Safeguarding

Keeping Your Child Safe

Bexhill Academy is fully committed to safeguarding our children and this is at the forefront of everything we do in school. Safeguarding means keeping your child happy, healthy and safe. All staff recieve annual safeguarding training and are aware of how to keep our pupils safe and what signs to look out for. Our pupils are encouraged to share any concerns and we have robust policies and processes in place that underpin what we do. These can be accessed below.

We actively support the Government's Prevent Agenda to counter radicalism and extremism and work closely with statutory and voluntary sectors to ensure we fulfill our safeguarding duties.

We are an Operation Encompass School. Operation Encompass directly connects the police with schools to ensure better outcomes for children who are subject or witness to police-attended incidents of domestic abuse. Find out more here

The School has a Designated Safeguarding Governor: Mrs Claire Wheelwright

Image

Further information regarding the legislation schools follow to keep children safe can be found below:

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2021

CHILD PROTECTION

In cases where the school has reason to be concerned that a child may be subject to ill- treatment, neglect or other forms of abuse, the Designated Safeguarding Lead (or deputy) may report this concern to Children’s Services and/or other appropriate agencies. In most cases, any referrals would be discussed with parents first.

Please remember that when the school does refer a concern about a child to the Children’s Services, it is not accusing the parents of abuse but requesting that further investigation takes place to establish whether a child is at risk. We have a duty of care o act in a certain way if concerns arise.

If you are unable to report concerns to one of the Designated Safeguarding Leads in school (for instance when school is closed) you can ring Sunderland’s  Children’s Services directly for advice and to make a referral (Together For Children):

If you have a concern about the safety of a CHILD or YOUNG PERSON (aged under 18) then you should talk to someone immediately, you can contact us on:

  • 0191 520 5560 8:30am to 5:00pm Monday to Thursday and 8:30am to 4:30pm Friday
  • Or the Out of Hours Team on 0191 520 5552 (also available 24 hours Saturday and Sunday)
  • In an emergency always call 999

The following link will provide you with more information:

https://www.togetherforchildren.org.uk/what-we-do/concerned

RECRUITMENT

When recruiting staff we carefully check that all staff and volunteers are safe to work with our children. A number of checks are made including DBS checks, references, ID and employment history. We keep a Single Central Record of all this information and this is regularly monitored.

Visitors and volunteers are rigorously checked in much the same way staff are before they can have any unsupervised access to our children. Any contractors on site have to read the Safeguarding Information Leaflet before being signed into the building. All adults in school wear an appropriate ID badge. Children understand that adults wearing a green badge are safe to work with 1-1.