Brooke Weston Teaching School Alliance were delighted to host a Counter terrorism Safeguarding event in collaboration with the Northants Police Special Branch.

The event, created specifically for partner agencies with representatives ranging from Social Services, Police, Probation and Healthcare is the only event of its kind offered to schools in Corby, and gave organisations the learning opportunity to make sure they have the appropriate measures in place should this scenario occur within our area.

The interactive day included a table top exercise covering a Counter Terrorism scenario which starts as a result of a school safeguarding referral. At different points through the event, additional information was fed in through via video, audio and verbal inputs.

Each group included partners from each agency in order to mimic a real life scenario. The benefit being, each partner could see how the safeguarding would be implemented in each field, and by having other partner agencies present they learnt how best to safeguard the young people in their care.

Detective Sergeant Andy Blaize said, ‘I work in special branch, Counter terrorism policing and predominantly the work we are doing today is around the PREVENT agenda. Todays training will see us work through a scenario that will originate from a call from Brooke Weston Academy calling MASH about concerns about two children who haven’t returned after the half term holiday from there the scenario unfolds.

‘It’s important for partners to understand more about extremism and radicalisation as it is still a fairly new topic and professionals will find themselves caught out on occasions by it. Whilst it’s a scenario around extremism and radicalisation the scenario to some degree, is only a small part of it and the training is about partner agencies working together as a team. This is the fourth time we have done this event and we have had fantastic feedback from everyone that has attended and are very proud of it.’

 

Director of Brooke Weston Teaching School Alliance Mrs Cristina Taboada-Naya said, ‘We were delighted to welcome the Northants PREVENT team to Brooke Weston and host the collaborative event on Counter Terrorism Safeguarding. It is fantastic to see our partners from across different agencies come together to share best practice and knowledge and ensuring the safeguarding of young people in Corby and the surrounding area.’

 

Catherine Ford from Kingswood School said, ‘The training is extremely useful. PREVENT is important for everybody to learn about especially nowadays you need to be aware of the risks that are out there. It has also been very interesting to get different perspectives from the different agencies on the table and gather information that you might not usually be privy to.’

 

Tracey O’Reilly from CFE Social Services said, ‘This training is fantastic as it is from a multi agency perspective and I think it is giving us a really good insight into terrorism and how we can look out for signs and issues within the communities that we work in’

 

Maxine Reilly from Early Help NCC said, ‘ I think it is showing how important it is for a multi agency approach when it comes to terrorism as working together we are finding that missing pieces of information are being brought together so we can look at all elements to decide the best approach.’