Safeguarding

At Avanti Brook, we recognise our moral and statutory responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of all pupils.

We endeavour to provide a safe and welcoming environment where children are respected and valued. We are alert to the signs of abuse and neglect and follow our procedures to ensure pupils receive effective support, protection, and justice.

Please click here to see our Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy.

Please click here to see our Prevent Duty risk assessment.

Our Safeguarding Team

If you have concerns over a child’s safety, it is your responsibility to inform the designated teacher immediately.

All concerns are taken seriously and confidentially on a need-to-know basis.

Mr Burden

DSL for Brook

Ms Ansell

Deputy DSL for Brook

Mrs Maher

Deputy DSL for Brook

Mrs Bull

Deputy DSL for Brook

Mrs McCulloch

Deputy DSL for Brook

Out of Hours

If your concern is urgent and requires immediate attention, especially outside of school hours, contact the appropriate authorities.

Hertfordshire Council Safeguarding team: 0300 123 4043
Police: 101 or for immediate emergency: 999
FGM – Mandatory reporting: Police on 101
Local Authority Designated Officer for Allegations: LADO: Dawn MacDougall 07741 500 428 | dawn.macdougall@hertsforlearning.co.uk
Children and Young People with Disabilities: 0-25 years: 07812 323 854

Whistleblowing

The Avanti Schools Trust Policy can be found here.

The NSPCC Whistleblowing Advice Line can be reached at 0808 800 5000 and is available 8.00am – 10.00pm Monday to Friday and 9.00am – 6.00pm at the weekend.

You can also email help@NSPCC.org.uk at any time. It’s free and reporting can be anonymous. More Information can be found here.

Safeguarding Curriculum

Safeguarding is of high importance, and we want to teach each and every one of our pupils how to stay safe in and outside of school.

We ensure that opportunities are identified in the taught curriculum and wider curriculum for pupils to learn about safeguarding.

We are sensitive in our teaching and recognise that some more sensitive subjects need to be taught at an age appropriate level, or by specialist services or one-to-one level where a more urgent need arises.

Operation Encompass

Operation Encompass is a scheme by which police inform the child’s school soon after a domestic abuse incident occurring within the family. Children can be significantly physically or emotionally harmed when this is the case and the information received will be used to make sure the right support is available for children and their families. This will usually happen by the start of the next school day.

Operation Encompass will ensure that a specially trained member of the school staff, known as the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), is informed. The DSL can then use the information that has been shared, in confidence, to ensure the wellbeing of the child.

The school will be able to make provisions or adjustments to assist for any difficulties experienced by the child or the families involved.

We are committed to offering the best support possible to all our pupils and we believe this scheme is extremely beneficial for all involved.

Support for Parents and Pupils

The following sections provide useful links to further information.

Addiction
SupportLine - SupportLine provides a confidential telephone helpline offering emotional support to any individual on any issue. The Helpline is primarily a preventative service and aims to support people before they reach the point of crisis. SupportLine is open to any individual of any age. Calls are received from children, young adults and adults.

Frank - Talk to Frank for facts, support and advice on drugs and alcohol.
Bereavement
Childhood Bereavement Network - A hub for those working with bereaved children, young people and their families across the UK.

Grief Encounter - We work closely with individuals, families, schools and professionals to offer a way through the anxiety, fear and isolation so often caused by grief.

Hope Again – Supporting young people coping with bereavement and living after loss.

Winston's Wish – Supporting children and their families after the death of a parent or sibling.
Bullying
Anti-Bullying Alliance - The Anti-Bullying Alliance is a coalition of organisations and individuals that are united against bullying.

Bullying UK - Bullying UK, part of Family Lives, is a leading charity providing advice and support to anyone affected by bullying.

