Safeguarding and Child Protection
Under the Education Act 2002 (section 175), schools must “make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children”.
We will endeavour to provide a safe and welcoming environment where children are respected and valued.
The school will therefore be alert to signs of abuse and neglect and will follow the Safeguarding Children Partnership Board’s procedures to ensure that children receive appropriate and effective support and protection.
Parents/carers should know that the law requires all school staff to pass on information which gives rise to a concern about a child’s welfare, including risk from neglect, physical, emotional or sexual abuse. The school should make parents/carers aware that records of safeguarding concerns may be kept about their child. They should be informed that school staff will seek, in general, to discuss any concerns with them including referrals to other agencies.
Local procedures state that “Consent should always be sought from an adult with parental responsibility for the child/young person before passing information about them to Children’s Social Care, unless seeking consent would place the child at risk of significant harm or may lead to the loss of evidence for example destroying evidence of a crime or influencing a child about a disclosure made.” This includes allowing them to share information without consent, if it is not possible to gain consent, if it cannot be reasonably expected that a professional gains consent, or if to gain consent would place a child at risk.
Where there is a need to share special category personal data, the Data Protection Act 2018 contains ‘safeguarding of children and individuals at risk’ as a processing condition that allows professionals to share information.
In accordance with legislation and local Information Sharing protocols, we will ensure that information is shared securely and sensitively. Information will only be shared with other services where it is deemed necessary and proportionate to ensure that children and young people are safe and receive the right service. In all circumstances, the safety of the child will be the paramount concern.
Schools will contact Children’s Social Care when they have reasonable cause to suspect a child may be suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. Occasionally, concerns are passed on which are later shown to be unfounded. Parents/carers will appreciate that the member of staff in the school with responsibility for child protection (known as the Designated Safeguarding Lead or Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead) was carrying out their responsibilities in accordance with the law and acting in the best interests of all children.
Under Section 3 (5) of the Children Act 1989, any person who has care of a child “may….do what is reasonable in all the circumstances of the case for the purpose of safeguarding or promoting the child’s welfare”. This means that on rare occasions, a school may need to “hold” a child in school whilst Social Care and the Police investigate any concerns further
Online safety is a key part of safeguarding and protecting our children. The staff and children at Duxford receive age appropriate online safety training every year.
Vodafone have produced a series of online internet / mobile phone safety ideas to help you and your child stay safe online. please click on the links below and follow the on-screen help.
View here
See EE's wifi control features which allow you to turn your children's wifi off from your phone- https://ee.co.uk/broadband/wifi-controls
Very useful E-Safety documents:
Safe online gaming tips for children – view PDF
A guide to online gaming for parents – view PDF
The good gaming guide – a parents guide to video games – view PDF
Online Gaming – view PDF
Stay safe on screen – How to chat on webcam with confidence – view PDF
Keeping your child safe online – A checklist for parents and carers – view PDF
Parents E-Safety and Online Issues – view PDF
Very useful website pages to help the parent and child stay safe on the internet:
Starz
As part of your childs curriculum, we provide supervised access to the Internet and to email via the Starz learning platform. We see this as an essential ICT skill for the children to learn as they grow up in the modern world.
Understandably, there are concerns about children accessing inappropriate material when working online - but we have taken positive steps to deal with this risk in school. The school has a filtering system called 'smoothwall' which monitors both staff and children's search history. The system produces reports which are monitored by the designated safeguarding lead and the deputy safeguarding leads.
* All staff have undertaken E-safety training.
* The school's IT system operates a robust filtering system that restricts pupils access to inappropriate material.
* The school has an E-safety policy.
* Pupils are supervised when working online.
* Pupil email messages are monitored by a staff email monitor.
Through our E-Safety discussions with children, we know that many of them are using Snapchat. We have recently been made aware that Snapchat have updated their app and you can now zoom out, when on the picture screen, to see a map. On this map you are able to see where your friends (as well as other people) are at that time. If you zoom in to the picture, it will take you in detail to where they are at the time. Street names etc. are shown on the map. This is a worrying update as it means that children's locations can be seen by anyone using the app.
The age recommendation for this app is 13+ but if your child is using it, we would recommend that 'Location' is switched to 'Never' in Settings so as to avoid your child's whereabouts being made public.
