Safeguarding

The journey within our school must start with safeguarding and this should be at the heart of everything we do, nothing is more important.  Children who need help and protection deserve high quality and effective support as soon as a need is identified.  Everyone connected with our school has an important role to play in safeguarding to:

• Protect children from maltreatment
• prevent impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
• ensure that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
• take action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

All of our staff have responsibility to provide a safe environment in which children can learn.  

In order to carry out our duties we need to have a Designated Safeguarding Lead and Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads, all trained to the same level, a Looked After and Previously Looked after Lead, a qualified Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator and a Mental Health Lead.  The DSL and DDSLs should have individual responsibilities that are included in their job descriptions.  We should take the need to keep up to date seriously and ensure that all staff are well trained.  Their safeguarding responsibilities should be set out in our induction programme and all staff need to receive full safeguarding training yearly.  In addition, there needs to be weekly updates to keep staff informed of updates and relevant reminders of practices and procedures.

We must be particularly aware that some children may be of a higher risk, for example, children who:

• are disabled or have certain health conditions and have specific additional needs
• have special educational needs (whether or not they have a statutory Education, Health and Care Plan)
• have a mental health need
• are a young carer
• are showing signs of being drawn in to anti-social or criminal behaviour, including gang involvement and association with organised crime groups or county lines
• are frequently missing/going missing from care or from home
• are at risk of modern slavery, trafficking, sexual or criminal exploitation
• are at risk of being radicalised or exploited
• have a family member in prison, or is affected by parental offending
• are in a family circumstance presenting challenges for the child, such as drug and alcohol misuse, adult mental health issues and domestic abuse
• are misusing alcohol and other drugs themselves
• have returned home to their family from care
• are at risk of ‘honour’-based abuse such as Female Genital Mutilation or Forced Marriage
• are a privately fostered child
• are persistently absent from education, including persistent absences for part of the school day
• need a social worker (Child in Need and Child Protection Plans)
• are missing from education
• have Elective Home Education
• have unrestricted access to the internet

The bullet points above, that are in bold, are examples of situations that are currently present within school or have happened in recent years.  The bullet point in red is the area that is most likely to have an impact on our children.  However, we must stay vigilant to the fact that any of these bullet points could mean our children are more at risk.

Behaviour and culture

As part of our commitment to providing the safest of environments, we must focus on the culture of our school and our community.  This focus must be strategically driven and led at all levels; nothing should happen by chance.  We want a culture of high standards that are constantly and consistently modelled by every adult working in our school.  What we ignore, we accept.  We want a culture that has high expectations of ourselves and our children and we should support this work with a lot of love.  If we love our children, our community, our neighbours, then we want the best for them and should not rest until we have achieved this.

 

Our behaviour systems need to be simple and clear so they are easily followed by all.  Our systems should work for all members of staff regardless of their job title and they should aim to keep improving the behaviour for all so that we can focus on our main job of teaching.  Senior Staff need to be ever present so that all staff feel supported and children know that action will be taken in a fair and consistent way.  We need to actively teach positive behaviour in an explicit way as well as helping individuals to understand and regulate their emotions.  Where children have additional needs, they should be supported with this.