Safeguarding

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At Krishna Avanti Primary School Croydon, we recognise the contribution it can make to protect children and support our pupils. Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility and the school will therefore be alert to signs of abuse and neglect and will follow the Safeguarding Children’s Partnership Board procedures to ensure that children receive appropriate and effective support and protection.

CHILD PROTECTION & SAFEGUARDING POLICY

PREVENT DUTY RISK ASSESSMENT

Our Safeguarding Team

If you have concerns over a child’s safety, it is your responsibility to inform the designated teacher immediately.

All concerns are taken seriously and confidentially on a need-to-know basis.

Bijal Pandya

Designated Safeguarding Lead

Neesha Rayatt

Deputy Safeguarding Lead

Zoe Brown

Deputy Safeguarding Lead

Shivani Vyas

Deputy Safeguarding Lead

Malory Griffith

Deputy Safeguarding Lead

Tanika Malhotra-Spencer

Deputy Safeguarding Lead

Out of Hours

If you have a concern and the school is not open, please contact the Croydon Council safeguarding team:

Single Point of Contact (SPOC): 020 8255 2888
Out of Hours: 020 8726 6400
Local Authority Designated Officer for Allegations: LADO Jane Parr: 020 8726 6000 Ext 24817 | 07716 092 630 | Jane.Parr@croydon.gov.uk
Croydon Safeguarding Children Partnership: 020 8604 7275
PREVENT Helpline: 020 7340 7264
Support for Families: Early Help Support, Croydon Council

Whistleblowing

The Avanti Schools Trust Policy can be found here.

The NSPCC Whistleblowing Advice Line can be reached at 0808 800 5000 and is available 8.00am – 10.00pm Monday to Friday and 9.00am – 6.00pm at the weekend.

You can also email help@NSPCC.org.uk at any time. It’s free and reporting can be anonymous. More Information can be found here.

Safeguarding Curriculum

Safeguarding is of high importance, and we want to teach each and every one of our pupils how to stay safe in and outside of school.

We ensure that opportunities are identified in the taught curriculum and wider curriculum for pupils to learn about safeguarding.

We are sensitive in our teaching and recognise that some more sensitive subjects need to be taught at an age appropriate level, or by specialist services or one-to-one level where a more urgent need arises.

Operation Encompass

Our school is part of Operation Encompass which is a national scheme that operates jointly between schools and police forces. Operation Encompass is the reporting to schools when a child or young person has experienced or witness domestic abuse, gone missing, or has an Adverse Childhood Experiences.

As a school, we ensure that a member of our staff (Designated Safeguarding Lead) has been trained in Operation Encompass procedures allowing us to use the information which has been shared, in confidence, to support child(ren) in our care.

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 identifies children who experience or witness domestic abuse as victims in their own right. We are keen to offer the best support to all our students and we believe this will be extremely beneficial for all those involved.

Support for Parents and Pupils

The following sections provide useful links to further information.

Addiction
SupportLine - SupportLine provides a confidential telephone helpline offering emotional support to any individual on any issue. The Helpline is primarily a preventative service and aims to support people before they reach the point of crisis. SupportLine is open to any individual of any age. Calls are received from children, young adults and adults.

Frank - Talk to Frank for facts, support and advice on drugs and alcohol.
Bereavement
Childhood Bereavement Network - A hub for those working with bereaved children, young people and their families across the UK.

Grief Encounter - We work closely with individuals, families, schools and professionals to offer a way through the anxiety, fear and isolation so often caused by grief.

Hope Again – Supporting young people coping with bereavement and living after loss.

Winston's Wish – Supporting children and their families after the death of a parent or sibling.
Bullying
Anti-Bullying Alliance - The Anti-Bullying Alliance is a coalition of organisations and individuals that are united against bullying.

Bullying UK - Bullying UK, part of Family Lives, is a leading charity providing advice and support to anyone affected by bullying.

Ditch the Label - Advice, information and tips for young people who are being bullied or are affected by bullying.
Children Missing
Runaway Helpline - Runaway Helpline is here if you are thinking about running away, if you have already run away, or if you have been away and come back.
Crime
Fearless - Fearless is a service that allows you to pass on information about crime 100% anonymously.
Domestic Abuse
Wellbeing Connect Services (WCS) – offers a one-stop-shop care approach to families experiencing mental health and domestic abuse through variety of services.

Refuge - Refuge supports women, children & men experiencing domestic violence with a range of services.
Honour-Based Abuse
AFRUCA - AFRUCA works in UK BAME communities to protect and safeguard children from abuse and harm.

