Staying Safe
As a school community, our greatest priority is keeping our children safe. We work closely with Hertfordshire Families First to ensure that families needing support get early help and will refer families to children's services where there is a concern about suspected neglect or abuse or may refer families for early help through other agencies, often on a more local level. Our Child Protection Policy can be found on our policies page and is summarised in our guide to safeguarding.
Children were recognised as victims of domestic abuse in their own right in the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act. The school is part of Operation Encompass - a national Police and education early intervention safeguarding partnership which supports children and young people who experience Domestic Violence and Abuse. This means that the Police will share information with our school about all Police-attended Domestic Abuse incidents which involve any of our children.
In order to achieve the very best possible outcomes for themselves and so that they can form and sustain healthy relationships and contribute to society at large, they need to be able to thrive and grow unimpeded by anything or anyone that might cause them harm.
As they grow from babies to toddlers, through childhood and into adolescence, children become more and more independent and need to develop the skills to identify and evaluate risk as well as how to deal with the unexpected. They cannot do this without the help and support of the adults in their lives.
The NSPCC website provides a range of useful information about helping children to stay safe in a variety of different contexts, from stranger danger to substance abuse. Their video below, Pantosarus, can be used as a talking point with children to help them understand about boundaries and about how to keep themselves safe. Age appropriate information for children can be found on the Childline website.
Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE) is the area of the curriculum in which pupils are explicitly taught about keeping themselves safe and healthy and we use the Jigsaw scheme for this. More information can be found here:
Digital Safety Advice for Parents
