Catch up with the latest in safeguarding for schools: best practice, thought leadership, and all the latest insights within single central record management.

SCR Tracker Blog

If you work in the education sector, it's imperative that you know how to keep your staff and pupils safe by knowing how to recognise and deal with key mental health issues. During this webinar recording the topics covered are:- 

If this webinar inspired you and you would like to find out more about Rachael's Safeguarding Consultancy Services, or you would like more information on the next webinar, please visit our safeguarding development page.

Watch our most recent Safeguarding Webinar recording with Specialist Rachael Bishop, as she provides essential safeguarding updates and awareness around mental health.

Safeguarding Development: Mental Health Matters

Join us and our host, Safeguarding Specialist Rachael Bishop, as she provides essential safeguarding information around mental health.

Safeguarding Development Webinar: Mental Health Matters

SCR Tracker | Safeguarding Development Webinar: Mental Health Matters

Mental Health Matters.pdf

Mental Health Matters Webinar Slides

Learning does not stop in the classroom. Children often attend after-school activities, referred to as out-of-school settings (OOSS), where they absorb new skills and knowledge. More specifically, OOSS are defined as organisations or individuals that act as providers of tuition, training, instruction, or similar activities in settings that aren’t formal schools or colleges or academies, but where parents or carers are not present to supervise.

These activities usually happen outside normal school hours. So, if you’re a parent sending your child for piano lessons over the weekends or on evenings or school holidays, that’s an example of an OOSS. It’s clear by the definition that OOSS are not a substitute for schools, but these settings and extra-curricular engagement can be incredibly helpful in your child’s holistic development. From social skills, initiative, leadership skills, time management, and exploration of interests, children learn a lot more than just the hard skills in such settings. 

OOSS can be both commercial, donation-based, or free, and can range from community youth centres and sports clubs to places of worship. These include learning centres built to supplement mainstream or home education, extracurricular skill classes like dance or sports clubs, instrumental or gymnastics training classes, centres for preparation of competitive examinations, uniformed youth organisations such as Scouts or Guides, or religious centres for faith-based learning, or faith groups or just a place of worship. 

Children often enjoy the time they spend in such settings because these activities allow them the space to explore their interests, get out of their comfort zone, get rich experiences, reinforce learning, and most importantly, help them build a social circle outside of their school. Many activities start with a hard skill in mind, for example, learning to play the piano, or learning gymnastics, but soft skills development constitutes a big part of these activities. Out-of-school activities follow the principle of learning by doing, called Experiential Learning. 

Angela Karanja, founder of Raising Remarkable Teenagers and an adolescent psychologist and parenting teenagers expert, points out the experiential advantage of after-school activities in developing crucial life skills in children by giving them a taste of the real world, “Schools are institutions with mainly routines and structure and young people can be caught up in the rote performance. Out of school activities allow for diverse engagement and brain and body activation, involvement in different perspectives, active and conscious thinking, evaluation and decision making. For example, if a young person wants to use the toilet at school, they know exactly where it is, the route and even how long it takes to get there, where the toilet paper is etc. Doing so at a different venue will require them to ask for directions, and travel a different route and distance from what they are used to. This simple activity in itself requires conscious thinking and it, therefore, expands their mind. They learn something new about their space, they practise asking for help and support, and it solidifies a renewed belief and confidence within them with respect to their flexibility and adaptability.”

For spaces that hold so much power for the future of children, it is imperative to keep children safe. Just like schools and academies, these OOSS venues should also be vetted for their safeguarding policies and provisions. 

Here are a few broad categories of safeguarding measures that can help ensure safety in after-school activities:-

Parents must check that the OOSS venues have fire safety and an evacuation plan. That goes for all buildings in the venue. The providers should also ensure that their employees have first aid training and that first aid kits are readily available and accessible in case of emergencies. They should also be equipped to act in such situations, like knowing where to call for medical emergencies, having a register of emergency contacts for the children attending the training or tuition.  If possible, providers can go a step further and maintain a directory of medical concerns or allergies that students attending their establishment have. It would also be a good idea to have a medical practitioner or volunteer in attendance or on-call for major events or crucial days, like a competitive event or a performance day when the venue is likely to host many people.

