Safeguarding / Child Protection Policy – Southeastern Montessori Academy

Introduction

This policy has been developed by the Southeastern Academy

Key objectives

Our primary goal is to ensure that every learner or child at Southeastern Academy is free from any form of abuse or harm.

Our key objectives are:

To ensure that each child experience a safe and comfortable learning environment at Southeastern Academy.
To ensure that each child is not at risk of any form of harm, including physical, sexual and mental abuse when in our school premises, or while receiving a service from us; whether the harassment is from employees, peers or contractors.
Recognize and take appropriate action, when a child or vulnerable adult might have been abused, including in the community or family.

To meet our objectives, we commit to:

Complying with all child protection laws and regulations in Ghana and within our institution.
Updating our safeguarding and child protection policy, to reflect lessons learned and the changing learning and social environment at our school.

Responsibilities

Deﬁne procedures and provide guidance on the safeguarding/child protection standards we expect and the actions our people (employees, contractors, and management) should take to avoid risk and to respond to cases of abuse.
Equip each child / student with the necessary skills and confidence to avoid, identify and report harassment by peers, staff or management to the school’s counseling team.
Communicate our policy and guidelines to our employees, contractors, parents and interested parties, and will be published on the school’s website.
Train new and old staff once every academic year, to understand and create a safe learning environment for our students. Each staff will sign a confidentiality agreement to abide by the safeguarding principles.
Monitor and document performance and apply any learning from these Safeguarding / Child Protection principles.
Southeastern Academy has developed a Safeguarding / Child Protection Policy this day of May 13, 2020 and as part of that policy, we have deﬁned a set of procedures to follow as well as guidelines on other issues. We will also signpost other policies and procedures that are complementary to safeguarding /child protection.

Our safeguarding/child protection learners’ principles

Every child/learner is protected by our safeguarding principles, and we ensure a safe learning environment.
We put the interest of the child/learner first and the learner shall be the primary consideration in our decision making.
We recognize and acknowledge that risk can exist in learning environments, and while we may not be able to eliminate this completely, we will do all we can to reduce or limit the exposure and impact.
Learners have equal rights and equitable access to resources and information at our school and beyond, to enable them identify and report any form of harm.
Equality of protection to ensure that students have the same positive opportunity and to engage in our activities safely regardless of their gender, ability, race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, circumstances or age.
We recognize that each child will experience their learning environment differently we ensure that resources are accessible and equitable to meet the different needs of our learners. We will continue to monitor and implement guidelines to ensure this.
Vulnerable children and adults require attention to optimize their safety needs and promote their access to opportunities.
We take responsibility to meet our obligations regarding our duty of care to all our students. This means ensuring our institution is safe and that we protect children and vulnerable adults across all our activities and facilities.
We reject the use of child or forced labor in our educational activities and in our business relationships.
We communicate our principles to contractors and suppliers and audit those we identify as being high risk.
We are honest and transparent in our approach and publicly disclose our policies and standards.
In general, excepting where there is an apparent immediate threat to life or limb, all personally identiﬁable information concerning students should only be shared and handled on a need to know basis and where we have the express consent of the data subject for the nominated purpose. Access to the information must be necessary for the conduct of a role relevant to our School. Only individuals who have legitimate reasons to access the information can receive it.
We support and train those working within Southeastern Academy to recognize and respond to student concerns, to concerns in relation to child and vulnerable adult protection risks and incidences.
We have a dedicated person (s) and the counseling team in place to take responsibility for the protection of children and vulnerable adults.
We work with others to protect children and vulnerable adults. This could include law enforcement or child welfare agencies where necessary. We require incidents relevant to this policy in respect of all students to be reported in a timely way both internally and to the appropriate authorities, linked to proper recording of the relevant details.