Safeguarding, SEND and personalized provision remains a professional learning focus. Working with both our Senior Student Welfare Officer and Director of Personalised Learning, I am beginning to develop a wider appreciation of the incredibly important work they undertake. Next week I am visiting an Alternative Provision provider.
What I have I learnt so far? Safeguarding and child protection are not the same thing. Safeguarding represents the action and procedures we have in place for all our pupils. These safeguarding principal should be woven into the fabric of the school, taught through the curriculum, through tutoring and assembly programme, role modelled by staff and adults in the building, through extra-curricular provision and what Andrew Hall refers to as “culture of vigilance.”
I also learnt about our The Prevent duty. Our responsibility to ensure that extremism and radicalization safeguarding concerns that are addressed by existing safeguarding procedures. Hence, perhaps one of the most clear curriculum links and “the possible tension between the rights of parents to withdraw their child from the teaching of RE, and the need for schools to ensure that children understand the ‘diverse… religious and ethnic identities in the UK.’” I have registered to attend a JISC WRAP (Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent) workshop.
Child protection is specifically the procedures we use for pupils who have been significantly harmed or are at risk of such harm. To support my professional development here, I am shadowing our Director of Personalised Learning who is undertaking a referral for one of our pupils. Three points of reflection for my own professional learning would be;
- The breadth of impact one child can exert, school, family (both adults and siblings), peer group, community and the local services.
- The significant risk a child can pose themselves.
- The complexity of cases. How seemingly unconnected or mitigating factors can combine or contribute to a young persons vulnerability.
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