Most after-school activity venues will be unregulated, but that does not mean that your child should be endangered. Mostly, after-school activity venues are also fun and safe places for children. There are still guidelines that can help fortify the spaces further.   

Some district councils have certification programmes that help such venues and community associations establish credibility in their safeguarding policies and procedures. What exactly can these policies entail? 

Below we discuss the provisions and policy elements, which are not very unlike the ones implemented in schools.

First and foremost, the OOSS should have a safeguarding and child protection policy. This policy ordinarily contains procedures and guidelines for dealing with safeguarding incidents. This policy should also be part of the staff training modules so that everyone who interacts with children is fully equipped to take care of their safety. 

The policy or the training will also apprise the staff members of the issues related to children at risk of harm, and help them identify signs of abuse/neglect/extremism/bullying. There should also be clear procedures if concerns are raised about misconduct by a staff member or volunteer. 

Apart from laying down policies and procedures, it is very crucial to appoint someone to take care of the safeguarding elements. This is usually a trained person called a designated safeguarding lead (DSL), whose details are also shared with parents, carers or guardians, should there be safety concerns. 

If parents want to escalate any issue or report any provider or serious incident, they can approach the NSPCC at 0808 800 5000, a Local authority designated officer (LADO) or the police.

Drawing from the previous point, it is also important that all the staff and volunteers working at the OOSS undergo a pre-employment check, like the DBS check, identity verification and so on. Sometimes, volunteers come and go and organisations fail to check up on each one, but DBS checks can ensure the safety of everyone attending the space.  

Training on safety procedures should form a part of their induction or onboarding process. For more formal spaces, regular performance reviews, anonymous feedback boxes, etc can also help make it a safer space for children.

To emphasise one specific part of the safeguarding policy, governance measures should help to strengthen the safeguarding response for children in OOSS spaces. There should be a clear complaints procedure and an effective whistleblowing policy that protects everyone involved. 

Everything that has been promised in the safeguarding policy should be backed up with sufficient resources. If incidents occur, children should have a clear idea of how they can report the same to a superior or a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). Providers should ensure that a robust complaint and redressal mechanism is in place and communicated to everyone.

Finally, parents can always exercise their right to ask about these provisions: official first aiders, DSL, health and safety protocols, child-protection policy, complaints committee or procedure, etc. If the providers at the OOSS are not able to answer with conviction, it’s a sign they aren’t taking accountability for your child. We suggest parents use this list of questions before choosing any out-of-school setting for their children.

An important element of children’s safety is their psychological safety or their ability to be able to express themselves without the fear of judgement, humiliation or punishment. Adolescent psychologist and parenting teenagers expert Karanja shares what these internal factors look like in practice, “Internal factors include empowering confidence and competence and belief in young people. Encouraging them to ask questions about the things around them, encouraging them to listen to their intuition, empowering them with choices, extending empathy when they are learning at a different pace than others. Young people should be empowered to speak about their discomforts or things that don't feel right to them. They need to know they’ll be listened to and heard and believed.”

As mentioned in a previous blog, children need to feel comfortable to be able to report incidents and receive support, validation, and reassurance. 

Last, but not least, if your child is using the internet or digital devices in any form for their after-school exercises or activities, we need to ensure proper checks are in place for their safety. Firewall settings, child-lock, use of VPN, and discouraging use of public networks are some tangible measures. Beyond these, you should strive to keep an open channel of communication with children. If they come across anything unwanted or uncomfortable online, they should feel safe coming to you with their concern.

Children pick up some of the most crucial life skills in out-of-school settings, so we should make sure they are able to make mistakes, learn from them, and express themselves openly in these spaces. As well as a safeguarding toolkit, their mental health should also be cared for. 

We are delighted to have reached a huge milestone for SCR Tracker - we have just signed our 1000th school!

The team here at SCR Tracker are having a mini celebration as we have just reached our 1000th school to subscribe to our software. We are also thrilled to have signed over 100 Trusts as well!

