Safeguarding at Aldwyn Primary School

What Is Safeguarding?

Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm.  

Safeguarding means:

• protecting children from abuse and maltreatment
• preventing harm to children’s health or development
• ensuring children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care
• taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes

Child protection is part of the safeguarding process. It focuses on protecting individual children identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. This includes child protection procedures which detail how to respond to concerns about a child.

Safeguarding children and child protection guidance and legislation applies to all children up to the age of 18.

Safeguarding has been defined by the government as: the process involved in protecting kids from neglect and abuse – stopping their development and health from being impaired. Also insuring that they grow up in a safe environment too which allows them opportunities to progress and develop to enter adulthood effectively.

What Is the difference between Safeguarding and Child Protection?

People sometimes wonder what the difference is between the terms safeguarding and child protection.

In practice, Safeguarding is the policies and practices that schools and Governing Bodies employ to keep children safe and promote their well-being. This means everything from security of the buildings, to the safe recruitment of staff and everything in between.  This diagram sets out what Safeguarding means in schools:

As you can see, Child Protection is one aspect of Safeguarding.  Child Protection is a term used to describe the activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.

Who is responsible for Safeguarding?

In short, EVERYBODY, any person who has contact with a child has a responsibility to keep that child safe from harm.

Within a school setting there is a designated team of staff who hold the overall responsibilty for safeguarding within school.

Safeguarding Documents and Useful Information

Below you will find links to websites that contain information relating to various aspects of safeguarding along with documents that contain information and contact details that you may find useful

Operation Encompass

On 21st January 2019 Tameside implemented a borough wide project that will run jointly between schools and Greater Manchester Police. This project is called Operation Encompass. It aims to support children who are affected by domestic violence by ensuring that their school is informed. This allows the school to support the children. Aldwyn Primary School are involved in the project. If you have any other questions about this project, please do not hesitate to contact school.

Safeguarding your child

As parents, you want to make sure that your children develop healthily and thrive.  We're here to help you with advice on how you can build strong relationships with your children and keep them safe.  Here are some resources for helping parents to keep their children safe, advice for parents on keeping children safe out of school, at home and online, when using the internet, social networking websites and playing online games, help and advice for creating a safe and nurturing environment for your children.

For guidance, further details can be found from:

General safe guarding support and information

https://www.tamesidesafeguardingchildren.org.uk/parentsandcarers.aspx 

http://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/

Staying Safe Online

www.thinkuknow.co.uk

www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/topics/stay-safe

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/share-aware/

https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/2017/tips-and-advice-parents-and-carers

https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/2017/tips-children-and-young-people/top-tips-under-11s

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

Awareness raising of Child Sexual Exploitation

www.ceop.police.uk

http://www.itsnotokay.co.uk

Bullying

https://www.bullying.co.uk/advice-for-parents/

Emotional Wellbeing and Child and Adolescent Mental Health

www.youngminds.org.uk/for_parents/parent

Healthy Living

http://www.nhs.uk/Change4Life/Pages/why-change-for-life.aspx

Female Genital Mutilation

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/female-genital-mutilation-fgm/

Radicalisation

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-you-can-do/report-abuse/dedicated-helplines/protecting-children-from-radicalisation/

Ways to contact the NSPCC

(The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is a charity campaigning and working in child protection in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands).

Telephone 0808 800 5000

Calls are free from landlines and most mobiles.

Text 88858

This service is free and we'll try to text you back within three hours.

Email: help@nspcc.org.uk

We will try to read and act on your email within 24 hours.

E Safety

E-safety Parental Feedback.

Dear Parents & Carers,

Many thank for all the responses to our questionnaire (15% response): they do give a good idea of where we stand and I think it was a really positive exercise.

Key findings:

• Parents have a good knowledge of monitoring computing activities (such as having home rules about time spent and guidance), e-safety tools (such as privacy settings), removing inappropriate content and the great majority of you have chats about what children should do if they’re worried about something etc. Great! The vast majority (over 90%) have pcs etc. in the family shared area which is good for e-safety too.
• The majority of parents (81%) are happy with the information they get from school. Advice in school to pupils rated highly as well (89% felt their pupils got good advice).
• There was a great variety in our pupil’s online activity at home – generally playing games and studying. Online chatting was used by 29% of our pupils.
• I am also really pleased you feel you can ask us for advice (90% felt they could).
• The question about children uploading video content to You Tube was interesting:

Your child is uploading video to You Tube. Is this a good idea?

7% - yes:           60% - no      33% - not sure.

From the surveys, I think the next steps are:

• We will continue to keep you informed of any advice that we are given in school regarding E-safety:  mobile phones tablets etc.
• We will respond quickly to any concerns that parents and pupils may have.

• We will ensure that the specific E-safety lessons are still delivered regularly and when necessary, as the opportunity arises as well.

A great web site for advice and tips is www.thinkuknow.co.uk

Here is a link to our E-safety policy. Have you got any issues that you think we need to add or deal with in a different way? Let us know.

If you do need advice or have concerns on any issue regarding E-safety, please feel free to send me an email (via admin@aldwyn.tameside.sch.uk) or send a note into school.

Many thanks everyone and keep safe,

Mr. Bonsall

What you can do to ensure your child is safe online

Staying safe on the internet is a hard task for adults let alone children who are not as tech savvy and may have an over active clicky finger. One wrong click on an embedded link or a badly worded google search can lead to pages that children should not be viewing.

From porn to radicalisation, the internet can be a minefield of page after page, picture after picture of inappropriate content for children.

Knowledge is key when it comes to keeping your child safe online, teach your child:

• Share with Care (Be Internet Smart) - no one should ever ask for personal information online, explaining to them that giving their name, phone number, e-mail address, password, postal address, school, or picture without your permission is not okay.  Meeting up with people who they have met on the internet should be actively discouraged, especially people who tell them not to tell anyone.  Sending pictures to people over the internet is very unsafe, once a picture has been sent it can be shared over and over again, if someone asks them for a picture encourage them to tell you right away.

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• Don’t Fall for Fake (Be Internet Alert) - People sat behind a computer screen/keyboard can be anything they want to be, that 10 year old girl from Edinburgh who wants to be their friend could actually be a fifty year old from Birmingham.  Remind them not to open emails or accept friend requests/follows from people they don’t know.

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• Secure Your Secrets (Be Internet Strong) – Discuss safe passwords with your child and the importance of keeping private information private.

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• It’s Cool to Be Kind (Be Internet Kind) - Online bullying or cyberbullying is widespread and teaching your child that bullying on the internet is just as bad as bullying in the playground is a good place to start.  If you wouldn’t do it face to face - Don’t do it online, for example, would you go up to a complete stranger and start a conversation?  Would you be abusive or hurtful to friends or strangers at the park?  Reminding them not to respond to hurtful messages and instead to show you anything that they don’t feel comfortable with or that upsets them.  Encourage them to save messages that upset them so that you can take appropriate action.

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• When in Doubt, Talk It Out (Be Internet Brave) – Make sure your child knows that you are approachable, that they won’t get in trouble if they show you something that has scared or upset them and that you can help them.

Sexting, Fake News and Radicalisation

Mental Health

Mental health problems cause distress to individuals and those who care for them.  Overall, it is estimated that one in ten children and young people have a diagnosable mental disorder – the equivalent of three pupils in every classroom across the country . Therefore schools are a vital part of a wider systems approach to promoting positive mental well-being and preventing mental illness in children and young people.

Here at Aldwyn we take Mental Health very seriously, we firmly believe that no-one should feel ashamed to talk about their mental health and we actively encourage our pupils and staff to speak out if they need to.