Q: What do safeguarding and inclusion mean to you as educators? Why are they so important?

A: Safeguarding is about ensuring that all students and members of the school community are safe when they are on campus, or engaging in any school activities (e.g., overnight trips, sports competitions, and so on). Safeguarding is about ensuring that the environment we create for our students is a safe space for them to be physically safe as well as comfortable, happy, and able to reach their full potential (psychologically safe). If students don’t feel safe and comfortable at school, then we can't expect them to excel in their academic pursuits.  

Safeguarding is also about ensuring: (1) that everyone in the community knows how to identify these students; (2) that everyone, including the students themselves, knows to whom to report about any concern or problem; and (3) that our schools have procedures to follow up and address any safety issues that arise. 

Inclusion refers to the practice of ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their background, ability, or differences, are valued and included in all aspects of school life. This includes providing equal opportunities, removing barriers to participation, and promoting a sense of belonging and acceptance. Everyone is welcome in our schools, and we want to ensure that all students that join us are fully supported in order to reach their potential.

With the advent of the new school year, the Safeguarding and Inclusion Division has formulated detailed work plans that will focus on the following areas.

🔺 School safeguarding audits. School safeguarding audits involve forming a professional team consisting of an experienced Head of Safeguarding and Inclusion and school leaders. This team carries out an in-depth safety assessment of each school by meeting with students, parents, and staff. On the basis of these assessments, the team makes recommendations for improvement to ensure a safe and secure school environment.

🔺Life Skills and Wellness Curriculum development. We will introduce a life skills and health programme to help students enhance their self-protection skills. This programme will teach them how to make the right choices when they encounter problems online or in person.

🔺Listening to students. Students understand their needs and concerns better than anyone else. We must ensure they have a voice in their schools, that they are being listened to, and that systems have been put in place to support them.

🔺Support in complex child protection cases. Leverage the large network of YCYW schools to provide professional advice and the necessary intervention when schools are dealing with complex child protection cases.

Q: How will the division be working with teachers, staff, and students to ensure that the school environment is safe and inclusive for all?

A: A key priority for our division is providing high-quality training to schools in the area of child protection in particular. We focus our training on the child protection leaders in the school so that they will know what to do, and that they can help train their staff members. The training is delivered in a variety of ways: from online programmes covering all schools, to lectures by overseas experts, complemented by on-site training and immediate support in schools to ensure the effectiveness of the training.

Q: How do you ensure that parents and guardians are informed and involved in YCYW's efforts to promote safeguarding and inclusion?

A: We have really enjoyed meeting parents when we visit schools for the audit. Feedback from parent surveys and the meetings with the parents themselves have shown us that parents have great confidence in the YCYW schools when it comes to the safety of their children. This has been the case in every school we have visited, and it was really pleasing to hear. The parents know that the teachers, leaders, and support staff really care about their child as an individual. Of course, parents still have concerns about social media use, their kids’ relationships with others, bullying and so on.

Where possible we will produce articles on WeChat and other platforms to keep parents well informed of what we are teaching their children, and provide them with helpful tips and resources.

We recently set up a "Child Protection Policies" section in the WeChat Parent Portal for all schools, so that parents can access all of our child protection policies and procedures. 

We also advise parents to make use of the organisation's YCYW Parent Webinar Series. Many of the topics that are featured in this series are related to educating parents about online safety, student wellbeing, supporting their child at home, and many more.