Blog – Latest stories tagged 'safeguarding'

Encourage pupils to work together for a better internet with our annual competition

The next ‘Safer Internet Day’ will be the sixteenth edition of the event and will take place worldwide on Tuesday 5th February 2019.

The theme for 'Safer Internet Day 2019' will be ‘Together for a better internet’.

The day aims to inspire young people to use technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively. The theme encourages us to consider what we do online, such as exploring the internet and thinking about how it works, considering where the information comes from and who owns it, being responsible for our own activity in the digital space and taking control of our own online lives.

SID2019 Competition - NOW CLOSED

To celebrate the fantastic work being done through Safer Internet Day activities around the world, we are delighted to be running our annual competition for schools. To get involved, all your pupils have to do is complete the grid as shown below and then tweet their entries from the school Twitter account.

The grid template can be downloaded as part of our free Safer Internet Day assembly available to all members (if you are not already a member, you can join our free membership here), or you can create your own. This can be in simple text, an image or a video. As long as it can be Tweeted and includes @SafeguardingSGE in the message.

To submit your school entries:

1) Simply Tweet your entries including the @SafeguardingSGE from your school Twitter account,
or
2) Submit your entries by email to competition@safeguardingessentials.com and we will Tweet it on your behalf

Entry is open now and schools can enter as many tips as they wish. All entries must be received before midnight on February 1st 2019 to be included in the competition. Please see the competition terms here.

Winners

The winners of our 2019 competition are:

Best Primary School
This entry was submitted by Cwm Glas Primary School in Swansea. Overseeing the project, Claire Howells from the school added "The boys really enjoyed the challenge of making a poster and used the example you provided as a template to build on. They took on board all the information they were given. They even created a background on a painting program so they knew it wasn’t a copyright image. They have been very excited for today to find out the competition winner!"

Best Secondary School
The winner in the secondary school category were the Digital Leaders from Castleford Academy.

Their winning entry can be viewed on Twitter here.

Mr Whitworth from Castleford Academy commented "Digital Leaders is something that we have been slowly developing over the past 12months. Giving pupils more ownership of Digital technologies and its development in the school. We are always on the look out for projects to get involved in. This one is particularly important to us as a school. We had a number of in-depth discussions about what our top tips would be. All pupils enjoyed the involvement in the project and it has been rolled out across the school as part of our Safer Internet Day (week) campaign."

Winning schools each receive one years free membership to Safeguarding Essentials.

Highly Commended

We would like to make a special mention St Wolstans Community School. The pupils there put in a great deal of preparation and organisation to come up with an e-safety song. You can view their video on the school Facebook page

Changes to local safeguarding provisions have begun, but what does this mean for schools?

The Children and Social Work Act 2017 delivered an overhaul to national safeguarding procedures and serious case reviews (SCR) in England. Case reviews had highlighted that there were still lots of gaps in safeguarding and child protection, often attributed to variable practice, underfunding, stretched services and a range of other issues. A number of reviews, including the Wood Review 2016, had identified that things needs to change and improve, which is what the Act attempts to address. Many of us have been waiting to see when the changes would come into effect and, as we sit here in November 2018, we now have a clearer idea of the timeframe for transition.

What will it mean for us?
Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) will disappear and local safeguarding arrangements will be the responsibility of the 3 local partners: the Local Authority; the Chief of Police and Health.

These partners are responsible for:

Geographical boundaries.

Organisation of safeguarding arrangements and their publication.

Which relevant agencies they should work with and how safeguarding arrangements should work in the area.

Schools and other educational partners.

Making arrangements for independent scrutiny of what they do.

Securing funding.

Resolving disputes.

Information requests.

Publishing an annual report about what they have done and how effective it has been.

A new version of “Working Together to Safeguard Children” (2018) is available. The guidance should be read by all relevant practitioners working with children and their families.

“Local Safeguarding — Transitional Arrangements” has also been published to support the process. This describes the procedures to be followed during the transition from LSCBs to local safeguarding partners and to child death review partners. It also covers the transitional arrangements which should be followed during the change from the system of SCRs to the new national and local review arrangements.

The timeframe
Councils and their safeguarding partners will have up to 12 months to agree the new arrangements, and three months to implement the changes. The final deadline date is 29 September 2019. We will need to pay close attention in our local areas to ensure we understand the new arrangements as they come on board.

Once the arrangements have been published and implemented, the LSCB for the local area will be given a "grace" period of up to 12 months to complete and publish outstanding SCRs and of up to four months to complete outstanding child death reviews.

The guidance states that LSCBs must complete all child death reviews by 29 January 2020 and all SCRs by 29 September 2020 at the latest. Once outstanding SCRs and child death reviews have been completed, the LSCB will cease to exist.