Over the past three years, our team has more than doubled with the introduction of a dedicated customer support team, partnerships with recognised safeguarding experts, and more recently the creation of a sales and marketing department.  During this time we have also been working hard to improve our software by adding new features, such as fully customisable templates and custom profile types, to our customisable reports and dashboard. Not to mention our most recent feature, which allows fully integrated DBS checks directly in the portal.

All of these improvements have significantly improved our customer satisfaction by ensuring the use of our software can reduce the amount of time spent on any safeguarding task and decrease the number of different applications needed to do the same job. Whether our users previously used Excel, an MIS, or another solution to capture their Single Central Record, we ensure they are up and running in no time. We want to take as much of the time-consuming manual checks and data entry away as much as possible and ensure it's a fully streamlined, efficient and enjoyable experience.

"The SCR Tracker software is excellent and very easy to use, I would recommend it without hesitation! It's quick and easy to get set up too." Sally Vickers SCR Administrator, St Edmund's Catholic School

We always listen to our customers to find out what we can further develop or any additional features that will help to improve the user experience. All of the positive feedback from our customers has certainly helped us reach this milestone. A vast amount of business comes from referrals and word-of-mouth, so we couldn't have achieved this growth so quickly without our loyal advocates, especially throughout a 2-year pandemic. 

"Migrating the information over was very straightforward ... The support from SCR Tracker has been invaluable. They are quick to respond to queries, giving sound and easy to follow advice, and are open to suggestions to enhance the system further." Jennifer Jarvis Primary Schools HR Officer, Wickersley Partnership Trust

We are hugely thankful to all of our fantastic customers - we hope they continue to enjoy our software and we can't wait to share all the exciting new plans coming up later this year!

If you are interested in finding out more information about our software, or you would like to book a system demonstration, please click here. 

When school management & policymakers talk about safeguarding in schools, one aspect that could use more attention and resources is the safety of children in schools who are known to be more vulnerable due to their identities. This goes for most marginalised identities, but in this article, we discuss one identity that isn’t always as visibly different: our LGBTQ+ children. 

For students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, or questioning (LGBTQ+), the school and university can be a crucial place and period. It’s a time when they are exploring their identity and understanding it themselves. But they’re also soft targets for bullying, harassment, discrimination, assault and other negative treatments. 

UK Charity Stonewall reports that two in five LGBT students (42%) have hidden their identity at university for fear of discrimination. 7% of trans students have been physically attacked by another student or member of university staff in the last year. A plethora of worrying accounts have been recorded, of students facing discrimination and a lack of inclusion because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Such kinds of bullying are unfortunately still a daily reality for many LGBTQ children and schools are often the first place they experience these things. With the online modes being so rampantly used, the manner and mode of such bullying changes — children can even be targeted anonymously — and it can get increasingly complex, targeted, or brutal.

Incidents and experiences like these take a mental and emotional toll. They can also be disruptive to a child’s learning and safety. This is why LGBTQ+ safety should form a core part of our safeguarding policies.  

Over the past few years, some progress has been made: 64% of LGBTQ+ students mentioned they are comfortable being open about their identity at school. 82% shared that they are confident about being more open about their sexual orientation or gender at university. As for the impact of their gender identity and expression on the educational experience, 9 out of 10 LGBTQ+ students reported having a good or neutral experience so far. Three-fourths of them attributed this comfort to acceptance by their peers. 

Today, educational institutions have a far greater awareness of the issues and are keen to create a safe environment where LGBTQ+ children can thrive. For this, there needs to be a safe space policy, in addition to school facilities, sensitisation drives, anti-discrimination and anti-bullying campaigns shared spaces and other initiatives. 

The design of all these initiatives should be made with the involvement of LGBTQ+ children. It’s called a lived experience approach and helps to ensure that our policies really benefit the ones they are intended to help. The principle is simple: Who can tell us better about the issues faced by LGBTQ+ youth than LGBTQ+ youth themselves? With that in mind, let’s look at how we can make our schools better places for LGBTQ+ children. 

