Keeping your children safe is our upmost priority
The health, safety and well-being of every child is our top priority at Woodside Academy. The responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of students is taken very seriously and we work together with other agencies to identify, assess and support children who are, or may be suffering harm. We provide regular training to staff on specific issues of safeguarding young people with SEND and by ensuring strong pastoral systems are in place. All staff read the Keeping Children Safe in Education document when first employed and thereafter Part 1 every year. Our Leader of Pastoral Care & Safeguarding Liaison Officer is Mandy Avery. Click here to view our Designated Safeguarding Team.
Our pupils are supported by a large therapy team including play therapy, occupational therapy, speech & language therapy, physiotherapy and the school's pastoral and support team. These teams work in a co-ordinated way and in partnership with the Academy to ensure all children and young people's needs are fully supported. We also work in close partnership with students, parents, carers and multi-agency professionals, especially Children’s Services. All staff, including temporary, volunteers and governors are aware of their responsibilites to safeguard our students whose welfare is our paramount concern.
Parent Safety Guides to social media and online gaming
We are in an information age and pupils can learn a huge amount from the internet and communicate with friends and family through mobile phones. However there can also be a down side; that of cyber-bullying. This is the sending of unpleasant texts or posting nasty items on social networking sites and is unfortunately another area which is growing rapidly. It is different from more traditional forms of bullying. Some pupils have 24 hour access to the internet or a mobile phone and so it can be hard to escape. The audience for the bullying can be potentially huge and comments and pictures are likely to stay online forever.
In school we use assemblies, PSHCE and our links with the safer neighbourhood team to educate our pupils about the dangers of cyber bullying. We also ask parents/carers to look out for this and if you have any concerns that your child is being cyberbullied, please print off any available evidence and report it to the School as soon as possible.
Please follow the link below to the National Online Safety website. On this page there are Parent Guides to social media sites and also online gaming sites. The guides tell you about the programmes, the age limit required to sign up and how to keep your children safe when using them. Click here for guides to some of the apps the students say they use.
For further information about keeping your children safe, please take a look at some of the useful links below:
- Ask about games
- Childnet
- Internet matters
- NSPCC
- NSPCC underwear rule - parent guide
- Online Safety at home
- Parent Zone
- Thinkuknow - Keep your Children safe from harm
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