The school works in partnership with West Midlands Police through Operation Encompass. This process involves reporting to schools, prior to the start of the next school day, when a child or young person has been exposed to, or involved in, any domestic incident.

Operation Encompass will ensure that a member of the school staff, known as a Key Adult, is trained to allow them to liaise with the local authority and to use the information that has been shared. This is done in confidence, while ensuring that the school is able to make provision for possible difficulties experienced by children, or their families, who have been involved in, or exposed to, a domestic abuse incident.

All related information is shared with Mr Skett, Designated Safeguarding Lead and Miss Stretton and Mrs Francis, Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads and teaching staff - on a need to know basis.

This information is stored in line with all other confidential safeguarding and child protection information. Mr Skett will report on numbers of Operation Encompass notifications in the Head Teachers Governors termly report (all information is anonymised).

Mr Skett has also led training for all school staff and Governors about Operation Encompass, the prevalence of Domestic Abuse and the impact of this abuse on children. We have also discussed how we can support our children following the Operation Encompass notification. 

Operation Encompass - Our Key Principles

• Operation Encompass is a unique police and education early intervention safeguarding partnership enabling support for children and young people who have experienced domestic abuse.
• Operation Encompass is every child’s right. It should be embedded in every force, in every school, for every child.
• Operation Encompass will ensure that ALL incidents of domestic abuse are shared with schools, not just those where an offence can be identified.
• Through Operation Encompass, one of the D/DSL team and key adults in school will be notified PRIOR to the start of the next day that a child has experienced an incident of domestic abuse that the police have attended. (This is dependent on school receiving the report in within the expected timeframe).
• Mr Skett, Miss Stretton and Mrs Francis are training safeguarding leads and will receive the Operation Encompass information and disseminate to 'MyConcern' (safeguarding recording system) and key staff on 'a need to know basis'.
• Mr Skett should cascade the necessary awareness training to Governors and all staff so that there is knowledge of the scheme as well as the knowledge about domestic abuse and its impact upon children.
• Whenever possible, the D/DSL team will be notified prior to the start of the school day in order to plan for timely support. This timely knowledge enables all interactions, from when the child first arrives at the school gates, to be of a positive nature.
• Operation Encompass is an integral part of safeguarding and child protection and, as such, should be cited in the school’s Safeguarding and Child Protection policy.
• Operation Encompass must lead to a secure record keeping trail. This may be electronic or paper based. All records must be managed at Child Protection level with the highest level of security and confidentiality.