Keeping our students and staff safe is a top priority of our college.
What is safeguarding?
Safeguarding means protecting a child/young persons health, wellbeing and human rights. Allowing them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. The Children Act 2004 reinforces that all people and organisations working with young people have a responsibility to help safeguard and promote welfare across the UK.
Nottingham College takes pride in ensuring the college is a safe, and supportive atmosphere for our students to thrive. The college is committed to ensuring that students have access to a range of support from student services, student support, security, tutors, and additional learning support. Nottingham college also works alongside a wide range of external organisations who we regularly refer to for support.
If you have any safeguarding concerns about a student at the college you can contact the college on 0115 9100 100, or alternatively you can send the safeguarding team an email on Safeguarding@Nottinghamcollege.ac.uk.
If there are concerns around a student outside of college hours, then please contact the Police on 101 for non-emergency incidents or 999 for any serious concerns.
What is Prevent?
Prevent forms part of the Government’s CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy. The Prevent duty requires specified authorities such as education, health, local authorities, police and criminal justice agencies (prisons and probation) to help prevent the risk of people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.
The objectives of Prevent are to:
- Tackle the ideological causes of terrorism
- Intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation
- Enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate.
Nottingham College takes disclosure, allegations, suspicion of harm or abuse seriously and handled in a sensitive manner.
Meet the Team
In order to ensure that safeguarding referrals are dealt with efficiently and effectively, Nottingham College has a range of specially trained colleagues who can pick up and respond to any concerns.
First Response Officers (FROs) are our first point of contact for any safeguarding cases raised regarding learners. FROs have received additional training to be able to manage low level safeguarding cases, and escalate concerns through our internal processes and required.
Designated Safeguarding Officers (DSOs) have received a higher level of training, and ensure that we are able to manage all of the safeguarding cases. DSOs will manage cases regarding child protection or other social care related issues. DSOs also provide support and guidance to First Response Officers and other colleagues across the college regarding appropriate actions required.
You can meet the Safeguarding Team here.
At Nottingham College, we take pride in ensuring the college is a safe and supportive atmosphere for students to thrive.
Nottingham College is committed to ensuring that students have access to a range of support from tutors, wellbeing mentors, additional learning support and security when it comes to safeguarding students.
Where we feel that students may need additional support in order continue or manage their studies, Nottingham College works with a wide range of external organisations who we regularly refer to for support.
If you have any safeguarding concerns about a student at the college and you think they may need additional support, please contact the college on: 0115 9100 100 and you will be directed to the most appropriate person. If there are concerns around a student outside of college hours, then please contact the Police on 101 for non-emergency incidents or 999 for any serious concerns.
What does ‘Safeguarding’ mean?
- Safeguarding looks at keeping children, young people and adults safe from a wide range potential harm, and puts in procedures into place to prevent, as well as acting to stop harm.
- Child protection looks at recognising abuse and neglect and acting to stop it. Special measures are put in place to protect and support any students we are concerned are at risk of significant harm.
- Prevent is about supporting students and helping them to stop them from becoming involved in extremist/terrorist activities.
Information for professionals
In your role, it may be that you are working with students that are leaving school, re-accessing education or are currently studying with us. If you have any safeguarding concerns or queries that you need to share with the college, please get in touch by calling either 0115 9100 100 and you will be directed to a member of the safeguarding team. Alternatively, you can contact the safeguarding team via email on safeguarding@nottinghamcollege.ac.uk. Please state to our call centre colleagues or in email about whether the enquiry is urgent.
For further details, please see our safeguarding policy in full here. If you are working with a student who is involved in any social care meetings, looked after reviews or any other safeguarding meetings, do contact the college and we will arrange for a representative of the college to attend.
Safeguarding Files
In accordance to Keeping Children Safe in Education (2018) schools are required to share relevant safeguarding information or files with the education provision that student moves to. If schools or alternative education provisions are aware that their students are progressing onto courses with Nottingham College, please get in touch with the safeguarding team at safeguarding@nottinghamcollege.ac.uk and a member of the team will get in touch.
Professionals visiting Nottingham College
Guidance from Nottingham City Council has outlined clear guidance to professionals around controlling access to school premises.
To summarise:
- Any professional wishing to undertake work in college with our students must be expected to make a formal appointment and the safeguarding team will take the steps to ensure a risk assessment is carried out and logged appropriately.
