Safety
What is safeguarding?
“The action we take to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm – is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and families has a role to play.” Every child can be hurt, put at risk of harm or abused, regardless of their age, gender, religion or ethnicity. Safeguarding legislation and government guidance says that safeguarding means:
- protecting children from maltreatment
- preventing impairment of children’s health or development
- ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
- taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcome
Click here to view 'How we use and protect your child’s information.'
Click here to view 'Information for parents and guardians of children participating.'
Can I report a concern?
Wellbeing and Safeguarding Button
If you are a parent and you have a wellbeing or safeguarding concern, please click on the button below and a member of the Pastoral Team will be in touch to offer you support.
How we safeguard our students
Leeds West Academy takes its role in safeguarding extremely seriously and our staff will do everything they can to protect students and children from harm. We acknowledge that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility and all of our staff are trained to be vigilant and aware of the signs and indicators of abuse. The viewpoints and voice of students is of paramount importance to our Academy and we will always listen to their wishes, thoughts and feelings, as well as identifying and supporting their needs. We will work alongside students to develop trusting, consistent and professional relationships. We advocate early help processes and, where possible, we will identify any difficulties or concerns early in order to act preventatively. We will always provide support and advice for families and parents/carers, whilst acting in the best interests of the student at all times. Safeguarding also includes ensuring we follow safe working practices and provide a secure learning environment for our students and staff.
Leeds West Academy safeguards students by:
- Maintaining a secure site and ensuring that all visitors to the Academy are recorded and monitored.
- Ensuring that safer recruitment practices are followed to prevent those who pose a risk to children gaining access to our students.
- Ensuring that all students understand the importance of e-safety both at the Academy and at home.
- Filtering and monitoring all internet traffic into the Academy to ensure that students cannot be exposed to harmful material and communication.
- Ensuring that all staff employed by the Academy have received Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) clearance which is recorded in the Single Central Record.
- Providing regular training and briefings for all staff in child protection and ensuring that all staff and visitors know who our designated safeguarding officers and designated senior lead are.
- Ensuring that admission and attendance procedures are robust to protect students, ensure that they are safe and prevent students from going missing from education.
- Empowering young people to identify risks both within the Academy and in their community; ensuring that they have the skills and confidence to protect themselves and others.
- Making sure that all students understand the importance of disclosing concerns about themselves and peers, and giving them the confidence to discuss sensitive issues.
- Providing pastoral and inclusion support to ensure that all students have access to guidance and advice, and when needed referrals for additional agency support to meet their needs.
- Sharing information with other agencies and services to ensure that students, children and their families have support to meet their needs and prevent children and students from harm.
- Taking immediate action and contacting the appropriate agencies when we believe that a student or child is in danger or is at risk of harm.
ThinkUKnow
Families can visit www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents to access advice and support on how to keep children safe from sexual abuse, both online and off. Articles provide guidance on topics as diverse as: challenging harmful sexual attitudes and promoting positive behaviours; helping a child with autism negotiate life online; supporting a child who has been sexually abused; and dealing with a range of online issues such as sending nude selfies and viewing pornography. Users will find films, downloadable guides and useful links to support organisations. Other helpful sources of information include:
ParentInfo.Org: Expert information to help children and young people stay safer online.
Keeping Children Safe in Education – DFE
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2
Keeping Children Safe in Education - Translated into 11 different languages. (Translation may not be accurate)
https://www.lgfl.net/digisafe/kcsietranslate
O2 NSPCC
CEOP
https://www.ceop.police.uk/safety-centre/
NSPCC
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/
NHS Live Well
https://www.nhs.uk/livewell/Pages/Livewellhub.aspx
The Lucy Faithful Foundation
Our confidential child sexual abuse prevention helpline (0808 1000 900) is available for anyone with concerns about child sexual abuse. Callers do not need to give identifying information, so can remain anonymous. We speak to thousands of people every year, and help them act to protect children and young people from sexual abuse and exploitation. We can also arrange for you to speak with someone in over 200 different languages. Or you can use our live chat or secure messaging service.