Ditch the Label - Advice, information and tips for young people who are being bullied or are affected by bullying.
Children Missing
Runaway Helpline - Runaway Helpline is here if you are thinking about running away, if you have already run away, or if you have been away and come back.
Crime
Fearless - Fearless is a service that allows you to pass on information about crime 100% anonymously.
Domestic Abuse
Wellbeing Connect Services (WCS) – offers a one-stop-shop care approach to families experiencing mental health and domestic abuse through variety of services.

Refuge - Refuge supports women, children & men experiencing domestic violence with a range of services.
Honour-Based Abuse
AFRUCA - AFRUCA works in UK BAME communities to protect and safeguard children from abuse and harm.

Karma Nirvana - Karma Nirvana is an award-winning British human rights charity supporting victims of honour-based abuse and forced marriage.
Housing
Shelter - Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support, and legal services.
LGBTQ+
Stonewall - Information and support for LGBTQ+ communities and their allies.
Mental Health
Anxiety UK - Anxiety UK is a national registered charity for those affected by anxiety, stress and anxiety based depression.

Beat - Beat is the UK's eating disorder charity. We exist to end the pain and suffering caused by eating disorders.

CALM - The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is leading a movement against suicide.

Harmless - Harmless is a passionate organisation who works to address and overcome issues related to self-harm and suicide.

Heads Together - Heads Together work to ensure that people feel comfortable with their own and their friends and family everyday mental health and well being.

MindEd - MindEd for Families has advice and information from trusted experts and will help you to understand what problems occur, what you can do to best support your family, and how to take care of yourself.

Samaritans – Samaritans is a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope, or at risk of suicide

Self Harm UK – Access to Alumina. Alumina is a free, online 7 week course for young people struggling with self-harm.

Young Minds - The UK’s leading charity fighting for children and young people's mental health.
Online Safety
Thinkuknow - Thinkuknow is the education programme from NCA-CEOP, a UK organisation which protects children both online and offline.

UK Safer Internet Centre - Advice about smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and other internet-connected devices.

Net Aware - Your guide to apps, games and social media sites.
Parent Support
Click – Click is a unique service providing early intervention relationship support from a mobile-friendly platform. Individuals, couples, families and professionals can use Click to access helpful, evidence-based support from a secure, mobile-friendly space.

DAD.Info – Europe’s largest advice and support website for fathers. It celebrates the changing role of Dads with engaging, helpful, practical, entertaining resources and content for every stage of their journey. It is home to the largest connected community of active, involved Dads through its interactive forum, providing great peer to peer support and advice for what can be one of the most challenging and rewarding life experiences.

Netmums – The UK’s most relevant, inclusive and supportive parenting community, welcoming millions of parents every month to explore forums, parenting content, recipes, local listings, product reviews and courses.

Relate – The UK's largest provider of relationship support. Here to help you make the most of your couple and family relationships, past, present or future. Services include Relationship Counselling for individuals and couples, Family Counselling, Mediation, Children and Young People's Counselling.
Sexual Abuse
The Havens - support anyone in London who has been raped or sexually assaulted in the past 12 months including men, women, young people and children of all ages. The service offers treatment, advice and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mosac - Mosac helps all non-abusing parents and carers whose children have been sexually abused.

Stop It Now - Stop It Now! offers anonymous and confidential support to help you prevent child sexual abuse.

The Lucy Faithful Foundation - The Lucy Faithfull Foundation is the only UK-wide child protection charity dedicated solely to preventing child sexual abuse.

Support for Parents and Pupils

The following sections provide useful links to further information.

Medicine & Sickness

We will administer medication that has been prescribed by a doctor to avoid children missing too much time from school. Our procedure must be followed:

Complete a Medicine at School form (obtainable at the school office)
Long term complaints (asthma/diabetes) will require meeting with our medical and welfare staff and Health Care Plan agreed.
Medicine should be brought to the school by the parent (Not the child) and handed to the office staff.
Medicines must be clearly labelled with your doctor’s label, contents, child’s name, and dosage. Medicines should be locked in the first aid cabinet or medical fridge.
Staff trained in administration of medication/first aid will administer this medication.
Under no circumstances should medicines be kept in cloakrooms or classrooms. This will eliminate the risk of the wrong child taking the medicine.
The school can only administer medication, which has been prescribed by a doctor (including Calpol and Piriton).

