The education of safeguarding within all of our academies is one of the most important vehicles to ensure our staff can identify and deal appropriately with safeguarding concerns and for our children to be able to manage their lives safely both within the school and beyond.

Raising awareness of safeguarding among staff: All our academies adhere to Keeping Children Safe in Education (2022), statutory safeguarding guidance from the Department for Education; all our staff, Trustees, Members and Governors are directed and sign to say they have read at least the first section of this guidance.

Safeguarding training - All our staff undergo safeguarding training, this is recorded in each academy, and regularly updated to meet statutory requirements. All our DSLs receive annual training through the local authority and additional specific CPD. To ensure training is current our DSLs attend termly updates and further training in response to local and national issues. All DSLs complete the full retraining as required

We recognise that staff knowledge and awareness is a priority. Staff are made aware, through regular training, e-mail updates, bulletins, staff meetings as well as visible information within our buildings of the safeguarding policies. Staff knowledge is secure as schools test staff to ensure training is embedded. The Trust is secure that staff are highly trained, can recognise concerns and are confident in reporting signs of abuse and neglect.

Raising awareness of safeguarding among students: All our schools are embedded into a culture of safeguarding as it is threaded into specific PSHE and RSE lessons alongside a broader range of curriculum subjects and enrichment.

It is expected that schools are responsive to current issues and adapt curriculums to meet immediate needs. In addition, regular newsletters, school displays and initiatives are to be employed by each academy.

In addition, student voice is an important component within each academy to gauge student understanding of key areas of safeguarding and then using this information to drive curriculum changes. This powerful asset is in line with the UN convention on the rights of the child.

Academy Leadership of safeguarding: It a priority for each of the schools to have the capacity within their safeguarding teams to meet the context of the setting. Each academy has a designated safeguarding lead (DSL). Schools are encouraged to develop a wider safeguarding team through training of additional DSLs who support students and staff, having capacity to liaise with other agencies. The DSLs are always available to staff during school hours and can be contacted out of school hours in emergencies. Staff raise any concerns about pupils’ welfare with their designated safeguarding teams, who will then make decisions about referrals. A referral is made immediately, in line with the T&W threshold guidance where a child is in immediate danger or at risk of harm.

In addition, the Trust place a significant level of responsibility upon the role of Local Governing Body (LGB) when monitoring safeguarding issues, procedures and outcomes. Each school must have a link governor for safeguarding whose responsibility is to meet with the lead DSL and headteacher to evaluate schools’ actions verses clear criteria. Those minuted meetings are then shared with the full governing body so they all very aware of strengths and areas for development.

This monitoring by external professionals is further enhanced by the service level agreement with the Local Authority. Telford and Wrekin provide a centralised service that includes high quality CPD, one to one advice and support in addition to full audits of our schools. These in-depth reviews cover all aspects of safeguarding from culture to compliance and full reports are circulated to LGB, Trustees as well as school leaders.

Induction/Safer recruitment – all adults working in our Academies, including members, trustees, governors, third party staff, casual staff and volunteers, all undergo appropriate safer recruitment checks, including the correct level of Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Anyone engaged in ‘regulated activity’ also undergoes an enhanced DBS check with barred list information. Checks are all recorded on each academy single central record (SCR) and LCT Central team on LCT’s SCR. The Company Secretary has access to all our academies SCRs and ensures they are up to date and compliant.

Certain individuals are disqualified from providing childcare or managing early year’s provision or out-of-school-hours childcare for under-8s. Our academies do not employ a disqualified person to work in a relevant setting.

At least one person on any appointment panel in our Academies must have undertaken safer recruitment training.

Dealing with specific safeguarding issues – The Trust ensures that all our staff are aware of the indictors of abuse and neglect. As well as specific safeguarding issues such as radicalisation, child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, children missing in education, mental health, serious violence and peer on peer abuse.

All our teachers understand that they should speak to the DSLs with any concerns on female genital mutilation (FGM) BUT that they are required by law to report to the police any concerns about FGM carried out on a girl aged under 18.

Trust ICT infrastructure: Appropriate internet filters and monitoring systems are in place in all our academies to keep children and young people safe online. This is informed by the risk assessment required by the Prevent Duty. Our students receive regular assemblies and learn in curriculum time how to be safe on social media. Parents can access support and advice from their child’s school, we provide information on websites as well as parent sessions.

LCT Central Team – all LCT staff are based at HLC campus and therefore abide by HLC’s safeguarding policy and procedures. They all undertake annual safeguarding training as part of their role. If they are working in one of our academies, they follow the child protection policy of that academy. Within the LCT team we always have a minimum of one DSL who oversees all aspects of safeguarding. If a member of the LCT central team needs to report any concerns regarding safeguarding practices in one of our academies, they report it directly to the Trust DSL via the Company Secretary.