Anti-Bullying and Hate Incidents
At Leeds West Academy, we are determined to provide our students with a safe, secure and happy environment in which to learn. We expect high standards of behaviour and do our best to encourage our students to develop into responsible and valued members of the community.
Bullying includes
- Deliberately hurtful behaviour
- Repeated often over a period of time
- Difficult for those being bullied to defend themselves against
It usually takes one of four forms
- Physical e.g. hitting, fighting, taking belongings
- Verbal e.g. name-calling, insulting remarks – Any verbal bullying that is construed as racist, sexist or homophobic will result in a significant sanction. Leeds West Academy adopts a zero tolerance policy on this form of deeply offensive bullying
- Indirect e.g. rumour-mongering, excluding someone from social groups
- Cyber-bullying e.g. texting, use of websites etc
Raising awareness through the curriculum
- Bullying is a major element of the transition process, Citizenship lessons and Form Time programme in Year 7 so that students are immediately aware that bullying behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerated
- Citizenship lessons in Key Stage 3, and Form Time activities throughout KS3, KS4 and Post 16 continue to address the problem of bullying and peer pressure during the examination of other topics, such as drugs, and adolescence
- Leeds West Academy is proud to be working towards The Diana Award and developing the role of Anti-Bully Ambassadors
- Form tutors are encouraged to discuss bullying as and when appropriate
- English and Drama lessons may be used to explore bullying issues
- Assemblies are periodically used as a vehicle for raising awareness, using relevant examples
- Audits are taken, through questionnaires of students’ experiences of bullying which then inform the Citizenship and SPACE curriculum
- An Anti-bullying week will take place each year, to raise awareness of different types of bullying and explore ways to prevent it from happening
- Procedures for dealing with incidents to include recording on BehaviourWatch as a ‘Bullying or Hate’ Incident
- All incidents are treated seriously by staff and referred to the Form Tutor/Year Manager or senior member of staff as soon as possible
- Written statements are taken from all students involved
- Both the ‘victim’ and the ‘bully’ are made aware that the academy views any instance of bullying very seriously
- It is imperative that the victim is supported and is given help
- Every effort must be made to resolve the situation immediately. Where appropriate, ‘victim’ and ‘bully’ should be brought together to discuss the incident
- Follow up procedures should check that the bullying has not resumed
- The lead member of staff will judge the seriousness of the incident. In the case of a minor ‘one off’ incident, in which no physical harm is done, a reprimand may be sufficient. More serious or persistent cases will necessitate the involvement of senior leaders. In these cases, parents must be informed and invited into the academy
- Sanctions must be clear, consistent and appropriate to the seriousness of the incident
- Where other strategies do not resolve the problem, permanent exclusion may be justified in the most serious and persistent cases, particularly where violence is involved
- When investigating a fight, it is important to identify whether it has arisen through bullying. If a student has been severely provoked, this must be taken into account when dealing with the incident. If both parties have been provoked by third parties, it is important to identify the provocateur(s) and deal with them appropriately. N.B. We must never give the impression that we condone retaliation, although we should treat incidents of this nature sensitively
Student support
Once the incident has been dealt with, it is important that there are no further problems. The victim must be able to alert the Form Tutor/Year Manager, senior member of staff of any repercussions and strategies should be put into place to allow this to happen. Similarly, the bully must be monitored so that no further incidents occur.
Please visit our Policies Page to view the following policies:
- Anti-Bullying Policy
- Safeguarding Policy
- Whistleblowing Policy
Support for Young Carers
Cost of Living Support Information
making your money count external 005 .pdf
cmt22 088 mic concertina inner pages print.pdf
Other Supporting Policies
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Click the following link to view statutory guidance: Keeping children safe in education - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) |
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Guidance for Safer working practice for those working with children and young people |
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Visit our Policy Page to download our Positive Behaviour Policy |
Key Online Resources to support the PREVENT Duty - combating extremism and radicalisation:
NSPCC Report Abuse in Education - Our new @educationgovuk helpline is now here for both children and adults who are victims of recent or historic sexual harassment and abuse in schools or education.
