Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined as:

Protecting children from maltreatment; preventing impairment of children’s health or development; ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.

             Designated Safeguarding Leads

Surrey Street Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people.  We are fully committed to ensuring that consistent and effective safeguarding procedures are in place to support families, children and staff at our school.

Our Safeguarding and Child Protection policy aims to provide a framework for our workforce to safeguard and promote the welfare of pupils who attend our school.

All staff are aware of their statutory responsibilities concerning safeguarding and are properly trained in recognising and reporting child protection and safeguarding issues.

CHILD-ON-CHILD ABUSE

Surrey Street Primary School recognises that children are vulnerable and capable of abusing their peers. We take such abuse as seriously as abuse perpetrated by an adult. This includes verbal as well as physical abuse. Child-on-child abuse will not be tolerated or passed off as part of ‘banter’ or ‘growing up’.

We are committed to a whole-school approach to ensure the prevention, early identification, and appropriate management of child-on-child abuse within our school and beyond.

In case where child-on-child abuse is identified, we will follow our child protection and safeguarding procedures, taking a contextual approach to support all children who have been affected by the situation

We recognise that child-on-child abuse can manifest itself in many ways, including:

• child sexual exploitation (CSE)
• sexting or youth-produced digital imagery
• up-skirting
• bullying
• radicalisation
• abuse in intimate relationships
• children who display harmful sexual behaviour
• gang associated and serious violence (county lines)
• technology being used for bullying and other abuse behaviour

We also recognise that these behaviours can occur online as well as face-to-face.

Some of these behaviours will need to be handled with reference to other policies in school, such as our behaviour policy, child protection and safeguarding policy and online safety policy.

Our procedures concentrate on child-on-child abuse in the context of sexual harassment and sexual violence and are compliant with the statutory guidance on child-on-child abuse as set out in the Department for Education’s ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ and should be read in conjunction with the Luton Safeguarding Children Board’s child protection and safeguarding policies and procedures and any relevant practice guidance issued by it.

Child-on -Child Abuse Policy - awaiting upload

E-SAFETY

Our duty of care to minimise the risk of harm to pupils in our school

extends their use of the internet.

OPERATION ENCOMPASS

Surrey Street Primary is part of Operation Encompass.

Operation Encompass has been established to help schools in providing support to children who may have been affected by incidents of domestic abuse in the home. We know that children can be significantly physically or emotionally harmed when they are involved in, present at or witness to domestic abuse.

As part of Operation Encompass, we will receive notifications following any domestic abuse incidents reported by Bedfordshire Police where a child attending the school may have been affected.

If you are experiencing domestic violence (this can be emotional, verbal or physical) talk to one of the Designated Safeguarding Leads, we can help support you and signpost you to services that can help.

PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM EXTREMISM AND RADICALISATION

As part of Surrey Street Primary’s ongoing child protection and safeguarding duties, we comply fully with the government’s Prevent Strategy.

All schools have been subject to a duty under section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, in the exercise of their functions, to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. This duty is known as the Prevent Duty for Schools.

At Surrey Street Primary School, we build pupils’ resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British values and enabling our pupils to challenge extremist views at an age-appropriate level.

The statutory guidance refers to the importance of Prevent awareness training to equip staff to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and to challenge extremist ideas.

USEFUL WEBSITES

You can access advice on protecting children from extremism and radicalisation from the websites below

• The PANTS rule - guidance for parents on how to talk to your children about keeping themselves safe from sexual abuse
• Educate Against Hate - advice for parents
• Childnet - internet advice for parents and children
• NSPCC - child protection advice

• RSE guides - Government produced guides for parents on Relationships and Sex Education, available in English, Arabic, Somali and Urdu.

• Thinkuknow - online safety advice for parents and age-appropriate advice for children