Safeguarding Update

From the Designated Safeguarding Lead

As we start another year at school, I wanted to take this opportunity to provide some reminders about key personnel in school and information you may find useful regarding safeguarding. We take our responsibilities to safeguarding our students very seriously and all of our staff have had their yearly safeguarding and child protection training update.

I am the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) for the school can be contacted directly using my school email susie.beresfordwylie@bradleystokecs.org.uk

We have two Deputy Safeguarding Leads in school:

Lynda Cordukes, SST Team Leader, for the secondary phase and Sharon Clark, Headteacher for Primary, for the Primary Phase.

Safeguarding encompasses a wide variety of issues which includes drug and alcohol use, exploitation, situations at home which cause students distress, bullying, mental health, children missing education, online safety  and peer on peer abuse.

We have certainly seen an increase in students presenting with mental health issues and whilst it is normal to feel anxious, worried, stressed or upset as part of everyday responses to situations, it is when these feelings overwhelm you and impact on your everyday life that we need to help our students to find coping strategies along with parents and carers support.

Where do I find support as a parent?

Off the Record are a fantastic provider of group or 1:1 counselling and resilience building sessions and parents and students can refer themselves. Their parent support sessions are excellent and we work very closely with tem in school.

The link below will provide you with their information for the Yate hub:

http://www.otrbristol.org.uk/2016/11/south-glos/

I have also previously shared the excellent online Kooth counselling provider and have added it in here for you again: https://kooth.com/

Please also take the time to look at our FROG student support page as this contains a wealth of information for parents and students on many issues such as coping with self-harm issues, friendship issues, online risks and support, our counselling provision in school and LGBTQ support. We update this regularly to reflect new organisations and support available for students and parents.