help@nspcc.org.uk or call 0800 136 663
Prevent Tragedies – website by the UK Police and other partners
http://www.preventtragedies.co.uk
FAST [Families against Stress and Trauma] – UK based organisation
http://www.familiesmatter.org.uk/
On-line support for Young People:
https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/your-feelings/anxiety-stress-panic/worries-about-the-world/
Extreme Dialogue - aims to build resilience to radicalisation among young people through a series of open-access educational resources and engaging short films that foster critical thinking and digital literacy skills. http://extremedialogue.org/
The Formers project - aims to tell the stories of four former extremists in their own words. The resources are still in development - http://connectfutures.org/formers/
Interactive training service focusing exploring issues such as difference - website provides short clips also on YouTube. http://meandyoueducation.co.uk
Inspire - Inspire is a counter-extremism and women's rights organisation. [http://www.wewillinspire.com/working-with-schools/school-resources/] It has produced a powerful film with members of Muslim communities to challenge the recruitment narrative of ISIL and that of far right extremists. Inspire have also produced a free online resource for schools on their role in challenging Islamist inspired extremism.
"Miriam's Vision: A Response to the 2005 London Bombings" a collection of unique, curriculum-based lesson plans, accompanying resources and guidance notes for teachers of pupils with age range 11 to 14 years.
Since 9/11 – a new teaching resource for schools for KS3 and above but elements could be used at Primary. Good cross curricular links and links with teaching fundamental British values.
Let’s Talk About it – this is an initiative designed to provide practical help and guidance to the public in order to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. This provides further information and support on Prevent including resources and videos.
Channel and Prevent Multi-Agency Panel (PMAP) guidance- Channel and PMAP are part of the Prevent strategy. The process is a multi-agency approach to identify and support individuals at risk of being drawn into terrorism.
Channel and Prevent Multi-Agency Panel (PMAP) guidance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Support for Parents
Home | Bramley Cluster - Children and Family Services
Crisis Support - Live Well Leeds
Bramley Care Bears | Neighbourly
On-line Safety training for pupils
Vodafone: Digital Parenting (Issue 5)
The Parent Zone in association with Vodafone have released the latest version of the highly recommended Digital Parenting magazine. The resource is free to access online and contains useful and practical information on a variety of subjects (Issue 5
contains reference to Digital Resilience).
https://www.vodafone.com/content/digital-parenting.html/
NSPCC NetAware
A really useful resource guide to help adults stay up to date with
the social networks children use. The resource highlights various
popular social media apps and provides an explanation of what it
is, age ratings, why it is popular and points to be aware of.
Counter Terrorism Policing
We are working with Counter Terrorism Policing to help keep everyone safe this summer. We are supporting their summer campaign, encouraging the public to stay alert and report anything that doesn’t feel right to security.
We all have a role to play in keeping each other safe. The safety of our school community is our priority and that’s why we have robust safeguarding systems and processes in place, including the “reporting concerns” button on our academy website.
You can play your part by trusting your instincts, and if you see something that doesn’t feel right, tell security. Our teams will take every report seriously. You won’t be wasting their time.
Here are some quick tips to help you have a safe and enjoyable time:
- Arrive early, allowing more time for security checks and measures
- Be patient with security checks. It might seem inconvenient, but they are in place to help you.
- Keep it simple and minimise what you carry. Fewer bags to search will speed up entry.
- Stay alert and look out for each other. If you see something that doesn’t feel right, tell security. Don’t leave it to someone else.
- Don’t leave bags unattended. Never agree to look after a stranger’s bag, no matter how genuine they seem.
- If there is an incident, listen to staff and any announcements.
In an emergency, always call 999.
Have an amazing time, and if you see something that doesn’t feel right, report it to security straight away. Thank you for playing your part.
Fake News
4 Quick Checks
https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/blog/fake-news-4-quick-checks
Can you separate the fact from the fiction?
The new interactive BBC iReporter game - aimed at youngsters aged 11 to 18 - gives you the chance to take on the role of a journalist in the BBC newsroom.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/school-report-43391188
Support regarding media coverage of terrorist incidents
Safety campaign – Advice for Young People on how to react in the unlikely event they are caught in a gun or knife terror attack.
Run, Hide, Tell: Advice For Young People
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxurz-wohT1dqkuuj0XkcB_BYvCcH--J9
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