Dear colleagues,

 

 

Welcome back. We hope you managed to get a restful school break. Term 6 usually marks a hive of activities to prepare for the summer holidays and support transitions for learners moving on to their new settings. Hopefully you are well underway in identifying and implementing plans for some of your more vulnerable learners.

 

We have produced a new webpage providing guidance around the process of Transfer of Safeguarding and Child Protection Files. This includes a Transfer of files flowchart and Pupil Passport.

Learning from a recent local statutory Child Safeguarding Practice Rapid Review has highlighted the need to send the receiving school a list of learners currently open to Local Authority Services so they can prioritise reading those files.  Please can you ensure that your setting implements this as a recommendation from the Local Safeguarding Partnership.

 

In this safeguarding bulletin, there are a few actions required of you to support work under the Keeping Bristol Safeguarding Partnership.

 

Contents

• Child Safeguarding Practice Review - Actions required.
• Generic Safeguarding email addresses for your established - Action required.
• Shadow board recruitment and questions  - Actions required.
• Working groups - Operation Encompass and City Wide Safeguarding Data  
• Avon and Somerset Evaluation

 

 

 

Child Safeguarding Practice Review - Actions required.

 

A thematic Child Safeguarding Practice Review has been commissioned following the sad death of  a 4 month child in December 2022 - the child came from a large family with siblings of statutory school age. Please note, the family's right to a private life under Article 8 should be respected.

 

The rapid review highlighted that there were issues about the quality and timeliness of the immediate multi-agency response to the child's death.  As part of a thematic approach to this statutory review, the Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership are seeking to evaluate the systems in Bristol and seek  the wider experiences of professionals that support and promote the safety of children and their families.

 

 

The education sector have been asked to provide a single report. The Safeguarding in Education Team are asking you, as a relevant agency,  to provide your general views on the multi-agency approach to child protection.

 

The ask:

• Please can you and/or the members of your safeguarding team consider sharing your views by completing the https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/KBSPCSPR/
• If you’d rather have a conversation and interact with a session, we have planned a virtual session for those who would like to use a different medium to feedback your thoughts and suggestions for the Thursday 8th of June at 10-11.30. Teams link Click here to join the meeting
• We require three Designated Safeguarding Leads to join a Practitioner Workshop Tuesday 4th July 09:30 – 12:00 City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR (Room TBC) – If you would like to express an interest in joining this workshop please email – henry.chan@bristol.gov.uk

 

Generic Safeguarding email addresses for your established - Action required - by the 30th June 2023

 

The KBSP are respectfully asking for you to create and share a generic 'Safeguarding' account for your setting to facilitate effective processes relating to your statutory duties. This is for the purposes of the following:

 

1. Creating a new log in account for your establishment for our new training platform 'PHEW'. This will be required to book onto your statutory required training for DSLs and deputies. This will assist in keeping training costs down as we will not have to pay for additional licenses for each professional.

 

1. The s.175 Audit will be shared via SharePoint on this link. This will remove the need to submit your audits via a deadline as we will have live access to your audit spreadsheet*.

 

Considerations:

• Can you ensure that the safeguarding email has reference to your establishment. Preferably using and accessing the same network/domain as your professional email (e.g., Safeguarding@setting.uk; safeguarding.settingname@trust.org; settingname.safeguarding@bristol.sch.uk).
• If you already have a generic account, please can you consider sharing this with us.
• We are not currently proposing to send sensitive information about children and families to these email accounts

(MASH, MARAC, Operation Encompass)  - however if access is only made by DSL trained staff/those who have completed a police safeguarding notification briefing this can be negotiated on a case by case basis. We do anticipate that a business manager is likely to require access to this account.

 

By the 30th June 2023 please share your generic safeguarding email addresses for your establishment via these links.

• Primary, Secondary, APs, Post 16 - https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/XDEUCV/
• Early Years - https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/XJ5VXB/

 

 

*s.175 Audit (2022-24) update.

