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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. 
 

What is contextual safeguarding? Information and resources from the Contextual Safeguarding Network

'Contextual safeguarding' is an approach to safeguarding that responds to young people's experiences of harm outside of the home, for example, with peers, in schools and in neighbourhoods.

The child protection system, therefore, needs to engage with individuals and sectors who do have influence over/within extra-familial contexts, and it needs to recognise that assessment of, and intervention with, these spaces are a critical part of safeguarding practices. Contextual safeguarding expands the objectives of child protection systems with recognition that young people are vulnerable to abuse in a range of social contexts.

Contextual safeguarding has been developed at the University of Bedfordshire over the past six years to inform policy and practice approaches to safeguarding. Contextual safeguarding provides a framework to advance child protection and safeguarding responses to a range of extra-familial risks that compromise the safety and welfare of young people. This briefing for practitioners provides an overview of the operational, strategic and conceptual framework of contextual safeguarding. It collates and summarises learning from multiple publications on the subject of contextual safeguarding with particular reference to the following:

  1. International evidence on why context is important to adolescents' welfare
  2. Contextual safeguarding framework with specific reference to how contexts relate to each other and inform young people's behaviours
  3. Contextual safeguarding system and the role of contextual interventions
  4. Implications of contextual safeguarding for child protection systems and practices.

There is work underway to build a hub of resources to support schools with the implementation of contextual safeguarding, which NAHT will be supporting. To date, the University of Bedfordshire has worked with schools to carry out research and consider what contextual safeguarding means to them. See what's already on offer for schools. 

To find out more about contextual safeguarding, visit the University of Bedfordshire's Contextual Safeguarding Network's website.

First published 20 June 2018

First published 20 June 2018
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