Karma Nirvana - Karma Nirvana is an award-winning British human rights charity supporting victims of honour-based abuse and forced marriage.
Housing
Shelter - Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support, and legal services.
LGBTQ+
Stonewall - Information and support for LGBTQ+ communities and their allies.
Mental Health
Anxiety UK - Anxiety UK is a national registered charity for those affected by anxiety, stress and anxiety based depression.

Beat - Beat is the UK's eating disorder charity. We exist to end the pain and suffering caused by eating disorders.

CALM - The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is leading a movement against suicide.

Harmless - Harmless is a passionate organisation who works to address and overcome issues related to self-harm and suicide.

Heads Together - Heads Together work to ensure that people feel comfortable with their own and their friends and family everyday mental health and well being.

MindEd - MindEd for Families has advice and information from trusted experts and will help you to understand what problems occur, what you can do to best support your family, and how to take care of yourself.

Samaritans – Samaritans is a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope, or at risk of suicide

Self Harm UK – Access to Alumina. Alumina is a free, online 7 week course for young people struggling with self-harm.

Young Minds - The UK’s leading charity fighting for children and young people's mental health.
Online Safety
Thinkuknow - Thinkuknow is the education programme from NCA-CEOP, a UK organisation which protects children both online and offline.

UK Safer Internet Centre - Advice about smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and other internet-connected devices.

Net Aware - Your guide to apps, games and social media sites.
Parent Support
Click – Click is a unique service providing early intervention relationship support from a mobile-friendly platform. Individuals, couples, families and professionals can use Click to access helpful, evidence-based support from a secure, mobile-friendly space.

DAD.Info – Europe’s largest advice and support website for fathers. It celebrates the changing role of Dads with engaging, helpful, practical, entertaining resources and content for every stage of their journey. It is home to the largest connected community of active, involved Dads through its interactive forum, providing great peer to peer support and advice for what can be one of the most challenging and rewarding life experiences.

Netmums – The UK’s most relevant, inclusive and supportive parenting community, welcoming millions of parents every month to explore forums, parenting content, recipes, local listings, product reviews and courses.

Relate – The UK's largest provider of relationship support. Here to help you make the most of your couple and family relationships, past, present or future. Services include Relationship Counselling for individuals and couples, Family Counselling, Mediation, Children and Young People's Counselling.
Sexual Abuse
The Havens - support anyone in London who has been raped or sexually assaulted in the past 12 months including men, women, young people and children of all ages. The service offers treatment, advice and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mosac - Mosac helps all non-abusing parents and carers whose children have been sexually abused.

Stop It Now - Stop It Now! offers anonymous and confidential support to help you prevent child sexual abuse.

The Lucy Faithful Foundation - The Lucy Faithfull Foundation is the only UK-wide child protection charity dedicated solely to preventing child sexual abuse.

Support for Parents and Pupils

The following sections provide useful links to further information.

Medicine & Sickness

We will administer medication that has been prescribed by a doctor to avoid children missing too much time from school. Our procedure must be followed:

Complete a Medicine at School form (obtainable at the school office)
Long term complaints (asthma/diabetes) will require meeting with the school nurse and risk assessment agreed.
Medicine should be brought to the school by the parent (Not the child) and handed to the office staff.
Medicines must be clearly labelled with your doctor’s label, contents, child’s name, and dosage. Medicines should be locked in the office.
Children will go to the office where their medicine will be administered by one of the first aid trained office staff. Teachers and/or office staff cannot accept responsibility for timing of the administration of the medicine. Parents are able to come to school to administer the medicine themselves should they be concerned about this.
Under no circumstances should medicines be kept in cloakrooms or classrooms. This will eliminate the risk of the wrong child taking the medicine.
The school can only administer medication, which has been prescribed by a doctor (including Calpol and Piriton).

If your child is sick at school, a trained first aider will attend and in consultation with the Head Teacher or Deputy Head Teacher will decide how to proceed and may decide to send home.

Please note that in line with guidance, children who have been vomiting or suffered from diarrhoea must not return to school until 48 hours following the last episode.

Special Educational Needs (SEN)

Following our vision and mission statement, we expect all children to be challenged in their learning. We encourage children to take risks, to be reflective learners who build the skills to be able to manage learning in all aspects of their lives.

All children will need support at different points of their learning journey. We know that a child’s ability to learn is not ‘determined at birth’ but is rather constantly evolving. We move away from describing children as ‘bright’ or high ability/low ability but look to find ways to help a child transform – their transformability.

Some children have specific and special education needs (behavioural need, learning need, social need etc). Some need extra support; some need more challenge. We are vigilant in identifying children’s needs, working in collaboration with parents/carers and other services to support their needs. Alison McCulloch is the HUB inclusion Lead with considerable experience in this field. Should you have concerns please do not hesitate to contact her to arrange an appointment.

