An insight into
Safeguarding
At the Learning Community Trust
We consider
Safeguarding to be at the forefront of all practises
The Trust demands and expects safeguarding to be at the forefront of all practice within our academies. We consider the safety and well-being of our students, staff, and community to be the highest priority, we recognise that placing safeguarding as a golden thread throughout all areas of our academies will lead to a culture of safe and happy children.
In order to fulfil this expectation, the Trust recognises the national and importantly the local context of our academies. In driving national priorities and being secure in our local contextualised knowledge we are able to inform and direct our academies programmes to ensure the needs of students and staff are met.
The key priorities of our safeguarding programme are:
- Education, training, and recreation
- Physical and mental health and emotional well-being
- Protection from harm and neglect
- Contribution children make to society
- Social and economic well-being
Child protection and safeguarding policy process
To ensure the trust vision for safeguarding and its execution in each academy the need for high quality polices is essential. As a result, the Trust holds a service level agreement with the local authority to provide an agreed template for child protection and safeguarding within academies that fulfils all national expectation and guidance. This draft policy and the linked documents create a spine for each academy to adapt specifically to the local and academy specific setting. Each child protection/safeguarding policy is updated at least annually, and when legislation changes. This policy is approved by the Trust lead designated safeguarding lead, the Local governing Body and is published on each academy website.
There is a Trust wide staff code of conduct in place which staff receive annually or when they join the organisation as part of a safeguarding induction process.
In addition, there are also Trust wide procedures covering particular safeguarding issues such as recruitment and selection, allegations against staff, attendance, children missing in education, radicalisation, whistleblowing, mobile phone usage, lone working, alternative provision and work experience in place.
To see the academy specific documentation for safeguarding please follow the below links:
Safeguarding
Education and training
The education of safeguarding within all of our academies is one of the most important vehicles to ensure our staff can identify and deal appropriately with safeguarding concerns and for our children to be able to manage their lives safely both within the school and beyond.
- Raising awareness of safeguarding among staff – All our academies adhere to Keeping Children Safe in Education, statutory safeguarding guidance from the Department for Education; all our staff, Trustees, Members and Governors are directed and tested to ensure they understand the information, then sign to say they have read the required sections of this guidance.
- Safeguarding training – All our staff undergo safeguarding training, this is recorded in each academy, and regularly updated to meet statutory requirements. All our designated safeguarding leads receive annual training through the local authority and additional specific CPD. To ensure training is current our designated safeguarding leads attend termly updates and further training in response to local and national issues. All designated safeguarding leads complete the full retraining as required and access regular supervision.
- Raising awareness of safeguarding among students – All our academies are embedded into a culture of safeguarding as it is threaded into specific PSHE and RSE lessons alongside a broader range of curriculum subjects and enrichment.
It is expected that schools are responsive to current issues and adapt curriculums to meet immediate needs. In addition, regular newsletters, school displays and initiatives are to be employed by each academy.
In addition, student and parent voice is an important component within each academy to gauge understanding of key areas of safeguarding and then using this information to drive curriculum changes. This powerful asset is in line with the UN convention on the rights of the child. Academy leadership of safeguarding – It a priority for each of the academies to have the capacity within their safeguarding teams to meet the context of the setting. Each academy has a designated safeguarding lead. Academies are encouraged to develop a wider safeguarding team through training of additional designated safeguarding leads who support students and staff, having capacity to liaise with other agencies. The designated safeguarding leads are always available to staff during school hours and can be contacted out of school hours in emergencies. Staff raise any concerns about pupils’ welfare with their designated safeguarding teams, who will then make decisions about referrals. A referral is made immediately, in line with the Telford & Wrekin threshold guidance where a child is in immediate danger or at risk of harm.
In addition, the Trust place a significant level of responsibility upon the role of Local Governing Body when monitoring safeguarding issues, procedures, and outcomes. Each academy must have a link governor for safeguarding whose responsibility is to meet with the lead designated safeguarding lead and Principal to evaluate academies’ actions verses clear criteria. Those minuted meetings are then shared with the full governing body so they all very aware of strengths and areas for development. This process is mirrored at Trustee level to ensure overall compliance and monitoring.
