Free webinar series: Ask the experts
To support schools during the Coronavirus pandemic, we ran a series of free webinars addressing the issues affecting schools during lockdown and then the return to school. All recordings from the series are now available to download for free.
Our expert partners gave a presentation about the key issues and took questions and shared the good practice schools follow to keep children and young people safe.
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If you would like to download recordings for all of the webinars in this series, you can do so by filling out the form below. You will receive access to a hub where you can download every recording as we have them.
You can scroll down the page to read full descriptions of each webinar.
Identifying Mental health problems – your new obligations.
with Sharon White OBE, CEO, School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA)
Sharon White OBE, CEO of the School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA) is recognised as a global expert on School Nursing and as a passionate advocate for children, young people and their families, as such, she works across national and international Government Departments influencing, challenging and developing policy whilst driving forward the school nursing profession.
In this webinar, Sharon will cover the processes schools should have in place for identifying possible mental health problems – now a key obligation for schools. Schools must now recognise their role in supporting their pupils’ mental health, and governing bodies and proprietors should ensure they have clear systems and processes in place for identifying possible problems, including routes to escalate concerns and clear referral and accountability systems.
Sharon will cover the role of school mental health support teams and provide guidance for how schools can support children and young people, including suggestions for policies and processes that schools can implement.
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How can you support your young carers?
with Rebecca Rolfe, The Children's Society.
The impact of lockdown severely impacted our young carers, returning to school will almost certainly have been harder for these individuals than their peers.
Being a young carer is linked to a range of safeguarding issues:
- 68% of young carers are bullied at school.
- 27% of young carers aged between 11 and 15 miss school, and young carers have significantly lower attainment at GCSE than their peers – the equivalent of 9 grades lower overall.
- Over one third of young carers report having a mental health problem.
With the correct support in place the negative impacts of a caring role on the young person can be reduced.
In this webinar, Rebecca Rolfe from The Children’s Society will discuss how the Coronavirus pandemic has particularly affected existing young carers and created a stream of new young carers. She will cover how to identify a young carer and how to support any young carers at your school.
Mental wellbeing and returning to school
with Helen James, YoungMinds.
In this webinar, leading mental health charity YoungMinds will discuss strategies to implement in the new school year to support the mental health of the whole school community.
As well as the usual challenges that young people encounter at the start of a new academic year, the return to school this year will be accompanied by the impact of living under lockdown and anxieties around life under the ‘new normal’.
Mental Health is now a key focus of the 2020 update to Keeping Children Safe in Education and so this session will include practical advice to help put strategy into action and get the year off to as positive a start as possible.
Infection control: preparing the school environment for the return of all pupils.
with Sharon White OBE, CEO, School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA)
Sharon White OBE, CEO of the School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA) is recognised as a global expert on School Nursing and as a passionate advocate for children, young people and their families, as such, she works across national and international Government Departments influencing, challenging and developing policy whilst driving forward the school nursing profession.
Sharon and her colleagues have been supporting schools to prepare for students returning to the classroom. Sharon will cover infection prevention and control strategies and provide practical recommendations for how to protect staff and students.
Covid-19 and Safeguarding in an international setting
with Ann Marie Christian
Ann Marie Christian is an International Safeguarding Consultant who has been supporting international schools since 2008. A qualified social worker with a specialism in safeguarding in education since 1999 when she was based in a school in an inclusion project in London. Since then she has managed school Social workers, Children & Families Social Workers, Safeguard leads and colleagues who work with children in various settings.
Ann Marie has spoken at various international safeguarding conferences including the Caribbean, Dubai and Singapore. She is an affiliated consultant with the Council of International Schools and supports schools around the world with training and consultancy.
In this session, Ann Marie will cover how international schools can manage safeguarding during the Coronavirus crisis and give advice for good practice as schools reopen around the world.
Ann Marie will talk about the particular issues that international schools face with regards to safeguarding and discuss processes to implement to prepare for ‘the new normal’.
The changing face of safeguarding
with Ann Marie Christian
Our webinar series will be starting off with safeguarding expert Ann Marie Christian in a session that summarises the latest advice from the Department for Education.
Ann Marie Christian is a safeguarding and child protection consultant. She is a well-known and very much respected voice in the world of safeguarding who spreads her good practice and passion about the voice of the child, as well delivering the strong safeguarding agenda.
Ann Marie will discuss how the role of schools in safeguarding children has changed dramatically over recent weeks.
She will look in detail at the very latest information and advice from the DfE and talk specifically about the impact of Covid-19 on vulnerable children, governance and the role of the DSL. We aim to make this session as interactive as possible and will invite the audience to ask questions for debate and share their own examples of good practice.
Changing patterns of abuse
with Sharon White OBE, CEO, School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA)
Sharon White is recognised as a global expert on School Nursing and as a passionate advocate for children, young people and their families, as such, she works across national and international Government Departments influencing, challenging and developing policy whilst driving forward the school nursing profession.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Sharon and her colleagues have been supporting schools as they manage a wave of new referrals from families affected by the crisis. SAPHNA’s team is working with a growing number of children who were not previously considered to be vulnerable but who are now reporting new cases of abuse. Sharon will discuss how domestic violence reports have increased and how her team is providing support to those affected. She will also cover the range of Mental Health issues that SAPHNA are seeing and share the strategies they are using to help deal with those.
The changing nature of exploitation
with Kev Murphy, Safeguarding Lead, NWG Network
NWG are EduCare’s key partner for our Child Exploitation courses and have worked with us to raise awareness of exploitation and our ‘Reframe the blame’ campaign.
Kev has a wealth of experience working with vulnerable children and has a unique perspective and understanding of special educational needs and disability.
As with many other safeguarding charities, NWG are seeing a rise in the number of safeguarding cases and have seen cases of child exploitation increase online. Kev will discuss how criminal gangs are targeting families who are suffering financially during the crisis and how drug dealers are working around the social distancing laws to continue County Lines operations and child criminal exploitation.
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Online safety during lockdown
with Will Gardner, Childnet
In this session, Will Gardner from Childnet will outline some practical and effective measures that schools can share with their community to help keep children safe online.
As our online use increases at home, the risks to children and young people will increase too. Will will cover what the growing risks are, provide suggestions for good practice when teaching remotely and online safety protocols that families may want to consider adopting in their own homes.
Whilst Will cannot offer any specific advice on IT security for mediums such as Zoom and Teams, he will share general security advice and protocol for keeping safe online.
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Practical bereavement strategies
with Suzannah Phillips, Head of Clinical Governance, Winston's Wish
Winston’s Wish is a UK charity whose purpose is to support children and young people affected by bereavement.
Suzannah has a background in Psychology working for CAMHS and as a neuropsychologist and now works for Winston’s Wish where she is responsible for designing and delivering training and leading the research and evidence department. She continues to work directly with bereaved children and their families, both face to face and on the charity’s national helpline.
In this webinar, Suzie will be providing schools with some practical advice that they can use when pupils begin to return to school.
She will look at common reactions that children and young people may have about the death of a close family member, tips for managing communication and talking about death, and strategies schools may use to support families affected by bereavement.
Whether children have been affected directly by a bereavement or are struggling to cope with the impact of the crisis on the population as a whole, this session will give school staff the confidence to support the children and young people in their care.
The session will be practical and informative with opportunities for attendees to ask questions and seek advice.
