Safeguarding

Keeping Our Children Safe

There is nothing more important to us than the safety of our pupils

We take this responsibility extremely seriously. We understand that referrals and investigations can be difficult for parents, staff and carers, but I am sure you will agree with us that to ensure we keep our pupils safe we MUST investigate and where we feel a need, refer any concerns.

We ensure all staff:

•  Have the training they need to ensure all staff know what to do if they have any reason for concern.
• Are fully aware of their obligations set out in Keeping Children Safe in Education and have indicated they fully understand these.
• Staff receive Child Protection newsletters which are sent to us via external safeguarding partners.
• Are supported by a team of qualified Designated Safeguarding Leads to ensure we can cover all times of the day, evening and night.
• Designated Safeguarding Leads have time to meet allowing them to standardise and moderate approaches to Child Protection and Safeguarding.
• All policies linked to Child Protection and Safeguarding are reviewed in line with recommendations.

In addition to this:

• To ensure the safety of all our students we have invested in systems that keep the site secure (locked gates, restricted access and strategically placed cameras to identify who is at the gate) and manage all visitors to the site
• All visitors will be requested to hand in their mobile phones whilst on the school site.
• All visitors, with the exception of inspectors and school improvement partners are escorted around the school.
• We have 8 trained Designated Safeguarding staff, this ensures 24 hour coverage
• Our Lead DSL is Jane Hatwell, Headteacher.
• The leadership team are all fully trained in safer recruitment and follow robust processes to ensure all colleagues are suitable and safe to work at Stone Bay School
• Our safeguarding team meets fortnightly, ensuring we have a platform to share learning, best practice and standardise and moderate our systems and processes.
• Refresher training for all Designated Safeguarding Leads Takes Place on a bi annual basis, with additional training to ensure all are up-to-date with the latest guidance and information
• Whole staff training on Safeguarding makes up part of our mandatory programme of professional development.
• We have a team of 3 qualified Positive Behaviour Management instructors and two practitioners.
• All classroom and residential staff have been fully trained in Positive Behaviour Support and appropriate safe physical interventions, refresher training for all staff  happens on an annual basis.
• All interventions are fully documented and reviewed, changes in practice and approach are based on this evidence base.
• Our PREVENT work permeates all aspects of our curriculum offer, across both the school and residential flats
• Promoting the core values of: democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect for and tolerance of those who are different, plays a major part in what we do. These values are British values though we accept they are not unique to Britain. We see them as universal values, shared by, and fundamental to many countries, cultures and cherished by people across the globe.
• We have a child-friendly version of our child protection policy in picture format.

Designated Safeguarding Leads

Stone Bay School DSL Team.

Jane Hatwell: DSL Head Teacher	Lucy Taylor: DSL. Deputy Head Teacher	Martyn Nash: DSL. Head of Care
Ivonne Puttmann: DSL Assistant Head Teacher	Michael Setterfield: DSL. Assistant Headteacher	Lou Scott: DSL. Assistant Head Teacher
Di Smith: DSL.  Team Leader		Mireille Birchenough: DSL.  Team Leader

 

Stone Bay School is an Operation Encompass School. This means we work in partnership with Kent Police to provide support to children experiencing the effects of domestic abuse. An Operation Encompass notification is sent to the school when the police are called to an incident of domestic abuse and there are children in the household; the police are expected to inform schools before the child(ren) arrive the following day.

Operation Encompass notifications help ensure that we have up to date and relevant information about children’s circumstances and enables us to put immediate support in place according to the child’s needs.

ONLINE SAFETY

The safety of our pupils is of paramount importance at Stone Bay School and this extends into their online education. With increasing access to the Internet, using a range of devices, the challenges and risks facing our students are real and constantly evolving. The school’s e-safety guidance is designed to help protect our students whilst using ICT devices. We live in an increasingly connected world, and we want our pupils to be part of that, therefore our online safety education focuses on educating not reducing access. We have a robust filtering system but have unblocked some areas of social media to ensure our students can explore the internet in a safe and supportive setting.

Education on the issues of online safety and wellbeing is delivered across relevant areas of the curriculum to all age groups within the school. We follow a set of SMART rules which are reproduced in ICT access points around the school. As this area of education is constantly developing with the pace of technological change we strive to constantly review our curriculum provision.

As our pupils are very  vulnerable we aim to embed safeguarding practice into all our activities. The boxes below contain links to the latest government guidance on Online Safety Issues.

Some useful links below:

• Child-friendly safeguarding policy
• Educate against hate
• Use of Social Media.
• Kids Smart
• 360 Safe
• ThinkuKnow
• CEOP Internet Safety

 

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