We can start small. Share this response template with all members of the staff if they are made aware of any instance of bullying or harassment against LGBTQ+ children. This includes reports about comments that may not have been directed at one person in particular, but that can negatively impact children who identify as LGBTQ+. 

Understand the situation, try to deal with it without much panic. It’s best if such incidents are resolved privately.

Get all the facts together. Who all were involved as spectators and who was targeted by whom? Find out exactly what happened and try to verify from different sources. 

Make space for listening. Calmly dedicate some time, give attention to everyone. Remember, children might be feeling particularly vulnerable right now. 

Then respond by repeating the facts of the incident, specifying the issues with the behaviour, and affirming that it was harmful or hurtful. 

Act according to the school/classroom policy: what does the policy suggest as a lesson? What are the consequences? Use this as a teachable moment for others too. Bring home the value of kindness. 

Beyond the immediate response and a guiding policy, there should also be tangible sources of help for LGBTQ+ children in the school. Mental health counsellors at school can be one of the most important support resources. In the past year, nearly half of LGBTQ youth wanted to seek mental health counselling. They also look for spaces and practices that affirm their identity. These positive affirmations are very important, especially for children in the formative stages of their lives. Access to such resources should also be easy and confidentiality should be assured. 

The language we use also influences the outlook towards different identities. Time and again, LGBTQ+ students have shared their distress at the demeaning remarks made at their expense, like the word “gay” being used in a negative or derogatory manner. 

So much of the teaching is also done in archaic ways. Using a gendered language, not using inclusive pronouns while referring to children, or upholding gender binary in the educational contexts also deprives marginalised identities to be included in a classroom as equal to their peers. So, language training should be imparted, but the training shouldn’t just be superficial or reactive. Instead, it should look at the nuances of the situational contexts where LGBTQ children might feel endangered or unsafe and proactively work to change old ways of communication.

Simple things can make a huge cultural shift: calling young people by the name and pronouns they want to use and ensuring your school policies are trans-inclusive.

Collaborate with External Training Providers & Nonprofits

To that effect, it might be a good option to consider collaboration with external entities who specialise in imparting such kinds of training. Jake Kelly, Joint Head of Youth Service, Gendered Intelligence, a UK charity, shares, “At Gendered Intelligence we run a mentoring service for trans, non-binary and gender exploring young people in their educational setting — from primary through to higher education. The aim of this work is to support young people to attend, achieve and enjoy.” 

He adds, “the GI mentoring service is able to offer a holistic look at the trans, non-binary or gender exploring young person's needs within an educational setting. As part of this service, we also offer support and guidance to the educational establishment around supporting their students. Our approach is to work with the young person and the key professionals in their place of education, thus taking the onus away from the child/young person to have to explain and educate the adults around them as to what they need to be able to thrive in their education.”

What else can school leaders and management do to ensure safeguarding for trans and non-binary children and young people? Kelly adds, “Management and school leaders are best placed to make decisions about trans and non-binary student access to suitable changing and toilet facilities. We would suggest considering creating one uniform policy with non-gendered items, rather than putting clothes in boys’ and girls’ columns. This allows students to choose the clothing which is most comfortable for them as an individual.”

This extends to the times when a safeguarding or child protection issue is being considered that involves a trans or non-binary student. Be thoughtful about the details of a young person’s identity/name/pronoun/transition/physicality and whether or not these are to be disclosed. 

The Trevor Project’s Coming Out: A Handbook for LGBTQ Young People covers a wide range of topics to support LGBTQ young people in exploring what coming out safely can mean for them.

The Trevor Project’s Guide to Being an Ally to Transgender and Nonbinary Youth covers a wide range of topics and best practices on how to support transgender and nonbinary people, including the basics of gender, forms of address that show respect, common mistakes and what to do if you’ve made one.

The Trevor Project’s How To Support Bisexual Youth: Ways to Care for Young People Who Are Attracted to More Than One Gender covers best practices for supporting bisexual youth, including the basics of multisexual identities, sexual vs. romantic orientations, preventing bisexual erasure and biphobia, navigating gender and bisexuality, exploring different relationship types, and self-care tips.

