Safeguarding | Avanti Brook Primary School

child protection

& safeguarding

We embrace our moral and statutory responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children. 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 robust procedures to ensure pupils receive effective support, protection, and justice. Please click here to see our Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy.

CHILD PROTECTION & SAFEGUARDING POLICY

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.

Sarah Samuels

DSL for Brook

Claire Mahers

Deputy DSL for Brook

Catherine Bull

Deputy DSL for Brook

Sally Allan

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 500428 | dawn.macdougall@hertsforlearning.co.uk
Children and Young People with Disabilities: 0-25 years: 07812 323854

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 and wider curriculum for pupils to learn about safeguarding.

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

You can access our Safeguarding Curriculum here.

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.

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 the school nurse and risk assessment 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 office.
Children will go to the office where their medicine will be administered by one of the first aid trained office staff. Teachers and/or office staff cannot accept responsibility for timing of the administration of the medicine. Parents are able to come to school to administer the medicine themselves should they be concerned about this.
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 Teacher or Deputy Head Teacher 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

We need written permission from parents/carers for a number of reasons – namely local trips, use of photos. Before children start school, parents are requested to sign a form giving permission for their child to go on local trips less than 1 mile in distance and on foot. A separate permission letter is sent for all other trips. Permission must be given before the day of the trip.

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 Meadows 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 AMPS Behaviour and Exclusion Policy for further information

School Expectations

Avanti Meadows Primary School uses the system of ‘Stay on Green’, which is underpinned by our ‘Six Golden Expectations’*. The expectations are designed to focus on positive action (e.g. be safe in school) rather than what children should not do (e.g. do not run). The rules are agreed actions so that there is consistency and fairness in all areas of school life.

However, as an inclusive school we recognise that all children are individuals with specific needs. Therefore, within this consistent approach is an element of flexibility to address the needs of specific children.

Everyone is responsible for behaviour of all children and adults should reinforce the Golden Expectations whenever appropriate.

Golden Expectations

Be Kind: think of others and help them
Be Safe: look after yourselves and others
Be Respectful: listen carefully and act politely
Be Honest: think before you speak or act
Be Courageous: keep on trying your best
Be Grateful: say 'thank you'

We encourage everyone to use the golden expectations as guidance for how to be live authentically whilst at school.

Educational Visits

We enhance our curriculum by organizing educational visits in the locality and further afield, especially making use of our incredible city. To help fund these visits, which we believe are essential to provide diverse and memorable learning experience we ask for a voluntary contributions from parents. There is no obligation to contribute and no pupil will be restricted from going on a trip. However, in increasingly challenging financial circumstance, if there are insufficient contributions we may have to cancel visits. The school cannot supplement educational 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.

child protection

& safeguarding