization faces many types of risk, but sexual abuse risk is uniquely consequential. It affects:
- the people we serve
- the staff and volunteers who deliver programs
- the reputation and legitimacy of the organization
- funding, partnerships, and insurance
- the organization’s long-term mission and survival
Traditional safeguarding tools — policies, training, background checks — matter, but they were never designed to prevent sexual abuse. They are static tools for a dynamic, human, complex risk.
To meet your governance responsibilities and protect both mission and people, our organization requires a system, not just tools.
Below is the rationale for adopting the Jigsaw Risk Management System as that system.
1. Jigsaw Uses Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) — the Global Best Practice
- ERM has been the gold standard for managing complex, high-impact uncertainty for more than twenty years in aviation, healthcare, emergency management, finance, and cybersecurity.
- Sexual abuse risk is a complex uncertainty risk, not a compliance task.
- Jigsaw applies ERM specifically to sexual abuse risk — something safeguarding has historically failed to do.
- This finally brings sexual abuse prevention into alignment with accepted global risk management best practice.
Bottom line: Our safeguarding should use the same standard of rigor applied to all other critical risks.
2. Abuse Vulnerability Comes from Four Sources — and Only a System Can Manage Them
Sexual abuse occurs more frequently when:
- Controls are absent
- Controls are inadequate
- Controls are deliberately manipulated (grooming)
- Controls drift over time
These vulnerabilities all arise from unmanaged uncertainty.
Tools cannot detect or manage this uncertainty.
Only a system can.
3. A System Makes Uncertainty Visible
Boards cannot oversee what they cannot see.
Most vulnerabilities are invisible without a system because they hide in:
- assumptions
- shortcuts
- routines
- exceptions
- cultural norms
- workarounds
- relationships
- transitions
- quiet compromises
- environment changes
- gaps between policy and practice
Controls are used to try to influence, but cannot detect these uncertainties. Jigsaw reveals, organizes, and reduces them, so board oversight becomes realistic, informed, and credible.
4. Jigsaw Produces Stronger, More Reliable Decision-Making
A system improves:
- consistency of frontline behavior
- clarity of roles and boundaries
- responsiveness to early signals
- alignment between operations and mission
- cultural awareness
- resilience under pressure
This strengthens safety and performance.
5. Jigsaw Creates Defensibility — in the Broadest Sense
Defensibility means the organization can clearly explain:
- the risks it faces
- how it identified them
- why it designed its controls
- how those controls work in practice
- how it monitors drift and improvement
- how its system aligns with global best practice
This makes the organization defensible in:
- law
- public scrutiny
- media environments
- insurance evaluations
- funding decisions
- board governance reviews
Defensibility is not perfection. It is reasonableness, transparency, and a system aligned with best practice.
6. Jigsaw Strengthens Mission, Not Just Safety
A strong system:
- reduces crisis and operational disruption
- increases trust from families, funders, and regulators
- stabilizes programs
- protects reputation
- enables safe growth and innovation
- supports long-term organizational sustainability
Safeguarding becomes a value-creating capability rather than a cost.
7. Jigsaw Builds Capability, Not Dependence
- Staff and leaders build their own understanding of risk.
- The organization generates its own controls, based on its real-world context.
- Knowledge builds in the organization — not with consultants.
- Improvement becomes continuous and internal.
This is the only sustainable path for long-term safeguarding.
8. Adoption Aligns the Organization With Its Duty of Care
Boards are required to ensure:
- reasonable measures
- systematic oversight
- appropriate risk management
- mission-aligned decision-making
- proactive protection
- defensibility
Jigsaw gives boards the systemic assurance they cannot get from tools, policies, or training alone.
9. It Is the Mature, Modern, Responsible Standard
Sexual abuse risk is too important, too complex, and too consequential to rely on:
- assumptions
- rules alone
- inherited tools
- periodic training
- individual discretion
A modern safeguarding posture requires a system, not scattered tools.
And Jigsaw is the first system designed to meet that need.
Recommendation
We recommend formal adoption of the Jigsaw Risk Management System as the organization’s structured, enterprise-wide method for managing sexual abuse risk.
This approach will:
- reduce vulnerability
- improve prevention
- increase protection
- strengthen governance
- increase defensibility
- support safe program delivery
- protect the mission
- build long-term organizational capability
- raise organizational performance
It is the standard of care that sexual abuse risk has required for decades — and the one our organization now has the opportunity to implement.