Safeguarding and Wellbeing

We have a duty of care to safeguard all children in our care and we make this our top priority. Everyone has a responsibility to protect children and young people and to report concerns. We take our responsibilities seriously and ensure all concerns and allegations are dealt with appropriately in accordance with our robust safeguarding policies and procedures. If we have a concern, we must act and do so promptly. ‘All providers must be alert to any issues of concern in a child’s life at home or elsewhere’ EYFS 2024

The Government guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ defines safeguarding as

• protecting children from maltreatment
• preventing impairment of children’s health or development
• ensuring the children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
• taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

All staff undertake full child protection training, followed by yearly online refresher courses in both safeguarding and the prevent duty. We have rigorous policies in place for reporting and acting upon any safeguarding concerns and all staff are familiar with these.

All staff are responsible for safeguarding. We also have two designated safeguarding leads (DSL’s) who have additional training. This allows us to ensure a DSL is available on site at all times. It also provides us with an opportunity for professional discussion, shared responsibility and reflections on our practice.

Sitting alongside our safeguarding responsibilities is our responsibility to safeguard children and young people against radicalisation, terrorism and extremist ideologies. The Prevent Duty 2015 (updated 2023) states that all education providers must have due regard ‘to help prevent the risk of people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism’.

Extremism is defined in the 2011 Prevent Strategy as ‘vocal or active opposition to the fundamental British values of Democracy, Rule of Law, Individual Liberty and Mutual Respect and Tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’ and as such, these values are implicitly embedded throughout the EYFS. At Southover Nursery we value and promote equality and diversity and work hard to prepare the children in our care for life in modern Britain.

How do we do this?

We developing an understanding of British values, age-appropriately, by:

• We allow the children to make choices – choosing what to play with independently or choosing as a group what story to read at group time
• We encourage them to listen to the ideas of their friends
• We make decisions together
• We discover what makes us unique and what we all have in common
• We teach the children to show empathy and concern for others
• We talk about our emotions and how we are feeling
• We take turns and share when we play
• We celebrate our differences and challenge stereotypes
• We provide children with opportunities to challenge themselves and develop their confidence and sense of self
• We teach children to be respectful and treat each other kindly and in a way in which we would like to be treated ourselves
• We teach children to recognise those who help us and those who contribute positively to society

We recognise that our safeguarding duties also require us to look after children’s healthy and wellbeing and as such we:

• have high standards of hygiene and cleanliness
• have drinking water available for the children at all times
• promote healthy eating and food choices
• support children’s emotional wellbeing
• have policies and procedures in place for the administration of medicines, for supporting children with medical conditions and for recognising and managing allergies
• all staff are qualified paediatric first aiders
• develop positive working relationships with all of our parents & carers