Safeguarding for Parents/Carers

Keeping your child safe at Cloughside is our highest priority. We will do our upmost to protect your child from serious harm, both online and offline.

We do this offline by working closely with a vast team of experts from multiple disciplines across all sites of the college (J17, Hope/Horizon & Gardener Unit). We also work closely with teams in the community, by building strong relationships with learners and, of course, by working with parents. We have a highly skilled and dedicated team of teachers who receive regular safeguarding training in terms of both safeguarding issues and the college's procedures when reporting concerns. We also have access to a range of clinical staff including psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, therapists and a plethora of mental health professionals who can offer advice when needed.

Online we use a comprehensive filtering and monitoring system (Smoothwall) that blocks known harmful sites and alerts us to any concerning text that students, or staff, have entered into our system. This works whether the text is entered into google, email, Microsoft Office or any other application.

We remain vigilant and adopt a 'it could happen here' approach to all our safeguarding processes and seek the views of pupils, staff and parents/carers regularly.  Through positive relationships and an open and honest approach we feel learners can speak out when sharing concerns.

We've included some articles in this section about common concerns that parents have.

If you have any questions, or wish to discuss any concerns further, even if you feel we could be doing something better, please contact the College and ask to speak to one of the following:

Safeguarding Leads at Cloughside

Staff Safeguarding Training

Every member of staff at Cloughside College undertakes periodic training in all aspects of the safeguarding of young people.

This includes recognising the signs of physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect, and how to correctly report concerns. As part of this training, staff complete a module on awareness of FGM.

Staff are also trained in the Government's Prevent Strategy, for recognising the signs of extremism and radicalisation. All college computer systems run real-time forensic scanning software that triggers alerts when it detects keywords linked to extremism in several languages.

These issues are regularly discussed in our weekly staff meetings and all staff have periodic top-up training sessions.