Safeguarding

Safeguarding culture: As the Designated Safeguarding Lead, my Deputy Safeguarding officer and myself support all our staff and our safeguarding team with their roles and responsibilities and ensure that there is a positive culture regarding safeguarding and a recognition that safeguarding concerns ‘can and does happen here’. We train staff to have professional curiosity and to not dismiss concerns and to ensure that even small observations are referred into the safeguarding team to help build a picture over time. 

We ensure that policies and procedures are up to date and in place to deal especially our Safeguarding Policy which is updated in line with government guidance.  

Safer recruitment: We have strict selection and recruitment processes for all our staff and regular volunteers for example rigorous reference checks, DBS clearance, purposeful interview process that has at least one member of the interview panel who has safer recruitment training.

Physical safety: As a special school we consider very carefully the physical security of the building with door swipes where needed and a secure external perimeter. Key entrance points also have camera system that allows us to monitor who enters and leaves. This is compliant with GDPR regulations, and the information is only stored for a short period of time.

Staff training: Our safeguarding team all have the relevant LSCB safeguarding training and work closely with parents/carers social care and other professionals to ensure that we have an open and transparent process to ensure that our students are not at harm, in line with the ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ guidance and Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) policy. All training through the LSCB website in line with our schools six-year safeguarding plan (see below).

Pupils voice: It is our duty to ensure that all students feel safe and are able to share any worries or concerns they may have and make sure that they feel listened to and know that we take what they say seriously. Students are supported to know who they can talk to if they have any worries or concerns with visual supports around the school including our safe hand:

Vigilance: A large proportion of our students are unable to communicate through formal methods therefore staff are trained to monitor children's non-verbal communication and presentation and track and monitor any obvious and subtle changes and to discuss this with the safeguarding team.

Tracking and monitoring: As a school we track and monitor any internal safeguarding referrals through our secure Behaviour Watch website which ensures the child protection team are kept informed of any concerns staff may have. This is analysed regularly to identify any possible trends and patterns.

Multi agencies: We work closely with a wide range of agencies and endeavour to work with parents/carers in an open and transparent manner, even in difficult conversations. Where we feel that professionals are not taking concerns seriously, we are confident to professionally escalate a concern in the best interest of the child/young person.

Children in Care: Our Designated Child in Care (CIC) Teacher and the school’s wellbeing team support our Children in Care in conjunction with the virtual school with regular EPEP and CIC meetings to track, monitor and support each CIC student’s academic and personal development and wellbeing.

Staff conduct: We work with our staff to ensure that they remain professional and adhere to our staff code of conduct policy. We train staff to refer and low-level concerns about staff conduct to the Head teacher to ensure that at no point poor practice is allowed to continue. This is dealt with through our low-level concern policy. Where the Head teacher identifies that a staff’s behaviour could meet harm threshold this will be referred to Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO).

Intimate care: Many of our pupils require intimate care throughout their day in line with our intimate care policy. Staff are training to ensure that they are trained to carry out these care duties with respect and ensuring pupils dignity. They are trained in moving and handling and pupils have intimate care plans that clearly state the best method to support intimate care practice. 

Preventative curriculum: In addition, our curriculum model is designed to ensure that students are supported to make safe choices and are taught how to keep themselves safe in relationships, in the community and online. We have a special school specific RSE and PSHCE policy which considers the requirement for specific special school curriculum to ensure that all our pupils are taught to stay safe.

Attendance: Our attendance policy supports our safeguarding policy and practice and any student who has a first day absence without information is phoned before 9:45am every morning. If we are unable to gain clarity about where a pupil is, we do home visits to ensure the child/young person is safe. The safeguarding team would then respond accordingly if there is no contact from home. This is in accordance with the commendations in the Children Absent in Education guidance.