If your child is sick at school, a trained first aider will attend and in consultation with the Head of School or Assistant Principal will decide how to proceed and may decide to send home.

Please note that in line with guidance, children who have been vomiting or suffered from diarrhoea must not return to school until 48 hours following the last episode.

Special Educational Needs (SEN)

Following our vision and mission statement, we expect all children to be challenged in their learning. We encourage children to take risks, to be reflective learners who build the skills to be able to manage learning in all aspects of their lives.

All children will need support at different points of their learning journey. We know that a child’s ability to learn is not ‘determined at birth’ but is rather constantly evolving. We move away from describing children as ‘bright’ or high ability/low ability but look to find ways to help a child transform – their transformability.

Some children have specific and special education needs (behavioural need, learning need, social need etc). Some need extra support; some need more challenge. We are vigilant in identifying children’s needs, working in collaboration with parents/carers and other services to support their needs. Alison McCulloch is the HUB inclusion Lead with considerable experience in this field. Should you have concerns please do not hesitate to contact her to arrange an appointment.

Our home visits are an opportunity to discuss how your child learns at home, their development from birth and any issues that have arisen. Being open and honest will help us all achieve the best strategy to support your child to achieve.

Parental Permission

During the enrolment process we will request consent from parents / carers for a number of reasons; for example to attend events for academic enrichment, trips, tours, photography/video usage and so on. These consents will be required prior to any trip and if consent is not received pupils will be expected to attend school whilst the trip/tour goes ahead.

Children without written permission will not be able to go on the trip, but will still be expected in school.

Parents are also asked to sign giving permission for the school to take photos for displays, for use in children’s books and classrooms, the school website, school promotion; this is common practice in UK primary schools. Names are never associated with individuals. Without this permission children are restricted from taking full part in the life of the school. We follow our safeguarding principles at all times.

Positive Behaviour Management Aims

Our behaviour policy intends to instil and develop positive behaviours related to our values driven curriculum with humble, respectful, grateful people who have courage to take risks, well developed self- discipline and who act with integrity and empathy. We aim for everyone to be included so that everyone sees themselves as part of a happy learning community and part of making the world a better place.

We have very high expectations of our school community’s behaviour and hope to develop children’s understanding of the impact of choices they make, whether positive or negative.

Good behaviour and achievement is not automatically learned. Instead, positive behaviours must be modelled, explained, taught, supported and recognised.

At Avanti Brook we care for and respect all life-human, animal and plant-and live in a way that causes the least possible harm.

Please read our ABPS Behaviour and Exclusion Policy for further information

Educational Visits

We enhance our curriculum by organizing educational visits in the locality and further afield.

Parents are expected to pay for trips to cover transport and venue costs. Parents are not obliged to pay, and children are not prevented from attending trips. We cannot however run trips at a loss and will cancel if we do not receive sufficient funds to cover costs as the school cannot supplement visits.

Home Learning

Children are encouraged to pursue their learning out of school; we have a number of expectations:

Children should be read to every day (by parents, grandparents, cousins, siblings, friends). This could be a favourite story repeated, or a new story. Research shows that telling the same story to children helps builds their literacy.
Children should read a book every day (EYFS: 10 minutes; Year 1-3 15 minutes). By the age of 10 children are expected to read at least 8 books each month.
Children should learn Maths facts (timestable off by heart; Number bonds (e.g. 1+9=10, 2+8=10 etc; and number bonds to 20, 50, 100)
Children should learn sight words.
Children will be assigned home learning projects each term. These will require children to investigate, research, write, build models, design, think creatively, work with their family.
Home work sheets are NOT given each week. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that homework sheets impact on children’s understanding.

safeguarding