Prevent

At Birchwood Community High School and Birchwood College we take our safeguarding responsibilities very seriously. The safety and wellbeing of our students is underpinned by an ethos of constant vigilance and early reporting of concerns, no matter how insignificant.

The Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015) requires that all schools and professionals work together actively to prevent young people from being drawn into terrorism. This is known as the ‘Prevent Duty’.

Parents

Definitions

These are the definitions of some of the words that will be used in the rest of the webpage and are the acts and processes we are actively working to prevent:

Ideology

a set of beliefs

Terrorism

a violent action against people or property, designed to create fear and advance a political, religious or ideological cause.

Extremism

Vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values such as democracy, the rule of law and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.

Radicalisation

The process by which a person comes to support extremism and terrorism.

Research has revealed that 90% of radicalisation takes place online. There have been cases in the news over the past year of groups like Islamic State (ISIS) using the internet and social media to recruit young people to fight in the conflict in Syria. In addition, there are examples of right wing groups such as Britain First and the English Defence League using Facebook and Twitter to engage with internet users. This is known as online radicalisation and can be described as “the actions of an individual or group who use the internet and digital technology to groom a young person into following their extremist ideas.” This means that a key part of our Prevent Duty is to educate our students about e-safety, to help them to become responsible online users and how to report any concerns.

Birchwood’s Prevent Duty is carried out by:

Accessing Risk

All members of the community are constantly vigilant and can recognise warning signs.
We react by reporting concerns in a timely fashion and by following our reporting systems.

Working in Partnership

Within our community. Our learners, students, parents and staff are vigilant and work together for the safety of all learners and students.
With other professionals as part of the Warrington Safeguarding and Children’s Board (WCSB).
With Cheshire Police. The Prevent Officer is Lynsey Mullin
With the support of WCSB and Cheshire Police we can refer young people to the Channel Project to support vulnerable young people who are at risk of radicalisation.

Staff Training

As a minimum we provide annual staff training with interim refresher sessions as appropriate. The key aim is to enable all staff to be able to know and recognise the warning signs and follow our routine child protection reporting systems.
Our Designated Safeguarding Leads have completed the REAP Training and the online Channel Awareness training.

ICT Policy

We educate our learners and students about the importance of e-safety and how to stay safe in an ever evolving digital world.
Implementation of a robust ICT filtering system and reporting of concerns accurately and in a timely fashion.