Contents:
Other contents:
With the summer here, Bristol is bursting with events and activities across the city. We hope you and your communities have been out and about and enjoying events so far this year.
You may also wish to highlight the West of England Combined Authority's fantastic offer 'Kids go free on the West's buses' where under 16s can get free bus travel across the WECA footprint Kids go free on the West’s buses - West of England Combined Authority. We want our children, young people, and their families to access all that’s on offer, have fun and be safe when doing so. So, we have created dedicated pages on our website for information, advice and resources around staying safe outside of school.
Please visit Staying safe out of school on our website for more information and to access resources - Staying safe out of school
ACTION:
Thank you to colleagues who have been robustly ensuring that the school holidays are covered to ensure education representation attendance at strategies and child protection conferences. Your commitment and availability has been reflected in positive feedback from lead professionals and the CP Chairs.
We recognise that for some of you this is a difficult task given the level of resource in your setting, but we strongly recommend that you review and consider how you can continue to contribute effectively to multi-agency working arrangements during the summer holidays. The safeguarding team will cover/arrange education representation for new Initial child Protection Conferences/strategies and planned Review Child Protection Conferences where possible if communicated.
If we do attend a meeting on your behalf we will feedback the outcome of the conference, any salient points, and dates of future planned meetings.
ACTION:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) recording software in virtual meetings.
We've had a few incidents where some settings have been attending with automated recording as a default setting on their devices. Whilst this is not widespread currently, we anticipate with the advancement of software and artificial intelligence this may progress to become an issue in upholding integrity of data protection and human rights within the statutory arena, and also in retaining dignity for family members and to support trust in the child protection system/multi-agency working.
ACTION:
There have been developments under the Local Safeguarding Partnership following learning from Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews
It is imperative each setting is familiar with these processes in line with Part 2 of Keeping Children Safe in Education - Working Together.
Operation Bond is part of a contextual safeguarding approach which aims to ensure robust information sharing information between Bristol area schools, the Local Authority and Avon and Somerset Police to respond to incidents of conflict in the community proactively and appropriately.
ACTION:
'We will work to keep our children safe, stable, and wherever possible, within their families and communities. We, along with our partner agencies, will provide our families, carers, and workforce with the right support to enable this to happen and create lasting change, putting children and families at the heart of every decision.'
Here are the workstream aims in how Children’s social care transforms and aligns with the national reforms. You can access this an infographic too - https://www.bristolsafeguardingineducation.org/media/415pqpjm/families-first-programme.pdf
Further information about this will be shared in the new academic year.
Now part of the First Assessment Service ensuring children experiencing harm from outside the home are assessed and considered under the Children Act 1989 to consider assessment of need and managing any potential harm.
All referrals will need to go through First Response where information will be recorded and triaged by the Safer Connections team for all of the harm outside the home referrals – this may not always result in a social care intervention, but may result in a different service or team being considered – this new approach is to ensure that information is captured and shared appropriately in line with legal and statutory duties under the Children Act 1989. This is a new process which will be assessed and refined as the service develops.
Development of information sharing for extra familial harm will be initiated through a Daily Incident Briefing where members of the Safeguarding in Education Team will represent the Education Sector and share information that is propionate to support management of risk and or develop contextual safeguarding approaches.
Further information about this with additional CPD support will be shared in the new academic year.
Unsure about whether you should make a referral or a request for targeted support? Please review Effective support for children and families, previously known as threshold guidance. You can also seek non-urgent advice from Family Help teams (email and numbers remain the same).
Unsure whether the child you are concerned about has a Social Worker or Family Help Worker? Request information from First Response for professionals
Webform System:
ACTION:
A ‘for information’ draft now been published - Keeping children safe in education 2025 a table of changes can be accessed here - https://www.bristolsafeguardingineducation.org/media/hjndmite/keeping-children-safe-in-education-2025.pdf
Update from the DfE - This version will come into force on 1 September 2025 by which time we expect it to include links to revised guidance on Relationships, Sex, and Health Education and revised guidance on gender questioning children.
KCSIE has been revised regularly for many years, and we intend that it will continue to be revised and improved on a regular basis. Whilst there are only technical changes to KCSIE 2025, future iterations will reflect the progress into legislation of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the emerging further learnings from the work of the recent Casey Audit and subsequent inquiries, the Violence Against Women and Girls strategy and the interactions between these advances.
This Government is clear that there are – and will continue to be – further learnings about how we can better protect children in the future as we come to understand more clearly what has gone wrong in the past and schools and colleges will continue to need to play an incredibly important role in this. Please visit here for the DfE post: Update to all education and childcare settings and providers
The Safeguarding in Education Team will review these changes and implement these within our new model policy update and any further CPD.
The team will be working diligently over the summer holidays to bring you annual resources to help you start your academic year. Remember whilst it is tempting to get annual safeguarding done in the first week during inset days, we advise that you break this up over the course of the year to ensure scaffolding of learning and doing this in bitesize pieces.
We will send resources out via this mailing list and upload it to the News section on our webpage.
What to expect:
We will continue to send you requests for information on the chance that you are able to provide support. MARAC discusses the top 10% of domestic abuse cases where there is a significant risk or harm to life. We will update you regardless as to whether you can provide information. You may be required to feed into wider professional safety planning in the new academic year.
Henry Chan has secured the new ALP Service Manager role which will be supporting children under the LA's s19 Duty of the Education Act 1996. This won’t be goodbye, but he will be working with you in a slightly different capacity.
This means there will likely be a series of recruitments in the Safeguarding in Education. New details of the updated service structure will be shared in the new academic year in September.
Please watch below video briefing about the proposed work that is due to take place in Bristol Supporting Family Relationships - Reducing Harmful Parental Conflict.
ACTIONS:
As always please don’t hesitate to contact the team if you have any queries or questions. If we don’t hear from you before the new academic year, we hope you and colleagues manage to have a restful break when you get to it.
Please make sure you are signed up to our mailing list to see this more promptly.
We thank you for your understanding.