PREVENT POLICY

Part of our safeguarding duty includes Section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (the CTSA 2015) requiring Dancing Petals to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ . This duty is known as Prevent duty.

Dancing Petals is committed to safeguarding its students and staff. We recognize that the prevention of radicalization is within the wider Safeguarding policies. The Prevent Lead is the Designated Safeguarding Officer (DSO), Anushi Sharma, whose responsibility includes maintaining links with external partners and chairing the Safeguarding and Prevent Committee.

The Objectives of Dancing Petals Prevent Strategy are:

Set an action plan to promote, implement, and monitor our responsibilities under the Prevent Duty.
Have due regard for Freedom of Expression.
Ensure staff, student, audience, and visitor safety.
Ensure that we promote a culture of respect and tolerance.
Provide support for students who may be at risk and develop appropriate sources of advice and guidance.
Ensure that students and staff are aware of their roles and responsibilities in preventing violent extremism and radicalization.

PREVENT STRATEGY

Information of the Prevent Agenda and Duty will be promoted to Parents/ Carers, students and staff by inclusion in Newsletters and Posters, published Prevent policy, and access to online trainings.
Dancing Petals will encourage students to respect others regarding the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010.
All staff and volunteers will be informed about:
- Government rationale and the channels for further action and referral.
- Relationship between extremism and terrorism.
- Inappropriate material and behaviors.
- Disclosures by learners about their exposure to extremist actions, views, or materials.
- Parental or peer concerns.
- Intolerance, indifference, bullying and abuse.
- Online and Social Media access and usage monitoring
Online safety will be observed by using filtering as a means of restricting access to harmful content. This will ensure that websites promoting extremist views and encouraging the radicalization of young people are where possible blocked.
Staff and Volunteers will be trained to always listen to Children about their fears and worries and help them find advice and support.
We will continue to develop links with external partners to remain aware of developments within the Prevent, Safeguarding and Child Protection arena. Links with relevant external agencies will be further developed through the school’s Prevent Lead.
Prevent Lead is tasked to ensure that all staff are familiar with the Prevent agenda and are able to recognize indicative behaviors in students and colleagues and are aware of the course of action to take if they are concerned.
Staff will report any concerns to the Prevent Lead, who will escalate as necessary.
If there is a concern about potential radicalization or a reason to believe that someone is at risk of becoming involved in terrorism or supporting it, Prevent Lead will
1. offer support or mitigation by reaching out to mental health services or children’s social care services.
2. engage in the CHANNEL process. Channel is a multi-agency program across England and Wales that provides support to people susceptible to becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. The person (or their parent or legal guardian, if under 18) referred to it must give consent before any support can be provided under Channel
3. Where consent for Channel has not been given or the level of risk posed makes it unsuitable, the Lead may reach out to Police-led Partnerships.
The Prevent lead will have more in-depth training, including on extremist and terrorist ideologies, how to make referrals and how to work with Channel panels.
When considering sharing personal information, Dancing Petals will
1. ensure the personal data is shared only where it is strictly necessary to the intended outcome and proportionate to it. Key to determining the necessity and proportionality of sharing information will be the professional judgement of the risks to an individual or the public.
2. ensure wherever possible the consent of the person concerned is obtained before sharing any information about them.
3. know that the sharing of data by public sector bodies requires the existence of a power to do so, in addition to satisfying the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998.
4. ensure awareness of responsibilities under the Data Protection Act.
Dancing Petals will report an actual or suspected Prevent-related incident promptly to OfS. Guidance states that providers should contact the OfS at the time when a potential serious incident is identified, and no later than five days after the incident occurring or being identified. In the case of ‘near misses,’ this should be as soon as it is deemed that a potential incident would have impacted on Prevent duty implementation had it progressed to its conclusion.
Examples of serious incident reporting include (but are not limited to) hate crime, arrests and charges, harm (either reputational harm or harm to staff and students), failure of Prevent-related policies and processes, and near misses. Further information about Prevent-related serious incident reporting can be found here: ofs-prevent-related-serious-incident-guidance.pdf (officeforstudents.org.uk)
NOTE: Radicalization can be really difficult to spot. Signs that may indicate a child is being radicalized include: