Safeguarding

Keeping children safe is everyone’s responsibility.

At Broadfield Specialist School we have a dedicated, passionate and knowledgeable safeguarding team, who work closely with our families to best meet their needs.  We have a holistic wrap around approach and ensure that no stone is left unturned to ensure our students are protected and nurtured.

We are committed to safeguarding, we promote the safety and welfare of all of our students and strive to ensure all staff and volunteers share in this duty. We are committed to working together with various agencies in and around Lancashire to ensure our school community is safe.  We offer early help to students and families to develop resilience and positively improve their lived experiences.

If you or your child have any concerns, please speak to a member of our safeguarding team. Alternatively, concerns can be reported online using the ‘report a safeguarding concern’ tab.

Early Help at Broadfield

At Broadfield Specialist School we recognise how challenging day to day family life can be. School play a role in supporting families to address these difficulties through more focused pastoral support, which might include requesting support via an external agency. If you, as a family, are struggling, have any worries or concerns about your child, our Early Help offer can provide much needed support and advice. This may include concerns about behaviour, mental health or general wellbeing.

Please speak to us to discuss possible support needs.

What is Early Help?

Early help means providing support to our children and their families as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life.

There are many ways in which we can help as outlined in our offer of early help below.

• Advice and support to promote good attendance
• Liaising with external services e.g. Housing and Children Social Care.
• Help to complete paperwork and forms e.g. court appearances, housing, school letters, grant applications and benefits.
• Referrals to outside agencies e.g. Continence service, Paediatric Learning Disability Team and Speech and Language Therapists.
• Emotional support for parents
• Information on local specialist training events linked to additional needs through the termly SEND newsletter
• School Nurse support
• Early Help Assessment – this may involve support from external agencies
• Children and Family Wellbeing pastoral visits
• Providing information and signposting to other services in your local area.
• Pre loved uniform

Early Help is consent based. If consent from parents/carers is withdrawn, the process stops.

https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/practitioners/supporting-children-and-families/

What is an Early Help Assessment?

The Early Help Assessment is an intervention with a family to gather, explore and analyze information about all aspects of the child or young person and their family life. This will support us to identify areas where change will address and support the childs needs and positively impact on their lived experiences.

This is recorded on an Early Help Assessment form which includes the family’s Early Help Plan.

Working alongside families from a holistic, strength-based approach areas of support are first identified, this will help to prevent escalation and the need for more intensive and specialist intervention.

Following an Early Help Assessment, regular Team Around the Family (TAF) meetings are held to share updates and discuss any actions required to meet and support needs.

The Early Help Assessment and Plan features a family radar. The family radar is linked to the cycle of change and will help you to identify which areas of support your family need the most. By completing a family radar you will also have an understanding of what point on the cycle of change you are at.

Your Family’s Early Help Assessment and family RADAR has replaced the CAF document.

At Broadfield we follow the Working Well with Children and Families Guidance

https://www.lancashiresafeguarding.org.uk/media/19299/wwwcf-part-1-and-2-final.pdf

Lancashire CSAP (Children’s Safeguarding Assurance Partnership)

The CSAP website is full of useful safeguarding and CP information.

https://www.safeguardingpartnership.org.uk/

Operation Encompass

Broadfield Specialist School has commitment to Operation Encompass. The lead person for Operation Encompass is Deputy DSL – Mrs Michelle Healy
www.operationencompass.org

Prevent

Under section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, all schools are subject to a duty to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”, known as the Prevent duty, forming part of the school’s wider safeguarding obligations. The school’s procedures for carrying out the Prevent duty, including how it will engage and implement the Channel programme, are outlined in the Prevent Duty.

Information sharing

The school recognises the importance of proactive information sharing between professionals and local agencies in order to effectively meet students needs and identify any need for early help. Considering the above, staff are aware that whilst the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 place a duty on schools to process personal information fairly and lawfully, they also allow for information to be stored and shared for Safeguarding purposes – data protection regulations do not act as a barrier to sharing information where failure to do so would result in the student being placed at risk of harm. Staff members will ensure that fear of sharing information does not stand in the way of their responsibility to promote the welfare and safety of students.

Confidentiality

Information received is treated sensitively with the strictest confidence and respect, and is only shared on a need-to-know basis. All student information is logged and stored on CPOMS. CPOMS is the market leading software solution for storage & monitoring safeguarding and wellbeing information.

Safer Recruitment

Broadfield Specialist School is committed to keeping students safe by ensuring that adults who work or volunteer in school are safe to do so.

We therefore ensure that the Lancashire County Council Human Resources Guidance is adhered to, to ensure that there is a strong reference and commitment to safeguarding during advertisement, selection and recruitment of new staff. An enhanced DBS check with barred list information will be undertaken for all staff members engaged in regulated activity.

The school keeps an SCR which records all staff, including agency and third-party supply staff (for longer placements), and teacher trainees on salaried routes, who work at the school. All members of the proprietor body are also recorded on the SCR. This is stored electronically on CPOMS – Staff-safe.

Multi-Agency Links

The school contributes to multi-agency working as part of its statutory duty. The school is aware of and will follow the local safeguarding arrangements. Further details can be found at www.safeguardingpartnership.org.uk

The school will be fully engaged, involved, and share information with local safeguarding arrangements. Once the school is named as a relevant agency by local safeguarding partners, it will follow its statutory duty to cooperate with the published arrangements in the same way as other relevant agencies.

The school will work with Children & Family Well – Being Team, CSC, the Police, Health services and other relevant partners and agencies for the benefit of families and children ensuring contribution to multi-agency plans to provide additional support.

Where a need for early help is identified, the school will allow access for CSC from the host LA and, where appropriate, a placing LA, for that LA to conduct (or consider whether to conduct) a section 17 or 47 assessment.

Broadfield Specialist School also recognises the particular importance of inter-agency working in identifying and preventing CSE and CCE.