Safeguarding:
Our Offer

A brief overview of the offer we provide in the key areas of safeguarding support for our pupils and their families; please see below for a list of contents and further below for more detail on each item. For even more information on any of these areas, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01254 261655 and ask for a member of the safeguarding team

• Mental health
• Family support
• PREVENT duty
• Female Genital Mutilation
• Digital Safety
• Substance misuse
• Child exploitation
• Child abuse
• Child on Child abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Safeguarding SEND
• Safeguarding Looked after children
• Child Protection & Child in Need
• Continuum of Needs

Mental Health

We believe all our pupils deserve to feel safe, happy and good about themselves and their lives. Our school has a team of trained practitioners supporting the daily wellbeing and long term mental health of those on roll at The Heights.

Pupils receive wellbeing sessions, mental health support and external referrals for counselling, assessments and SEND related support should they have additional needs identified by our team. We also put pupils in need on ‘Safeguarding & Wellbeing Action Plans’ (SWAPs) to monitor and support in more depth.

We recognise some of the challenges in our pupils lives may be due to low moods or emotional wellbeing struggles, and in turn pupil’s positive mental health is at the forefront of everything we do.

Family Support

As part of the Pastoral Team’s duty, we offer pupils a holistic support plan where we can support them and their families in key areas of need or guidance.

Should carers or parents require further support to help better the lives of their child/our pupil, we can liaise with families daily, home visit, lead Family support plans, provide parenting support in the form of family group sessions or mediation meetings and supply packages such as uniform support, food parcels and basic essentials to support the overall wellbeing of the whole family.

Importantly, we can support families by positively referring for additional help from our key professional contacts in the community.

Prevent

We are committed to ensuring all of our pupils are safe from terror threats; whether this is through preventing harm by terror to many or preventing harm to one who may be being groomed and/or radicalised.

The Heights Blackburn recognises its duty to our pupils and the wider public to take immediate and appropriate action in reporting concerns, educating pupils and supporting external professionals in preventing terror or radicalisation by spotting the early warning signs, receiving regular training to stay up to date and working closely with pupils and families positively to ensure all remain safe.

We report all concerns of this nature to Prevent for advice and guidance as soon as the concern is raised.

FGM

We are dedicated to supporting women and girls or any individual who may be the victim, directly, indirectly, potentially or historically, of female genital mutilation. 

Our staff are trained to spot the signs around causes for concerns, and will take every action appropriate to safeguard, protect and support any individual believed to be a victim of FGM.

We are aware of the risks, alert to the concerns and will ensure serious actions are taken to support anyone who requires help in this regard.

Digital Safety

Our safeguarding team recognise that many young people spend a lot of their time online or in the digital world, and in turn there are many serious concerns that could endanger them physically, emotionally and even sexually.

The Heights Blackburn has appointed a trained Digital Safeguarding lead to tackle these issues directly, raise awareness about digital safety and promote a healthy online lifestyle for young people engaging with technology; we can provide targeted interventions for pupils struggling with any area of engagement in the digital world that may be affecting their safety.

Ensuring pupil safety both inside and outside of school in the digital world is of the utmost importance to the safeguarding team.

Substance Misuse

Many young people today are involved in using substances that are not appropriate for their safety or health, such as alcohol, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cannabis and other drugs. At The Heights Blackburn, we provide pupils with targeted intervention around these risk taking behaviours, support families holistically with eradicating substance misuse from their children’s lives, and importantly we make direct referrals to professional health services for positive support for young people stopping substance misuse.

The Heights Blackburn also provides wellbeing support to families struggling in this area, and will make positive direct referrals for any close person of a pupil (family/friend) misusing substances, providing support every step of the way on their journey to achieving a happier and healthier life.

Child Exploitation

At The Heights Blackburn we recognise that our pupils could be vulnerable to being influenced, groomed or exploited in many different ways. We work with Police, Health and Social care regularly to refer, information share, consult with and support pupils and young people in the community who are at risk of or being exploited criminally or sexually.

We do not judge young people or their families who are being criminally or sexually exploited, and support their cases with dignity, understanding and care; no young person wants to be exploited, however many young people are not aware that they are a victim of this. In turn, we work daily to ensure all our pupils are aware of the risks, that our staff are trained to spot the early signs of exploitation, and that we continuously work with all relevant agencies to eradicate CCE & CSE from the lives of our pupils and their families.