What will it mean in our local areas?
Currently, we still don’t know what new arrangements will look like in our local areas. Many areas are currently going through a process of consultation with key stakeholders. In Brighton and Hove, for example, recent discussions have concluded that they are happy with the Local Safeguarding Board model and want that to continue in some form. What that will mean in practice is unclear. What is clear is that each local area final plans must be approved by the Department for Education before being implemented.

The government has also announced that 17 areas of the country, covering 39 local authorities, will act as "early adopters", working with the National Children's Bureau to implement the new arrangements before they are established across the rest of the country.

The early adopters will be tasked with "developing new and innovative approaches to set up multi-agency safeguarding processes and produce clear learning which can be shared across other areas".

Schools: a relevant agency
In the Children and Social Work Act, schools became a “relevant agency” rather than a safeguarding partner. The safeguarding partners are required to involve schools and other education providers in formulating the new arrangements and ensuring they are fit for purpose.

“Working Together” 2018 states: “The safeguarding partners should make arrangements to allow all schools and other educational partners in the local area to be fully engaged and involved, making sure communication is effective.” (p 81)

It acknowledges that schools have an important role to play in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and that schools will continue to be held to account for this by Ofsted.

For many in education safeguarding, this was disappointing as the majority of replies to the “Working Together” consultation document earlier in the year had asked that education become a 4th partner. The response was that, as this idea of education as a partner was not part of the original Act, this was not possible without amendments to the Act itself.

An updated version of “Keeping Children Safe in Education” (KCSIE) went live on 3rd September 2018 to set out the role of education providers in safeguarding. One thing is clear. Those that see and work with children and young people every day will always have a pivotal role to play in local safeguarding.

Updates on the local consultation should be available through your Local Safeguarding Board website.

Have your say: Are the local safeguarding changes an improvement?

Do you think the new arrangements will improve the safeguarding provision for your school or area? Do you think that the transition will be easy? Do you believe schools should be a safeguarding partner rather than a relevant agency? Please use the comments section below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Our partners at Friendly WiFi discuss the topic of public WiFi accessibility

Technology is a vital part of education in schools today from primary right through to secondary and beyond. We are in an age where the foundation of teaching is via some form of technology and a way to interact with students of all ages. Let’s face it, phones, tablets, laptops, gaming, shopping, etc – all the things our kids love to use and do is based around a piece of new age technology so of course they expect no less in their learning journey.

Parents at home are focussed on protecting their kids online from exposure, information and images that they wouldn’t wish them to see and there are many sites providing information that enables them to do their best to stop this happening. At home is an easier scenario to deal with for parents. What about when our kids leave the safety of the home. When they are out and about with their friends after school or our young son or daughter is bored at a family meal. A phone or tablet is not far from their reach and is usually in their hand! The same is when our kids are in school. Phones are used in many lessons for research to drive learning and obviously used by kids in their breaks. Many lessons are in computer rooms or sat at PC’s where talks are set and the internet is accessible.

Great for learning but what about the risk of exposure to indecent images and inappropriate material. By being in school this risk doesn’t automatically disappear, and parents are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers. Many solutions are put in place to protect data and cyber-attacks but the one area that can be easily forgot is a simple filtering solution. This will ensure that the indecent images and inappropriate material is blocked meaning our kids can’t be exposed and ensures that any visitors can’t also access such material. Important – yes of course it is. This type of material can be harmful to kids and their mental health and wellbeing is of paramount importance. It is also a safety net to stop online predators hanging around schools to access this type of material by jumping on their WiFi.

Figures taken from the Safeguarding Essentials - E-safety Checklist 2017/17 suggest that 20% of schools are still failing to implement adequate filtering and monitoring on their school network*

How can Friendly WiFi help?
The Friendly WiFi certification ensures that these filters are in place and this is checked annually giving peace of mind each year. The colourful symbol can be displayed physically in the school to show all visitors and students that the WiFi service is safe and that they are protected. By displaying the symbol online, it is also very visual to anyone wishing to use the service where it clearly shows that the WiFi service blocks inappropriate material. A great message for parents and provides them with peace of mind, brilliant for the school to show how seriously they take online safe and an essential and a certification which is so important in this every changing and challenging technology driven world.

Download a Friendly WiFi guide for teachers and parents

This downloadable document gives guidance on helping students understand how Friendly WiFi can protect them and is also a useful tool to share with parents about the scheme. Join free and download now

Subsidised memberships available

Here are Safeguarding Essentials, we are delighted to have teamed up with Friendly WiFi to offer subsidised membership to those most in need, with up to 100% discount available to qualifying schools.

Our subsidised memberships are allocated based on current Ofsted rating or school status.

Friendly WiFi are also offering their certification service at an exclusive cost to all Safeguarding Essentials members

Discover your discount now!

*The statistics quoted are taken from the Safeguarding Essentials interactive online e-safety checklist, which is available to all Safeguarding Essentials members. The 9 point checklist gives you an outline of the necessary action or procedure that needs to take place in your school, with references to additional information and support if you need them. Find out more