We take this moment to acknowledge the anniversary of the deaths of Max, Mason, Darrien, Mohammed, Fares and Joury. These tragedies have been felt acutely by immediate families and wider communities, whom we continue to support in our day-to-day work. We appreciate many of you have been affected personally and professionally when working with your communities in response to these incidents. Please do make use of your employee assistance programmes and speak to your manager for support, if you need assistance with supporting your community feel free to reach out to your safeguarding advisor.
Responding to Critical Incidents - Guidance for Senior Leaders in Schools and Education Settings - if your setting has yet to take up our free training we still have some spaces for upcoming dates on the 17th March and 17th June 2025.
Safeguarding is everybody’s business. We acknowledge Designated Safeguarding Leads do a lot!
To save you time and capacity, we’ve produced a video resource to cascade for wider members of the safeguarding team, governance and other members of the senior leadership team – please do share with your colleagues. You’ll also find slides from the DSL networks if you need access to them - Click here for the PowerPoint slides
There is a slight increase in measles cases in the Bristol and Gloucester areas, even though there are small numbers, it is important for everyone to be reminded of what to do if there is a suspected case of measles in your setting. Any suspected measles cases should be reported to swhpt@ukhsa.gov.ukwho can also offer advice.
Alternative provision - GOV.UK
Updated guidance to reflect changes in related policies and added sections on unregistered alternative provision and use of in-school units.
This document includes statutory guidance from the Department for Education. Local authorities should have regard to that guidance when carrying out their duty to arrange suitable education for children who cannot attend mainstream provision. The guidance also covers the role that the child’s home school (if they have one) should play when commissioning alternative provision to ensure the child receives a suitable education in a safe environment.
This guidance also highlights the role the parents / carers and the child should play in agreeing suitable provision and on how and when a child could be reintegrated back into mainstream schooling (where relevant).
We are pleased to inform you that the 2024-2026 S.175 Audit spreadsheet is now available for you to access in your SharePoint folders. You should already have a link to your folder – we recommend that you save this link that you can access. Access has also been shared with your governance (and where appropriate with your Trust Safeguarding Leads). As Keeping Children Safe in Education puts the strategic leadership for the setting’s safeguarding arrangement, we have included a tab for governance sign off to ensure compatibility.
If you have new members of staff/governance and need to support them to understand the process – please direct them to the dedicated webpage which has an embedded introductory video. Bristol's S.175 Audit
The audit will support the KBSP and Local Authority to support he workforce with areas of need. But has also allows settings to show growth and development of practice throughout the period – we strongly encourage you to take your time and ensure that you are working collaboratively with your governance to ensure that you are not just complaint, but effective in your practice. The Safeguarding in Education Team will dedicate a section of the audit in our DSL networks to allow for troubleshooting and sharing of good practice.
The Local Authority will continue to monitor completion rate of the audit and message settings around progress and where required – offer advice, support, and guidance.
If you do not have access or you require additional staff/governors/trustees/proprietors to have access please make access requests to your area advisor directly via email:
We formally request that you complete this in line with your duties set out in the Children Act 2004 reinforced with statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 and Keeping Children Safe in Education 2024.
The results help us report back to thematic strategic groups (e.g, Prevent, Child Sexual Abuse, Strategic Partnership Against Hate Crime) about the number of incidents across the city. This is an integral part of being able to allocate resource depending on need. For example should a pilot of intervention be launched, settings encountering issues more acutely can be identified and targeted for that support. Last academic year we acknowledged that it would have taken a period to align your record keeping and data collection. Hopefully you have been successful in this and are able to report data for the academic year 2023-24.
Please ensure that you complete the data drop by 31st April 2025 on https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/KBSPDataDrop23to24/
For further information please visit - KBSP Education Annual Data Drop
‘How to have conversations with your child about knife crime’ This resources has been created by the Shadow Board of the Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership to support parents to have conversations with their children about knife crime.
We are looking for more young people with lived experiences to join the shadow board. Please print the posters off – https://www.bristolsafeguardingineducation.org/media/bcbjeqkx/shadow-safeguarding-board-flyer-design-01-25.pdf
Bristol Sanctuary Strategy 2025-2030 - Closes 16th March 2025
The Bristol Sanctuary Strategy 2025 to 2030 will be a document that sets out what is most important to sanctuary seekers in our city and explains what Bristol City Council will work to achieve over the next five years to support them. Bristol City Council wants to hear from sanctuary seekers and people who work them to help us to develop the Strategy.
Improving the way Ofsted inspects education - Closes 28 April 2025
Ofsted are reviewing – their proposals around - report cards, education inspection toolkits, inspection methodology, and how Ofsted will place a school into a category of concern. Please visit our webpage to consider how the proposals impacts on safeguarding - Consultation - Improving the way Ofsted inspects education - how this relates to Safeguarding
Revised use of reasonable force and other restrictive interventions in schools guidance - Closes 29 April 2025
The DfE are seeking your views on whether the revised 'Use of reasonable force and other restrictive interventions in schools' guidance supports schools to:
Under the requirements laid out in Working Together to Safeguard Children and the duties and responsibilities for education settings in Keeping Children Safe in Education , we request any updates of safeguarding contacts for every education setting. This enables effective communication and information sharing between education settings and the local authority to promote the safety and welfare of children in Bristol.
Please do not forget where possible to provide an out of office number should there be a critical incident and/or child protection concerns. These will only be shared with explicit permission.
For details of the networks and to sign up to ones for the rest of the academic year please follow this link: Bristol Designated Safeguarding Lead Networks (bristolsafeguardingineducation.org)
Virtual Session 15th May 2025 - 15:00-17:00
New DSL and DSL Refresher training is now available to book. Please email tradingwithschools@bristol.gov.uk with any training or invoice specific queries.
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Course |
Dates/ times |
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Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) - Refresher training - East/Central |
6th March 2025 08:45 - 16:30 |
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New Designated Safeguarding Lead Training - Face to Face - East/Central |
12th March 2025 08:45 - 16:30 |
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Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) - Refresher training - Virtual |
30th April 2025 08:45 - 12:30 |
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New Designated Safeguarding Lead Training - Virtual (Microsoft Teams) |
19th May 2025 08:45 - 12:30 |
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11th June 2025 08:45 - 16:30 |
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New Designated Safeguarding Lead Training - Face to Face (North) |
24th June 2025 08:45 - 16:30 |
The following training on offer can be booked via the KBSP Learning Platform https://bristol.event-booking.org.uk/events-list:
If you can’t come to us and would like us to come to you – please consider commissioning us to do any bespoke CPD requests. Request Bespoke Safeguarding Training for your setting (bristolsafeguardingineducation.org)
We would love to continue to develop our community of practice. We do not have a budget for venues so if you can support us by hosting future training or network meetings, can you kindly pass on this link to your business manager to complete https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/Schoolvenues/