Our home visits are an opportunity to discuss how your child learns at home, their development from birth and any issues that have arisen. Being open and honest will help us all achieve the best strategy to support your child to achieve.

Parental Permission

We need written permission from parents/carers for a number of reasons – namely local trips, use of photos. Before children start school, parents are requested to sign a form giving permission for their child to go on local trips less than 1 mile in distance and on foot. A separate permission letter is sent for all other trips. Permission must be given before the day of the trip.

Children without written permission will not be able to go on the trip, but will still be expected in school.

Parents are also asked to sign giving permission for the school to take photos for displays, for use in children’s books and classrooms, the school website, school promotion; this is common practice in UK primary schools. Names are never associated with individuals. Without this permission children are restricted from taking full part in the life of the school. We follow our safeguarding principles at all times.

Positive Behaviour Management Aims

Our behaviour policy intends to instil and develop positive behaviours related to our values driven curriculum with humble, respectful, grateful people who have courage to take risks, well developed self- discipline and who act with integrity and empathy. We aim for everyone to be included so that everyone sees themselves as part of a happy learning community and part of making the world a better place.

We have very high expectations of our school community’s behaviour and hope to develop children’s understanding of the impact of choices they make, whether positive or negative.

Good behaviour and achievement is not automatically learned. Instead, positive behaviours must be modelled, explained, taught, supported and recognised.

At Avanti Meadows we care for and respect all life-human, animal and plant-and live in a way that causes the least possible harm.

Please read our AMPS Behaviour and Exclusion Policy for further information

School Expectations

Avanti Meadows Primary School uses the system of ‘Stay on Green’, which is underpinned by our ‘Six Golden Expectations’*. The expectations are designed to focus on positive action (e.g. be safe in school) rather than what children should not do (e.g. do not run). The rules are agreed actions so that there is consistency and fairness in all areas of school life.

However, as an inclusive school we recognise that all children are individuals with specific needs. Therefore, within this consistent approach is an element of flexibility to address the needs of specific children.

Everyone is responsible for behaviour of all children and adults should reinforce the Golden Expectations whenever appropriate.

Golden Expectations

Be Kind: think of others and help them
Be Safe: look after yourselves and others
Be Respectful: listen carefully and act politely
Be Honest: think before you speak or act
Be Courageous: keep on trying your best
Be Grateful: say 'thank you'

How it works:

In the class there is a prominent ‘Stay on Green’ display.
On this display, all children have a pocket with their name on it.
Each day, children start with a green card in their pocket.
If children make positive individual choices they are celebrated by placing a bronze, then silver, then gold card with rewards at each level.
If children make negative individual choices they are warned by placing a blue, then amber, then red card with consequence appropriate to the level of behaviour.
The system allows children to reflect on their actions, attitudes and behaviour; if behaviour
Change then they can move back towards green.

Educational Visits

We enhance our curriculum by organizing educational visits in the locality and further afield, especially making use of our incredible city. To help fund these visits, which we believe are essential to provide diverse and memorable learning experience we ask for a voluntary contributions from parents. There is no obligation to contribute and no pupil will be restricted from going on a trip. However, in increasingly challenging financial circumstance, if there are insufficient contributions we may have to cancel visits. The school cannot supplement educational visits.

Home Learning

Children are encouraged to pursue their learning out of school; we have a number of expectations:

Children should be read to every day (by parents, grandparents, cousins, siblings, friends). This could be a favourite story repeated, or a new story. Research shows that telling the same story to children helps builds their literacy.
Children should read a book every day (EYFS: 10 minutes; Year 1-3 15 minutes). By the age of 10 children are expected to read at least 8 books each month.
Children should learn Maths facts (timestable off by heart; Number bonds (e.g. 1+9=10, 2+8=10 etc; and number bonds to 20, 50, 100)
Children should learn sight words.
Children will be assigned home learning projects each term. These will require children to investigate, research, write, build models, design, think creatively, work with their family.
Home work sheets are NOT given each week. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that homework sheets impact on children’s understanding.

safeguarding

Our Safeguarding Team

Bijal Pandya

Neesha Rayatt

Zoe Brown

Shivani Vyas

Malory Griffith

Tanika Malhotra-Spencer

Out of Hours

Whistleblowing

Safeguarding Curriculum

Operation Encompass

Support for Parents and Pupils

Addiction

Bereavement

Bullying

Children Missing

Crime

Domestic Abuse

Honour-Based Abuse

Housing

LGBTQ+

Mental Health

Online Safety

Parent Support

Sexual Abuse

Support for Parents and Pupils

Medicine & Sickness

an education that's

personal

Reimagining the purpose of education

ADMISSIONS

PROSPECTUS

CURRICULUM