Remember ‘DON’T GO, SAY NO’

A word from Paul Moffat, Corporate Director of Children’s Services

Dear Parents

As the school year gets well underway, we wanted to share these useful top tips from our friends at Kidscape; a UK wide charity that provides resources to keep children safe from harm . These top tips are designed to help us talk with confidence with our children about keeping themselves safe when out in public.  Our fears of strangers around our children, and other elements of child safety, combine to stop children playing out as much as they would like. As a corporate parent we know the value of raising awareness, highlighting key support from services and sharing useful information. The focus for us as parents and organisations is education to enable.

Child safety is a key part of the Northumberland Children’s Services broader commitment to our children’s wellbeing, and ‘Stranger Danger’ awareness is one area that schools and services cover to help us all enable our children to think through decisions, gain increased self-confidence and attain greater resilience. Some examples of ongoing work and further online resources include:

Across schools, there are areas within each Key Stage of the curriculum where safety can be addressed:

Key Stage 1 - discussions about which types of strangers can be helpful in situations where there is danger.

Key Stage 2 - keeping safe outside of school and recognising personal risk.

Key Stage 3 - how to recognise when pressure from others threatens their personal safety and wellbeing and also to develop effective ways of resisting pressure and knowing where to get help.

Key Stage 4 - guidance is taken to next level through awareness of potential exploitation in relationships.

All schools in the county have access to support and advice, plus direction to appropriate learning resources, from the Health and Wellbeing Team within the Education Service.

Northumbria Police are involved with schools via their local Police Community Support Officers, who visit schools to help children feel safe and confident with police officers and to talk about various aspects of community safety.

The Northumberland Safeguarding Children Board is an independent partnership responsible for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.