Please click here to view our Safeguarding Processes Poster
Safeguarding is about ensuring that children are safe from harm. This means protecting them from maltreatment, preventing any impairment to their health or development, ensuring that they grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care, and taking action, when appropriate, to ensure all children have the best outcomes. Child protection is part of this definition and refers to activities undertaken to prevent children suffering, or being likely to suffer, significant harm, including abuse and neglect.
All staff are regularly trained, vigilant for signs of harm, and are confident about applying our policies to any potential safeguarding issues. Our safeguarding and child protection work is led by our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) and several deputies; they are:
For detailed information or to discuss any safeguarding matters, please contact the school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead, Mrs K Molloy, at dsl@hernebayhigh.org or by phone at 01227 361221 during normal school hours.
Please follow the links below to our key policies:
Useful Numbers
If you have an immediate concern and believe a child to be at risk of significant harm or danger, please contact the police on 101 or 999. You can also contact Social Services on 03000 41 11 11 or 03000 41 91 91 for further advice and support (Report abuse - Kent County Council).
Worried about a child - Kent Safeguarding Children Multi-Agency Partnership
Lifelines:
Kent Social Services - to tell them about a child safeguarding concern, either:
CEOP:
CEOP is a law enforcement agency and is here to help keep children and young people safe from sexual abuse and grooming online. They help thousands of children and young people every year. CEOP are unable to respond to reports about bullying, fake accounts or account hacking.
Supporting Young People Online - Reporting Harmful Images and Deepfakes
As part of our ongoing commitment to keeping students safe online, our safeguarding team regularly completes training on emerging online risks. One area that is becoming increasingly concerning nationally is the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfake technology, which can be used to create or manipulate images without a person’s consent.
To help ensure students and families know where to seek help if they encounter harmful or inappropriate images online, we are signposting the following trusted reporting services. These organisations can help remove images from the internet and provide support where needed.
Take It Down is a free service that helps young people remove or stop the spread of nude images of under-18s online. Images are converted into a digital fingerprint so that participating platforms can prevent them from being shared. Access the service here: https://takeitdown.ncmec.org
The Internet Watch Foundation is a UK organisation that works to identify and remove abuse imagery online. Anyone can report content anonymously.
Report harmful content here: https://www.iwf.org.uk
Report Remove, provided by Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation, allows young people under 18 to report images or videos of themselves online and get help to have them removed.
Access the tool here: https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/online-mobile-safety/report-remove
Accessing Support in School
Students can also speak to a member of the school’s safeguarding team if they are worried about something they have seen or experienced online. We encourage young people to seek help as soon as possible so that we can support them and take appropriate action, and we reiterate this regularly with students during our house assemblies.