Safeguarding

Quality safeguarding systems and procedures are a priority across the Bolton Impact Trust.

In order to maintain high quality processes across the trust several systems are in place to quality assure safeguarding many of which involve the support of our local governors and trustees.

Each academy has a link governor for safeguarding who has a specific responsibility for working with the Academy Leads and Designated Safeguarding Leads concerning safeguarding and child protection by providing a balance of challenge and support.

Safeguarding governors have a responsibility to:

• Make sure the academy has suitable and up-to-date policies
• Monitor the academies safeguarding systems and procedures
• Make sure the academy has an appropriate safeguarding response to children who go missing from education
• Make sure the academy has appointed a designated safeguarding lead (DSL)
• Meet regularly with the DSL to monitor that the academies policies and procedures are effective and all staff and governors have had the appropriate level of training (as applicable)
• Make sure the DSL has sufficient time, resources and training to carry out their role effectively
• Make sure the academy has appointed a designated teacher to promote the educational achievement of looked-after and previously looked-after children, and that this person has appropriate training
• Make sure the curriculum covers safeguarding, including online safety
• Make sure that checks to the single central record are happening. They will not be checking the SCR themselves
• Keep the governing board up to date with statutory guidance relating to safeguarding and child protection and any advice issued locally by the academies safeguarding partners
• Inform the board of whether it needs to make any changes (e.g. in light of new regulations)
• Update the board on how monitoring activities are going
• Attend training for safeguarding link governors
• Encourage other members of the board to develop their understanding of their safeguarding responsibilities
• Complete a report outlining the findings from any school visits or meetings and present them to the local governing body.

In addition to this, Academy Leads provide a safeguarding report, each term, to their local governing bodies and the Vice Principal reports this back to the trustees termly.

The governors responsible for safeguarding at the Bolton Impact Trust are:

The Bolton Impact Trust and each of its academies are committed to working with children and their families to provide support via the early help process as soon as problems start to emerge.

Early Help is a way of bringing workers together to work with children and their families when they need extra support. This could be for any reason including health, education, parenting, emotional well-being and many more.

Support can be delivered from a wide range of services depending on what is needed; services already working with the family might offer additional help or requests for support could be made to specialist and targeted services.

All services in Bolton are signed up to using the Early Help process. Early Help is for children of all ages up to the age 18 to try and act early to prevent problems from getting worse.

A member of staff may speak to you about early help if they feel it could be used to support you and your family or you may request some additional support via early help.

If you have any questions about the early help process please speak to the designated safeguarding lead in your academy.

Bolton Impact Trust and each of its academies are part of Operation Encompass, which is a project run jointly with Greater Manchester Police and has been designed to provide early reporting of any domestic abuse incidents that occur outside school, which might have an impact on a child in school. These are communicated through a secure email to school following an incident.

The project ensures that at least one member of the school staff, known as the Key Adult, is available to liaise with children's services and the police and to use the information that has been shared in confidence.

In this way, we aim to support each child who has been involved in, or witnessed a domestic abuse incident.

The key adults at Bolton Impact Trust are:

When the Key Adult receives an Encompass notification, they will make sure that a person the child trusts is available to help - if the child needs this. This confidential information is not ordinarily shared with all staff, just with those who are providing support to the child.

All schools have a duty to share any information with other organisations if they feel a child is at risk of being hurt. The Key Adult(s) may contact other organisations if required.

If you would like to find out more about Operation Encompass please visit:

https://www.operationencompass.org