At Newark Orchard school we are committed to the wellbeing of our students and equipping them with the knowledge and skills to make the right choices and to keep themselves safe. The staff know the students well and recognise when extra support is needed during difficult times. Alongside our safeguarding curriculum we have five Designated Safeguarding Officers whose role is to support the staff with any concerns and liaise with other agencies where appropriate. The Senior Designated Safeguarding Lead is Rebecca Turner, Education and Health Leader and the deputies are Margot Tyers, Head Teacher, Leanne Hurdle, Lisa Williams, Deputy Headteachers and Ryan McWilliams, Assistant Head Teacher. All of which can be contacted via the school office. We also have a Senior Mental Health Leader and three Mental Health Ambassadors who have completed their Mental Health First Aid certificates and champion positive mental health across the school. As part of our commitment we worked towards the All Together programme which is an initiative by the Anti-Bullying Alliance to ensure schools have effective practice to prevent and manage bullying in schools. It has a specific focus on supporting SEND students. After the initial training, we completed an audit to see what we did well in school and what we needed to develop. We put together an action plan which included:
- Leading staff training on the All Together programme, ensuring they have access to resources on the schools portal
- Conducting a planning scrutiny to ensure the effective teaching and learning of our safeguarding curriculum
- Updating the schools ‘anti-bullying’ policy
- Co-ordinating a whole school ‘Healthy minds’ focus week
- Developing positive strategies to promote resilience of our students
- Ensuring all incidents of ‘bullying’ are reported, recorded and managed in an effective way and that steps are taken to learn from the incidents
- Parent and pupil opinion questionnaires
The ‘Healthy Minds’ week included activities such as:
- Learning about friendship
- Understanding emotions
- Taking part in mindfulness activities
- Building self-esteem and confidence
- Over the next year, the above were put into place and the evidence was collated and a final audit was created to achieve the Gold Award.
Emotional well-being and mental health
At Newark Orchard School we strongly believe that pupils need to be happy and emotionally secure in order for them to be able to learn. We have trained staff who have a wide variety of skills and strategies in place to ensure that pupils in school have someone to talk to if they are feeling anxious or worried about anything. These staff are also able to carry out interventions and have the relationships with the pupils to carry out work under the guidance of CAMHS colleagues
We offer 1:1 support or group work through lunch clubs and support groups to discuss difficult issues and build confidence and self-esteem.
All offers are individual and pupil centred.
Listed below are the safeguarding curriculum maps for each key stage which ensure we offer opportunities for all of our students. Please click on links below to view/download.
