Who are we?

The Safeguarding in Education Team help to ensure school staff and others working in education are promoting the welfare of the children in their settings.

"Protecting children from maltreatment, preventing impairment of children's health or development, ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes. Children includes everyone under the age of 18.”

Source: Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022

What do we do? 

The Safeguarding in Education Team can provide information, training, advice and guidance including:

• Advice and guidance to educational establishments, early years settings and childminders on safeguarding and child protection concerns, including allegations against staff
• Safeguarding and child protection training for all early years settings and childminders, schools (through the Continuous Professional Development Programme) and Hackney Education staff
• Training for Designated Safeguarding Leads
• Bespoke training for early years establishments upon request (Bespoke training for schools can be accessed through external training providers)

Other available training includes:

• Safe practice training, managing allegations training and safeguarding training for parents
• Disseminating best practice regarding safeguarding by drawing on latest safeguarding guidance and research
• Contribution to and delivery of City and Hackney Safeguarding Children's Partnership training packages

This service helps provide an overview of the relevant legislative, statutory and advisory guidance that those who come into contact with children and their families MUST be aware of.

Who is responsible for safeguarding children? 

Everyone has a role to play in safeguarding children. Staff in schools, colleges, Early Years settings and Childminders are particularly important as they may be the first to notice something concerning and provide help for children, to prevent concerns or situations from escalating.

Schools and colleges, Early Years settings and Childminders and their staff are part of the wider safeguarding system for children and should work with; social care, the police, health services and others to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm.

The Safeguarding in Education Team can provide practical guidance in relation to safeguarding policies, record keeping and referrals to Children's Social Care including Hackney's Disabled Children's Service where the concern may be more specific to disability related complexity.

To help with this a range of useful resources can be found on Hackney's Services for Schools including: 

• Hackney Education's Safeguarding and Child Protection Handbook
• Hackney Education's Preventing Bullying Statement
• Hackney Education's Domestic Abuse Guidance
• Working together to safeguard children
• Keeping children safe in education
• What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused
• City of London & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership
• Guidance for safer working practice for those working with children and young people in education settings
• Multi-agency statutory guidance on female genital mutilation
• Information sharing - Advice for practitioners providing safeguarding services to children, young people, parents and carers (March 2015)
• The common inspection framework: education, skills and early years
• Towards safer organisations
• London Child Protection Procedures and Practice Guidance
• A Guide to Child Performance Licensing

View information and resources from Hackney Education's Safeguarding in Education Team. 

Hackney Education Revised Positive Handling Guidance for Schools and Settings

The revised guidance document sets out Hackney Education's position in relation to the use of reasonable force and physical restraint in schools and settings across the borough.  It details the legal position and best practice in this area.

Hackney Education believes everyone has a right to:

• Recognition of their unique identity;
• Be treated with respect and dignity;
• Learn and work in a safe environment;
• Be protected from harm, violence, assault and acts of verbal abuse.

This latest version of the document seeks to provide comprehensive guidance to schools and settings. The guidance also considers best practice, de-escalation strategies, non- verbal techniques, and issues to avoid when effectively managing challenging behaviour. This guidance should also prove essential in reducing potential allegations made against education staff if physical interventions can be proven to be supported by effective training and guidance.

View Hackney Education's - Positive Handling Guidance for Schools and Settings. Included in this document are model policies. To use the model policies copy and paste the relevant information and insert your settings name.