St. Anne's School and Sixth Form College Ethos
All staff and volunteers, whatever their role at St. Anne’s has these responsibilities at all times, with all of the children.
Valuing children as individuals means:
- Educating, caring for and treating every child as unique.
- Addressing each child by their own name (not by their needs, disability or inappropriate nick name) or an abbreviation they prefer ie. James to Jamie.
- Consistently caring for children across all settings and encouraging children to be independent in a positive way as far as possible.
- Encouraging children to use and look after their own possessions were possible.
- Giving children enough time to take part were possible; to do things for themselves to understand and be understood.
- Spending time learning the ways children communicate. Using communication systems appropriate to children’s needs.
Treating children with dignity and respect means:
- Attending to a child’s care needs promptly, thoroughly and discretely.
- Addressing every child with respect.
- Wherever possible not doing things for a child if they are capable of doing it for themselves, especially when time does allow for this.
- Having high and realistic expectations of children to help them fulfil their potential.
- Praising, encouraging and prompting.
- Involving children in appropriate conversations, never talking about the child as if they were not there.
- Not seeing the child as a set of tasks to get through (toileting, feeding, changing, bathing).
- Respecting every child’s privacy whenever possible.
- Respecting the child’s environment in terms of hygiene and tidiness.
- Treating all information about a child with discretion and sensitivity; keeping information safe and sharing only with those people who need to know.
- Should information need to be passed on it must be accurate, relevant, helpful to others and in the correct form or documentation. Respecting a child’s rights of confidentiality out of work and to other parents/carers.
- Giving the best possible education and care that can be provided.
- Involving children in decisions that affect them and actively encouraging children to express their views. When these cannot be taken into account explaining why (“because I said so” is not enough).
Caring for the children first means:
- Offering the same rights and choices and as far as possible the same life as other children of the same age and culture, while providing or helping to co-ordinate extra help or support services if a child needs them.
- Providing consistent education and care from staff who really care about them and know them well. Helping new staff to get to know the child by providing the relevant information.
- Actively supporting each child as part of a family; involving their parents fully in planning for them and acknowledging their ultimate responsibility for their child.
- Ensuring access to communication equipment at all times and listening to children when they need to communicate, even if it takes a little longer and they are not easy to understand.
- Giving children information about what is happening to them before it happens e.g. being taken somewhere, giving explanations about procedures before they occur.
- Providing opportunities to play in an appropriate way.
- Giving child’s opportunities to learn new skills provide a stimulating environment to broaden their experiences (within health and safety limits) to maximise their independence and minimise reliance on others.
Keeping children safe means:
- All staff being aware of, and implementing rigorously the Safeguarding policy.
- Not exposing children to unnecessary risks and protecting children from abuse.
- Not exposing children to violent, distressing or sexually explicit materials (eg. inappropriate media, T.V, news, radio, press).
- Providing supervision accordingly to their need, on and off site.
- Having consent for photographic material of individuals to be published via the media or website.
- Not allowing parents to expose school event photographs to the internet (eg. facebook).
- To action or report all identified risks.
To ensure the successful implementation of Equality & Diversity:
- It is important that children feel they are part of a service that is integrated; not letting children hear things that may undermine their faith in the service as a whole (eg. disputes between staff or departments).
- That children know that they have all of these rights, all of the time that they are at St. Anne’s and that these rights can only be denied to them with good cause (i.e. if the exercise of these rights would be detrimental or harmful to the child or other people).
- That we ensure that all of the relevant adults in the child’s life are aware of these basic rights, and understand what they can do if these rights are infringed or not respected.
- Children, parents and carers are made aware that religious / cultural beliefs of the family will be respected at all times, and activities altered to adhere with these preferences.
