Our school core safeguarding principles are:
- It is a whole school responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of children as its paramount concern.
- All children (defined as those up to the age of 18) regardless of age, gender, ability, culture, race, language, religion or sexual identity, have equal rights to protection.
- All children have a right to be heard and to have their wishes and feelings taken into account.
- All staff understand safe professional practice and adhere to our code of conduct and other associated policies.
- All staff have a responsibility to recognise vulnerability in children and act on any concern in accordance with this guidance.
There are four main elements to our safeguarding policy
- Prevention ( e.g. positive, supportive, safe school culture, curriculum and pastoral opportunities for children, safer recruitment procedures);
- Protection (by following the agreed procedures, ensuring all staff are trained and supported to respond appropriately and sensitively to safeguarding concerns);
- Support (for all pupils, parents and staff, and where appropriate specific intervention for those who may be at risk of harm);
- Working with parents and other agencies (to ensure appropriate communications and actions are undertaken).
All members of staff have a responsibility to:
- Provide a safe environment in which children can learn.
- Ensure all children are able to develop appropriate strategies to recognise and respond to risk and build resilience.
- Identify and recognise children who may be in need of extra help, who are suffering, or are likely to suffer significant harm.
- Provide help for children, where appropriate and reasonable.
- Take appropriate action to prevent safeguarding concerns escalating and work with other services as needed.
- Safeguard children’s well-being and maintain public trust in the teaching profession as part of their professional duties.
- Maintain an attitude of ‘it could happen here’ where safeguarding is concerned and to always act in the best interests of the child.
- Respond to and refer any concerns about children or other members of the community in accordance with this policy.
- Contribute towards, read and adhering to the school policies.
Safeguarding FAQ
What is Prevent?
Prevent is the Government’s strategy to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism, in all its forms. Prevent works at the pre-criminal stage by using early intervention to encourage individuals and communities to challenge extremist and terrorist ideology and behaviour.
What is Channel?
Channel is an early intervention multi agency panel designed to safeguard vulnerable individuals from being drawn into extremist or terrorist behaviour. Channel works in a similar way to existing multi agency partnerships for vulnerable individuals. It is a voluntary process allowing the individual to withdraw from the programme at any time.
Who is Channel aimed at?
Channel is for individuals of any age who are at risk of exploitation by extremist or terrorist ideologies. Early intervention can prevent individuals being drawn into terrorist related activity in a similar way to criminal activity such as drugs, knife or gang crime.
How does Channel work?
The Channel Panel is chaired by the local authority and works with multi agency partners to collectively assess the risk to an individual and decide whether an intervention is necessary. If a Channel intervention is required, the Panel works with local partners to develop an appropriate individualised support package. Partnership involvement ensures that those at risk have access to a wide range of support. The support package is monitored closely and reviewed regularly by the Channel Panel.
Who can make a referral?
Anyone can make a referral. Referrals have come from family members and a wide range of partners: social services, children and adult services, youth offending teams, health, police, education establishments, places of worship and community organisations. You do not need the consent of the subject to make a referral – consent will be sought by the Channel Team before being adopted by Channel.
Who sits on the Channel panel?
The Channel Panel is chaired by the Interim Executive Director of Communities and Wellbeing and includes Police, statutory partners and non-statutory partners, where appropriate. Lead safeguarding professionals will be invited on a case by case basis.
Who delivers Channel?
Channel interventions are delivered through local partners and specialist agencies. Support could include mainstream health, education, employment or housing services through to specialist mentoring or appropriate faith guidance and wider diversionary activities such as sporting activities.
Escalating Concerns
If you believe that someone is vulnerable to being exploited or radicalised, please follow the established safeguarding procedures to escalate concerns to the appropriate people in your organisation who can refer concerns to Channel if appropriate.
As stated above, if you have a concern that regards a family member, you can refer them into Prevent. In addition to this, you may want to visit the website ACT Early – Prevent radicalisation which is aimed at family and friends of those who are worried about family members being radicalised.
Further information regarding the acronyms used within Safeguarding can be found here.