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Safeguarding Briefing - 21st February 2022
Dear ,
I hope you have had a good half-term. I know the break has varied around the country, so you might only just be starting yours. My wife works in Essex, so I took mine along with her.
If you emailed or asked questions in Safeguarding.Pro during the week, I'll be catching up with those over the next few days.
The storms have been quite horrific haven't they, and hope you are safe and sound. In the storms of '87, we lost the roof on the music block, and I know how awful it can be.
Free Mental Health Resources for Your School (Yes Futures)
At Yes Futures, we believe early intervention is crucial when it comes to mental health awareness and wellbeing. As a charity, running wellbeing programmes for 10 years, we know this is more important now than ever.
Our latest set of free resources is designed to help schools build a culture of positivity, alongside recognising our strengths and talents. This set of resources will support staff and students and can be adapted for use in school, for home learning, or independent learning.
Download the resources here: https://www.yesfutures.org/mental-health-resources
YesFutures also have teacher wellbeing resources and you can find those here: https://www.yesfutures.org/teacher-wellbeing-resources
Critical Incidents
A reminder this week about the importance of a lockdown plan - not the Covid kind of lockdown, but a lock-in plan.
A police incident directly outside a primary school in a large, rural village at home-time meant the children had to stay indoors. These situations often come out of nowhere, and so it is important everyone understands what to do.
Outdoor activities
Also in the news, a secondary school was fined £30,000 for taking a group of teenagers on a dangerous hike up a mountain in the Lake District in March 2020.
The two staff and thirteen pupils were eventually found in the dark by a mountain rescue team. The adults had no formal qualifications in mountain leadership or experience in wintery conditions and were relying on a smartphone app for guidance. The school now says that it has improved its procedures.
Advice and Support (OEAP)
The website of the Outdoor Education Advisers’ Panel (OEAP) provides national guidance, activities, training and support for outdoor learning and educational visits.
Visit the website here: https://oeapng.info/about-national-guidance/
Fostering Digital Skills for Life (The Fostering Network)
The Fostering Network, in collaboration with Internet Matters and the University of East Anglia has created a free to access course to give carers a better understanding of online risks, and the confidence to support children and young people’s recovery online.
The course is suitable for carers of children of any age, as we look at practical strategies to help you build digital resilience into your day-to-day practice with younger children to through to teenagers.
The course is available online as both trainer-led and on-demand.
For further information go to: https://www.thefosteringnetwork.org.uk/fostering-digital-skills-for-life
Let's Talk About Porn (SWGfL)
'There are over 40 million porn websites in the US alone with over 30 million unique visitors to these websites every second of every day. 25% of all internet searches are porn related which might not sound like a lot but 25% actually means 68 million porn searches a day.' (Lets Talk About Porn Teachers Guide, SWGfL)
Discussing pornography can be a difficult topic to broach and discuss with teenagers. Yet such content is very easy to find. The government is again attempting to force the adult content industry to implement effective age verification. For a variety of reasons this may never happen. Other countries are attempting to do something similar, President Macron in France is currently threatening to ban pornography websites altogether, unless they prevent under-18s access such material.
Researchers tell us that the majority of sexual content is misogynistic, doesn't always appear consensual and is often violent. An NSPCC research report published in 2017, 'I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it' found that common reasons young people sought out porn was to learn about sex and see whether their bodies were 'normal'.
SWGfL has produced a teaching resource designed to help teachers and facilitators educate young people about pornography, specifically online. This resource has been developed by the lead practitioner for the Professionals Online Safety Helpline in response to the need from schools and teachers to have something that can help with the growing issue of pornography consumption in teenagers.
The resources is aimed at Key Stage 3 as research shows children will at this age have already been exposed to or be a regular consumer of online pornography. The lesson is broken down into three main sections, which can be taught together or separately; The history of porn, The legalities and Myth busters.
You can find the resource here: https://swgfl.org.uk/resources/lets-talk-about-porn/
Forthcoming Events
Advanced Safeguarding for DSLs
This is a four-session course for DSLs over a full-day. The course is offered live and as a recorded replay. When the course is live, there are plenty of opportunities to contribute with observations, questions or answers. As a recording, the interactions from other people are included and feedback notes that this makes it feel like you are not on your own.
"I came to a session in Birmingham back in 2019 (the day after the GE I think) and it was superb. Today [online] was just as good, if not better. The use of video mixed with live speaking was excellent and goes way beyond what other safeguarding courses provide. You've been there and done it, and your openness with your own story is inspirational."
LIVE ONLINE Tuesday 15th March 2022 BOOK NOW
...and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience BOOK NOW
Whole School Safeguarding CPD Online Session
In this two and half hour online presentation aimed at staff in all roles, specialist safeguarding consultant, Andrew Hall, explores important aspects of safeguarding in schools including child protection, learning from case studies and the latest version of Keeping Children Safe in Education.
"I would like to extend my thanks to Andrew for his fantastic online training. It was filmed so well - almost as if he were here with us! We were kept engaged throughout and felt so well informed - a huge thank you. It was a real success, and we look forward to booking you again in the future - with the staff team saying it was the best safeguarding training they have ever had. We really appreciated Andrew's real-life storytelling and the way such sensitive information was shared - it was excellent training."
You book your online session here: https://cpd.safeguardinginschools.co.uk/product/whole-school-safeguarding-course-online/
Until next time, keep safe and thank you for all the work you're doing,
Andrew Hall,
Specialist Safeguarding Consultant,
Success In Schools Ltd.
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