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Safeguarding and support for pupils

 
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NAHT members are at the forefront of safeguarding children. School leaders are committed to keeping children safe, so they can learn well. NAHT believes that all pupils should receive the support they need to maintain their well-being and achieve their potential, both within school and from wider services including health and social care.

NAHT is campaigning to:

Enable schools to play their part in supporting pupils' well-being

  • Lobby for pupils and schools to get the support they need from wider services including health, social care, police and youth services
  • Influence the implementation of the proposals from the mental health green paper, including the senior lead for mental health and mental health support teams
  • Support schools to access relevant, high-quality training and resources to enable pupils to exercise their right to support for their mental well-being.

 

Support schools to safeguard and protect pupils

  • Engage with the DfE over proposed changes to the role of the Designated Safeguarding Lead
  • Influence changes to Keeping Children Safe In Education, Working Together and Sexual Violence and harassment guidance
  • Campaign to improve online safety for children and young people
  • Press the government to ensure home educated children are adequately safeguarded
  • Promote guidance and resources to support schools to protect children at risk of harm including involvement with violence and other crime.

 

Enable schools to support vulnerable groups of pupils

  • Campaign to ensure pupils with SEND can receive the support they need from schools and wider services
  • Press for improved alternative provision and collaborative approaches across communities to support pupils excluded from school
  • Provide information to schools to help them to support disadvantaged children
  • Enable schools to make informed decisions regarding parental requests to home educate
  • Ensure reforms to behaviour guidance and networks is evidence-based and appropriate for all schools and a diverse pupil population. 
 

Investigating and strengthening child safeguarding and protection responses in light of the covid-19 pandemic

King's College London is conducting a study: "Protecting children at a distance: investigating and strengthening child safeguarding and protection responses consequent upon covid-19 lockdown/social distancing measures". The study investigates challenges to multi-agency child protection/safeguarding practice posed by the covid-19 lockdown and social distancing measures, and it identifies emerging and innovative good practice solutions. NAHT is part of the Expert Reference Group, representing the education sector, to support and influence this work's design and outputs. 

A report has been published covering the first stage of the study in which 67 interviews were conducted between June and September 2020 with safeguarding leaders in London. These leaders came from safeguarding partnerships, children's social care, health, police, law, education and mental health services. If you would like to read the full report, you can access it here. 

The study offered detailed findings on the impact of covid-19 on the safeguarding continuum, multi-agency working and professional practice. It identified a number of overarching trends and issues related to safeguarding and protection arising from the response to the covid-19 pandemic. These were as follows: 

  • While members of all disciplines engaged in child safeguarding exhibited extraordinary commitment, resilience, and creativity, lockdown imposition exposed some inadequacies in contingency plans and poor resilience. This was even though no agencies reported significant reductions in overall staff capacity 
  • Participants highlighted an urgent need for the government to recognise the long-term, multifaceted harm to children that is the pandemic's likely legacy. This harm is likely to arise from a number of areas including reduced educational attainment and employment opportunities to increased mental ill-health and delayed disclosure of maltreatment 
  • The pandemic has both exposed and exacerbated inequalities, particularly digital poverty and gendered inequalities. 

 The second stage of the study will comprise a national survey of senior safeguarding practitioners from safeguarding partnerships, children's social care, health, police, law, education and mental health services across England. We will share this survey with members later in January 2021.

First published 11 January 2021

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