- The named professional must be the person who undertakes any intervention · Professionals must show their organisation ID on arrival
- Professionals must sign in on reception, and where possible be accompanied by a member of staff at all times
Support we can offer
You may be working with students who currently receive a wide range of support in school around their emotional wellbeing, looked after child support, support around behaviour or wide safeguarding issues. Starting college can be an anxious time for many students, but if you believe that there are any support requirements that the college can put into place before students join us in September, do not hesitate to get in touch.
There is a wide range of support available at the college, and particular support is in place for any learners who are either Looked After or Care Leavers. Looked After Learners and Care Leavers are able to access specific support from their Wellbeing Mentors to ensure that they are able to reach their highest potential while studying with us. This can range from one to one support, wellbeing check ins, referrals to external services and ongoing liaison with social workers or personal advisors.
All Looked After Learners will also have Personal Education Plan (PEP) meetings, which will be attended by their Wellbeing Mentors and the Faculty Area Manager for their curriculum. These meetings are in place to ensure that learners are on track with their course, attending well, and any barriers to learning are resolved and support is put into place.
For more information about the financial support offered to Looked After Learners, please contact our Student Finance Team.
For safeguarding purposes, if a learner has any current or pending convictions then the safeguarding team must be made aware at the application stage or during the learner’s time with us if an incident was to occur during. A thorough risk assessment will then be conducted in a sensitive and confidential manner, to ensure the safety and support needs of both the learner and others linked to the programme are able to be met, and for the learner to achieve their potential in a safe and supportive environment. Nottingham College prides itself on following the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1984 and ensures that every learner is given a fair and equal opportunity. We have expertly trained, friendly and professional behaviour specialists who work with our learners and we have other support in place such as Wellbeing Mentors.
Nottingham College offers a wide range of support for students who suffer with mental health issues. If you are working with a student whose mental health is having a detrimental effect on their ability to study, or you are the parent or carer of a student who needs support with their mental health, please get in contact with the college, and we may be able to begin our Support to Study Procedures in order to best support the student. This can even be completed before a student enrols at the college, so support can be organised before they start in September.
Every student has an Wellbeing Mentor allocated to them to give pastoral support when needed. Wellbeing Mentors work with tutors, Faculty Area Managers and the Wellbeing Co-ordinator for student wellness to create a support plan for those students who need support with their mental health. Additional support available includes liaising directly with external mental health services such as CAMHS, Community Psychiatric Nurses and social workers as well as referring to additional external support, making reasonable adjustments for exams, workload, deadlines and timetabling to give the student the best change possible of achieving their potential.
In addition to this, we also have a number of Youth Mental Health First Aid trained staff who work across all our campuses. They are specifically trained in recognising signs of distress in our students, listening to concerns around mental health, signposting to support services, managing a mental health crisis and reporting concerns to our safeguarding team for additional support. These members of staff are recognisable by their Mental Health First Aid badges on their lanyard and are always happy to help.
Nottingham college takes online safety very seriously and we have a range of tools and systems in place to ensure our students stay safe whilst they use the internet. Whether a student is using a device whilst on campus or using a loaned College device/laptop at home, we have integrated a secure monitoring system on all of these. This system is called eSafe, which is vital service which alerts schools and colleges to the earliest warning signs of risks to safety, welfare and wellbeing and enables early interventions – supporting education leaders with their statutory duties, as defined by the Department for Education. eSafe not only monitors words and phrases for risk markers in all languages but is the only digital monitoring service that can also detect evidence of safeguarding risks in static and moving images that aren't tagged with descriptive copy. This is particularly important in the current pandemic, as isolated imagery is often the only place where signs of the trending safeguarding risks (such as webcam grooming and child sexual exploitation) will be found.
Where an alert is sent to the Safeguarding team, it is dealt with appropriately depending on the severity of the content, which may include a discussion with their tutor/Wellbeing Mentors or in some instances contact is made with the students’ parents, social worker or the Police.
Please note that if any of our students are abusing any of our college devices or not following the IT policy correctly, we reserve the right to suspend their use of the devices or confiscate any that were on loan.
Nottingham College has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to bullying, harassment and abuse. Where an incident is reported to a member of staff, we will always ensure the relevant support is provided, a thorough investigation is conducted and the matter is dealt with appropriately.
Where our students do not feel confident in speaking up to a member of staff in person, they are able to report their concerns to a confidential email address called Report-It. This service is not anonymous, but is staffed by a trained team who will treat their report with complete confidentially. We will offer them support and advice, and explain how their concern will be managed. We have posters to promote this service on the inside of all our toilet door cubicles and there is also a copy on our internal StudentNet page.
Together we can tackle and overcome bullying and harassment and keep ourselves and our College community safe from harm.