Due to prevailing resourcing and staffing issues, we will push our now biennial audit tool out in September 2023 to allow for the technological developments to be implemented without currently adding additional work to the education workforce. We apologise for any inconvenience, but are happy to support reviewing of practice in the meantime should you require assistance.

 

 

Shadow Safeguarding Board recruitment and questions  - Actions required.

 

The KBSP are currently looking to recruit young people to the Shadow Board. The Shadow Safeguarding Board is a group of young people aged 12 to 25, that meet to talk about safeguarding issues impacting them and their peers. This could be topics such as social workers being involved in their family, being a care leaver, or being a young carer. The group uses their experiences to help inform and change how Bristol’s safeguarding services are shaped, including children’s social care, domestic abuse services, and transitions services (16-25 year olds).

 

The Shadow Safeguarding Board are meeting with the Bristol City Council's Executive Director of Children and Education, Abi Gbago, in July 23.

 

Please can you consider cascading to your pupils who will be eligible  - we are looking to:

1. Recruit young people to the group (you may know young people who would really benefit from being part of this group -  please can you consider proactively having a conversation with them about whether they would like to join)
2. Obtain questions from the young people for the Shadow board to ask Abi.

 

Hi   We are a group of young people who hold leaders of services who work with children and families to account in Bristol. We currently meet once a month and to carry out projects, campaigns and meet with leaders to talk to them about our experiences.   To find out more about us please visit our webpage - https://bristolsafeguarding.org/children/shadow-board/ If you would like to become a member email us at kbsp.shadow@bristol.gov.uk    In July we will be meeting with Bristol City Council's Executive Director Abi Gbago. Abi oversees services that work with children and families, education, skills and employment, and keeping communities safe. Even if you don't want to join the Shadow Safeguarding Board  - would you like to ask Abi a question about what she can do to help keep children and young people safe in Bristol? If so please submit anonymously here! https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/W8SDWB/   We look forward to hearing from you.   Yours sincerely

 

 

 

Working groups - Operation Encompass and City Wide Safeguarding Data 

 

We have set dates for operational working groups for:

 

Operation Encompass 

Avon and Somerset Constabulary have signed up to the national Operational Encompass scheme. In Bristol we have had the Police Safeguarding Notification Scheme operating since 2015. We will need to consider systemic changes and developments to align local work to the national framework.

 

We have had a couple of colleagues who have proactively offered to support with this. We do require more of you to assist with rolling out arrangements for September 2023. Our first meeting is on the Monday 12th of June 12.30-14.00.

 

 

City Wide Safeguarding Data

We are aiming to standardise safeguarding data categories across different record keeping platforms to support effective data sharing (between trusts, the Local Authority and the KBSP) and limit practice concerns when transferring files between establishments.

 

We would particularly like to hear from Trust Safeguarding Leads to join this working group. Our first meeting is on Monday 19th June 13.00-14.30

 

If you would like to join us for either group please can you email michael.sealy@bristol.gov.uk who will send you the links to the meetings.

 

Avon and Somerset Constabulary Evaluation

 

We are currently in the process evaluating how are officers engage with schools, and have developed an opinion poll/questionnaire for schools across the force to fill out.

 

The questions in this will cover some of the below:

 

• Subject topics: based on the titles of our teaching materials, such as Cyber bullying or Knife crime, we ask against each whether it is considered to be a high, medium or low risk; whether it is currently covered by the school, and if so, who provides this support. This can guide our catalogue and prioritisation of topics.
• Ease of getting support: We then ask how easy they feel it is to arrange support from the police to cover such topics, and if supported by police, how often such support is provided.
• Types of support: We ask how appreciated each type of support is, starting with the low effort approach of providing guidance material, through to more engagement from mini police or discussion groups.
• Quality of Police support: Where we do provide support, there are then a few questions to gauge how well received it is, which can inform our training.
• To finish off there is a box they can type in, in case there is something they want to share with us that wasn’t covered by the questions.

 

The link to the live form is: https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/forms/pss

 

Thank you for your ongoing support.

 

Kind regards

 

 

Safeguarding in Education Team

E: safeguardingineducationteam@bristol.gov.uk |T: 0117 9222710