Prevent
What is Prevent?
Prevent is a national strategy which aims to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. Prevent also extends to supporting the rehabilitation and disengagement of those already involved in terrorism.
The objectives of Prevent are to:
tackle the ideological causes of terrorism
intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation
enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate
The Prevent duty requires specified authorities such as education, health, local authorities, police and criminal justice agencies (prisons and probation) to help prevent the risk of people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It sits alongside long-established safeguarding duties on professionals to protect people from a range of other harms, such as substance abuse, involvement in gangs, and physical and sexual exploitation. The duty helps to ensure that people who are susceptible to radicalisation are supported as they would be under safeguarding processes.
Prevent at St Egwin's
At St Egwin’s we take our duty to support Prevent extremely seriously and ensure that we have a Prevent strategy as well as updating staff training to ensure that this key area of life in Britain is something that we remain focused on. We handle information sensitively and ensure that we are vigilant and playing our role in this key national campaign. Just like with all safeguarding matters, we operate a ‘it could happen here’ attitude.
We fully appreciate that this is a sensitive area and as always our aim is to ensure that we are keeping children safe but doing this in a manner that educates our school community as opposed to focusing on aspects that may cause children to worry. When we educate about Prevent through the curriculum and through Collective Worship we are always aware of the importance of putting across the key messages of the national strategy but do so in a considerate and empathetic way that reassures the pupils.