Stonewall’s LGBTQ+ inclusive books for children and young people. A hand-selected list of LGBTQ-inclusive books for children and young people to enjoy. 

In this webinar we will look at the key safeguarding areas for consideration this academic year and how to maximise the effectiveness of strategic safeguarding work. 

We will consider how safeguarding leads and senior leaders can embed safeguarding across the school and link all aspects of school life together to ensure that safeguarding and the promotion of welfare is at the heart of all practice. 

We will look at the cornerstones of safeguarding practice, including opportunities for training, parental engagement, record keeping and policy development. 

The webinar will include lots of practical tips and strategies and has been designed to help attendees develop an annual plan for developing safeguarding practice – whether they are DSLs, headteachers, governors, business managers or trustees.

Join us and our Guest Panelist, Safeguarding Specialist Elizabeth Rose, as she provides essential safeguarding updates for the year.

Strategic Safeguarding Development: Strategies for Driving Forward Practice

Strategic Safeguarding Development Webinar

SCR Tracker | Strategic Safeguarding Development Webinar

SCR Tracker Slides.pdf

SCR Tracker Slides

Strategic Safeguarding Development - Slides.pdf

Strategic Safeguarding Development Slides

In the UK and elsewhere in the world, we are seeing children and young people return to early years, schools, and colleges gradually and will continue to see more educational settings opening up in the coming weeks. While it’s exciting for them to be able to join back their social circles in person, this inevitably also brings concerns about their safety and wellbeing.

Safeguarding has now become a part of our phraseology as the pandemic has created or deepened many vulnerabilities in our systems, disrupted schooling schedules, and added novel responsibilities for the staff. Children’s experiences of the pandemic have been very varied — they might have been safely isolating at home, or the past year might have been challenging, grief-ridden or traumatic. As children return to school, it’s important to acknowledge these differences and how they’ll impact their progress going forward. 

There is also a need to put safeguarding measures in place that will ensure the physical as well as mental safety of the children. At the same time, the staff, especially the safeguarding leadership, will confront unprecedented challenges in the process. Their well-being, too, needs to be prioritised. 

In this blog, we enumerate some safeguarding measures and wellbeing provisions that can help ensure safety in schools in a holistic manner. 

In order to address how the mental health of children and staff has been impacted, it’s important to understand the various possible ways the past 18 months may have impacted them. Some children may have gone through a direct loss during this time, like losing a relative to the virus or other illnesses, or witnessing a close relative/friend go through a tough period of ill-health or hospitalisation.

For others, the loss may look different: parents who were furloughed or lost jobs (and in turn took to unhealthy coping mechanisms), families that moved homes, and more. The impact of long-term isolation from relatives, extended family, and friends can also weigh heavy on children.

"This", Kate Young, founder of the Safeguarding Association, reminds us, "could have led to a lot of children who previously weren’t even on the radar now falling into the vulnerable category. My main suggestion is to identify who these vulnerable young people are, finding a way to identify them without compromising their safety, also helping them self-identify, and then making the information on support resources readily available,” she adds. 

Information about how the mental healthcare support at school works can be key in making newly vulnerable children comfortable about reaching out for help or opening up about their issues. This would entail looking out for less obvious signs of distress like children seeming withdrawn, uncharacteristically irritable, angry or confused. Children will also respond to grief differently. There should be robust processes in place to support students through this time as well as awareness amongst the children about the support they have available. One of these without the other will make the safeguarding plan ineffective.

Cruse Bereavement Support has a range of resources that can be helpful for the school staff to support children, including a guide on creating a school bereavement policy.

Under normal circumstances, school staff are able to identify vulnerable children through cues from their behaviour and other warning signs. Now, vulnerable children (especially the newly vulnerable ones) may have fallen through the cracks created by the changed mode of learning and teaching.

