Woodlands Community College takes its responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of children at our school very seriously.
Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSL)
Miss Iverson
Mrs Ryves
Mrs Mackay
Ms Hocking
Miss Lawrence
Mrs Basford
Mrs Sharples
Mrs Seulean
Mr Allmark
Mrs Wyatt
Mr Chikiwa
Mrs Barratt
Safeguarding Is:
• Providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge
• Protecting children from maltreatment, whether this is within or outside the home,
including online
• Preventing the impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
• Ensuring that 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
Summarized from Keeping children safe in education (2025).
At Woodlands the welfare of the child is paramount.
We therefore ensure :
All children, regardless of age, gender, ability, culture, race, language, religion or sexual identity, have equal rights to protection.
All staff are aware they have an equal responsibility to act on any suspicion or disclosure that may suggest a child is at risk of harm and must fully understand the need to safeguard children.
Students and staff involved in child protection issues receive appropriate support.
The school works closely with parents, carers and other agencies. Where there is a conflict of interest between the child and parents, the interest of the child will be paramount.
The school operates a safe recruitment practice by carefully checking the suitability of staff and volunteers who work in the school.
The school’s Curriculum, in particular the PSHE programme, will be used to raise awareness of how to manage risk in different circumstances.
Operation Encompass
The school works closely with local police to support families that are experiencing domestic abuse. Operation Encompass is a police and education early information safeguarding partnership enabling schools to offer immediate support to children experiencing domestic abuse.
To find out more about Operation Encompass, please click here: About us : Operation Encompass
If you are experiencing domestic violence, please reach out to any of the school’s DSLs for support.
Pupils at Woodlands Community College use the Internet on a regular basis as part of their learning. In school, we have regular ‘e-safety’ activities to remind pupils of the importance of keeping themselves safe online. At home, sometimes children can be given unsupervised access to the Internet. This, potentially, allows them to access all kinds of society (both good and bad) and bring them virtually into their homes.
Here are some tips and useful links to help you to keep your children safe online:
Explore e-safety sites – There are lots of links to useful e-safety sites for parents and children.
Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Snapchat – Many of these sites/Apps have a minimum age limit of 13, so our pupils should NOT be encouraged in using them.
Keep your computer in a shared area – Talk to your child about what they are doing online and, if possible, set up your computer in a shared area at home so that you can all share in the wonderful sites that are available online.
Some links to more information:
Kidsmart – An award-winning internet safety programme for children.
Childline – ChildLine is the free helpline for children and young people in the UK.
Please note the “Useful Links” section at the bottom of this page, which provides further support documentation.
In school we use a variety of precautions to protect our young learners.
Each student is allocated their own computer account and permission is requested from parents to allow internet access. Internet activity is monitored by Impero remote management suite and our Lightspeed web filter.
