Good In Service Shock Horror
Published August 18th, 2007 in EducationOn Friday morning we had a two hour session in the school hall on Child Protection. As you can imagine, the prospect of this did not exactly fill me with glee. Child Protection is, of course, important, but I wasn’t so sure that spending two hours being lectured about it was really going to make any difference to my practice.
I was wrong.
Anne Darling delivered a moving and informative session which gave us a clear understanding of the potentially life saving role we have to play as teachers of abused children, and highlighted the way that procedures have changed for the better over the last few years. The material could have been dry and depressing, but Anne’s personal involvement and passion brought it alive.
Brilliant stuff - thanks Anne.
Stumble it!
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I hope the school support staff were present. I carried out a straw poll recently and found that the vast majority of school support staff knew nothing about child protection issues. I include myself in that majority. I have worked in schools for nearly 20 years and even though I have frequently inquired about training in this subject nothing has been forthcoming.
‘Fraid not Brian. School would have to pay support staff if they had them in on in-service days so…
Crazy really, as an in-class auxiliary might well be the person a child chooses to disclose to.
Brian/Robert
I’ll follow this up
Don
Many thanks Don,
Robert you are right, I often pass pupils wandering the corridors in an upset state and you are tight they may choose to disclose to me and I wouldnt really have a clue. I guess I would inform management. I talked with Alan Coady recently as this issue had been raises amongst music instructors.
Not all support staff are sessional and it would be easy to include them in child protection training or tailor a course specifically for ourselves.
Cheers Don. Sorry about the delay in your reply appearing Brian - my spam filter ate you comment initially!