Child Abuse

We do not believe that any child should come to any harm; The Heights Blackburn stands against Child Abuse in all of its forms and works tirelessly daily to ensure all of our pupils feel and are safe at school, at home, within themselves and within the community and digital world. Child Abuse of any form is unacceptable and safeguarding and protecting our pupils from child abuse is our number one priority.

We have an 11 person strong safeguarding team all trained to the same level as the DSL to be aware of the signs, suspicions, concerns and realities of potential or actual child abuse, physically, emotionally, mentally, verbally, digitally, sexually, negligently or otherwise.

The Heights Blackburn works closely with the police, health, social care and pupil’s mainstream schools around any and all child abuse concerns.

Child on Child Abuse

The Heights Blackburn is completely committed to eradicating child on child abuse from pupils’ school experience with us. We recognise this can take place in many different forms, such as but not limited to, physical, emotional, mental, sexual, verbal, domestic, financial and/or digital abuse. We have trained all our staff to be aware of the signs around children abusing children, how to take immediate action to stop the abuse and support the victim, and then to report the concerns to the safeguarding team for further actions immediately upon ensuring the safety of the victim(s) and all other potential victims. We monitor, observe and check in on pupil wellbeing, the student community and school experience for our young people daily to take a proactive approach in managing potential issues rather than simply waiting to react to them. Through assemblies, workshops, student voices, 1-1 support sessions  and PSHE lessons we capture the voices of our pupils’ experiences to ensure we can keep our school safe every day for all.

Our ethos is ensuring the victim(s) and all who could suffer directly or indirectly, receive the utmost care to keep them safe in all areas. We take a zero tolerance approach to bullying and all forms of child on child abuse. All efforts are made by behaviour practitioners at The Heights Blackburn to educate and rehabilitate alleged offenders through targeted interventions where safe to do so for the victim, however alleged offenders may be reported to social care and the police on a case by case basis, whilst physical and mental health support referrals will be made for victims where appropriate.

The Heights Blackburn will always take the voice of the victim (and family/team) into account when taking next steps, and always ensure as a number one priority when dealing with cases of child on child abuse that the victim feels safe as next steps progress.

SEND

Our child protection policy reflects we are aware that children with SEND, or certain medical or physical health conditions, can face additional barriers to any abuse or neglect being recognised. With this in mind, the safeguarding team works extremely closely with the schools’ SENDCO and SEND team in both proactively supporting young people with (possible) SEND and in responding to safeguarding concerns for our SEND pupils.

When supporting our SEND pupils with safeguarding concerns, we ensure a member of the SEND or mental health team are present and that key members of their family and support teams are included every step of the way to ensure the voice of the pupil is accurately and appropriately captured.

Looked After Children

We have appointed a designated teacher, Helen Morris (also the DSL) who is responsible for promoting the educational achievement of looked-after children and previously looked-after children in line with statutory guidance. Helen Morris is supported by the SEND, pastoral and safeguarding teams.The designated teacher is appropriately trained and has the relevant qualifications and experience to perform the role.

As part of their role, the designated teacher will work closely with all departments of the school (including but not limited to; quality of education, pastoral & safeguarding teams, attendance and support staff) to ensure that any safeguarding concerns regarding looked-after and previously looked-after children are quickly and effectively responded to, and work with virtual school heads to promote the educational achievement of looked-after and previously looked-after children, including discussing how pupil premium plus funding can be best used to support looked-after children and meet the needs identified in their personal education plans, including attending and leading PEP (personalized education plan) meetings and collaborating with social workers and carers to fully support the young person, whilst importantly constantly capturing their voice around their school and lived experiences.

Child Protection

At The Heights Blackburn we ensure all pupils who are with us who are also on a Child Protection plan receive the utmost holistic care and support during their time with us. These pupils receive both their own wellbeing mentor at school and a member of staff as point of contact for home for any support that may be required. Their social worker will be contacted daily on key concerns/updates and a member of our safeguarding team will attend and report to every Child Protection plan meeting held. We recognise children on this level of support plan are of the most vulnerable and in turn their safety and care is paramount to our every action in supporting them.

Continuum of Needs

Many of our pupils come from different local authorities, and in turn when working with social care, health and the police we primarily liaise with three different bodies; Blackburn with Darwen, Lancashire and Bolton.

At The Heights Blackburn, we report to, refer and consult with all these authorities on advice and guidance that meets or could meet the continuum of needs threshold, and ensure we attend all Child in Need and Early Help meetings, liaising with social workers, support workers and lead professionals daily on key concerns/updates where appropriate.

All pupils who meet the continuum of needs threshold are appropriately supported by key staff at The Heights Blackburn to ensure their safety and wellbeing.