Young shares her number one concern from the past 18 months: that the rapport-building of the staff with parents was interrupted: 

“We’ve only seen parents online, so the school staff don’t have a relationship with them, and, therefore, cannot make judgement calls on whether a particular situation is risky and what level of risk is being held because they don’t have the background information on the family that they would ordinarily have. This gap is especially true for parents whose children have been in the school for just 2 years. There’s a huge piece of the puzzle missing there. For safeguarding, being able to build that trust with families quickly is important.” 

In line with that, it’s important for schools to devise a plan where they can get to know the children and their families better. We need to get to know them before we can support them with their needs, understand who they are, what they’re struggling with, what their vulnerabilities are, what the risk factors look like. This plan should involve measures to help identify the vulnerable groups and also sharing information and resources so they can self-identify. 

Another aspect of children returning to schools is anxiety around rejoining social spaces, starting social interactions again, and feeling safe with respect to infection. Karen Liebenguth, an accredited mindfulness teacher and supervisor & founder of Green Space Coaching & Mindfulness shares some tips on how to stay calm and grounded as we return to school, useful for both staff as well as the students.

Pause 5 times daily to take 3 deep breaths (it takes about 20 seconds): Set your alarm or remind yourself with a post-it note. Connecting with the body and breath in this way activates the parasympathetic nervous system that lets the brain know that you are safe; it brings you back into your direct sensory experience (primary experience), into the here and now where we can feel safe, grounded and calm. It’s a direct antidote to spiralling off in our head (secondary experience) which activates the sympathetic nervous system, the alarm system (amygdala) of the brain.

Take regular mindful breaks (before you need one): Taking regular breaks keeps you resourceful, creative and productive throughout the day vs feeling completely exhausted and overwhelmed at the end of the day. Breaks do not have to be long. Just a 2-minute break and several during the day can make a big difference.

For school staff, she suggests an informal system of work buddies: 

“Ask a colleague to be your work buddy and arrange to talk with each other regularly. Share how your work has been, what you’ve managed to do, what you’ve found challenging. Avoid going into catastrophic thinking together. Help each other come back to primary experience, to what’s actually going on, in the here and now. Find out what you need and how you can best support each other.”

Support your leadership & DSLs in their work and emotional wellbeing

In addition to resources and exercises for self-help, the school leadership and Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) need to be thoughtfully supported through more hands-on professional and emotional support. They will be looking at supporting vulnerable children with different needs from a variety of angles. DSLs are going to be dealing with huge volumes as well as the serious nature of cases for a long while.

For someone working on this caseload volume, they need adequate resources at their disposal as well, not just around their case management, but also in terms of emotional support structures for themselves. A big part of Young’s work, she shares, is supporting the leadership team and DSLs by offering them a space for one-on-one support where they can come and offload, have an open conversation in confidence, and get their batteries recharged.

Provision of training, support and guidance along with the creation of policies that foster work-life balance, decent pay and conditions will also positively impact their wellbeing. 

Infrastructural Safeguarding to reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission

As schools reopen, it's important to think of ways to create safety in community settings. This includes infrastructural adjustments like CO2 monitors, creating seating arrangements that abide by social distancing norms, crowd-control measures, one-way systems, robust COVID testing, among other measures. 

Ventilation has been a cause of concern as we return to schools since the possibility of infection shoots up in poorly ventilated rooms.

The Department for Education (DfE) is spending £25m to provide 300,000 CO2 monitors (September 2021). These monitors will send out alerts if the CO2 levels rise and the fresh air is scanty. Former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson shared, “Providing all schools with CO2 monitors will help them make sure they have the right balance of measures in place, minimising any potential disruption to education and allowing them to focus on world-class lessons and catch up for the children who need it.”

Some schools are choosing to keep face coverings mandatory, others are also considering ozone disinfecting machines. If the school experiences an outbreak, bubble groups and face masks are advised to be enforced strictly.

Apart from this, many schools are encouraging children to take lateral flow tests at home and self-isolate if testing positive. Children in the age group 12-15 years are also being offered the COVID vaccines — a dose of Pfizer — to curb possible infections.

To successfully return to schools and in-person teaching, it’s important to minimise the risk factors and to highlight the available support for both children and staff. 

Safeguarding measures for pupil and staff wellbeing