This monitoring by external professionals is further enhanced by the service level agreement with the Local Authority. Telford and Wrekin provide a centralised service that includes high quality CPD, one to one advice and support in addition to full audits of our schools. These in-depth reviews cover all aspects of safeguarding from culture to compliance and full reports are circulated to Local Governing Bodies, Trustees as well as school leaders.
Our Trust
Safeguarding systems
Induction/safer recruitment
All adults working in our academies, including members, trustees, governors, third party staff, casual staff and volunteers, all undergo appropriate safer recruitment checks, including the correct level of Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Anyone engaged in ‘regulated activity’ also undergoes an enhanced DBS check with barred list information. Checks are all recorded on each academy single central record (SCR) and LCT Central team on LCT’s SCR. The Company Secretary has access to all our academies SCRs and ensures they are up to date and compliant.
Certain individuals are disqualified from providing childcare or managing early year’s provision or out-of-school-hours childcare for under-8s. Our academies do not employ a disqualified person to work in a relevant setting.
At least one person on any appointment panel in our Academies must have undertaken safer recruitment training.
Dealing with specific safeguarding issues
The Trust ensures that all our staff are aware of the indictors of abuse and neglect. As well as specific safeguarding issues such as radicalisation, child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, children missing in education, mental health, serious violence, and child on child abuse.
All our teachers understand that they should speak to the DSLs with any concerns on female genital mutilation (FGM) BUT that they are required by law to report to the police any concerns about FGM carried out on a girl aged under 18.
Trust ICT infrastructure
Appropriate internet filters and monitoring systems are in place in all our academies to keep children and young people safe online. This is informed by the risk assessment required by the Prevent Duty. Our students receive regular assemblies and learn in curriculum time how to be safe on social media. Parents can access support and advice from their child’s academy, we provide information on websites as well as parent sessions.
LCT Central Team
All LCT staff are based at Corner House and therefore abide by individual academies safeguarding policy and procedures when visiting. They all undertake annual safeguarding training as part of their role. Within the LCT team we always have a minimum of one DSL who oversees all aspects of safeguarding. If a member of the LCT central team needs to report any concerns regarding safeguarding practices in one of our academies, they report it directly to the Trust’s lead designed safeguarding lead via the Company Secretary.
Trust Safeguarding Staffing Structure
To ensure the trusts own culture is embedded the members and trustees are all appropriately trained having read and understood Keeping Children Safe in Education, Working Together to Safeguard Children and what to do if you’re worried a child is being abused: advice for practitioners.
Paul Roberts is the lead designated safeguarding lead for the Learning Community Trust. It is the role of the Trust lead designated safeguarding lead to feedback to Trustees and support their quality assurance work within our academies such as the monitoring of peer on peer abuse.
The Learning Community Trust has developed its own safeguarding structure and has also developed a team of staff that support our young people and staff.
- Christine Davies (Trustee) – Safeguarding link trustee
- Paul Roberts – Trust Designated Safeguarding Lead, Prevent and CPD
- Nikki Morrison – Trust Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead, Attendance, Welfare, Mental Health and Early Help Lead
- Veronica Croft – Trust Compliance Officer
Trust Monitoring and Responsibilities
The Trust leadership and Trustees have the following recognised responsibilities:
- To ensure that safeguarding and associated policies are in place at all academies
- To ensure that all staff meet the requirements of keeping children safe in education, working together to safeguard children 18 and the statutory framework for early years foundation stages
- Ensure safer recruitment procedures are followed in all academies
- To ensure that all trustees have attended appropriate training
- To ensure that best practice for safeguarding is shared across the trust
- To ensure that appropriate funding is available to deliver all aspects of safeguarding education and training
- To monitor child on child abuse between children, attendance, and other key indicators of the current safeguarding position
- To ensure a full understanding of GDPR obligations
- To ensure that safeguarding is on the agenda for all appropriate meetings
Our academies policy sites
Allscott Meads
Burton Borough
Charlton
Crudgington
Ercall Wood
Hadley Learning Community Primary
Hadley Learning Community Secondery
Kickstart
Lantern Academy
Queensway
Severndale
Telford Priory
