Teaching Social Safety When Out and About
Anyone working or living with children and vulnerable adults has a duty to keep them safe, be that teaching them how to cross the road or how to protect themselves in social situations. How do we go about that? We can’t be there every minute of every day, so we need to teach those in our care about social safety.
It is important for a school to have a proactive safeguarding culture that equips learners with the correct knowledge and tools so they can keep themselves safe, and so that they have the communication skills and language to be able to report concerns.
Over the last six months Birchwood Junior School in Lincoln has undertaken to do just that using the SoSAFE! programme. They are a mainstream primary school where 25% of learners have some additional needs.
We met with Kirsty, a teacher from the school who has overseen the implementation of the SoSAFE! programme in the school. She is also the school’s PSHE lead.
How did you discover the SoSAFE! programme? My colleague heard about it through a link with another local school. I commented that the standard PSHE curriculum wasn’t going to work well for my class, my colleague told me to take a look at what this local SEN school was doing, and it went from there.
Why did you think that SoSAFE! would be beneficial to your school? Our school is in the top 10% of deprived areas in the UK and we have had safeguarding issues raised. On top of that 25% of our cohort have additional needs and find it difficult to access the full PSHE curriculum. We felt that a lot of work needed to be done around social safety and empowering our learners to feel safe. We wanted to make sure that all of our children had a bespoke programme that catered to their needs and situation.
We also needed a whole school programme that had consistent language and dealt with issues such as consent, and that included visual tools to complement the teaching.
Practicing ‘OK, OK, Yes!’ at Birchwood School
What were the main skills that you wanted to teach your learners around the topic of social safety? We wanted to teach the learners what is OK and not OK with different people in their lives, but before that we had to teach the concept of consent and permission. The children weren’t aware of boundaries, even down to not knowing that you should ask to borrow an item rather than just assuming it is OK. Teaching boundaries and permission has been a big thing.
Another huge issue for us was around consent when learners are accessing the internet. A lot of our children spend a lot of time online, often unsupervised. They were unaware that people cannot be your friend if you’ve never actually met them and, that in order to meet them – but also to even talk to them online – someone you know should be there to facilitate the relationship safely.
We identified some children who needed an intensive pathway whilst the rest of the school followed the whole school approach. My colleague Joan worked intensively with the smaller groups and did a great job teaching the learners the SoSAFE! concepts.
How have school staff taken to the programme? Now we all use the same language which is really helpful. Nearly all classes have a description of what consent means stuck on the wall. We do need to do some more work on the Talk Touch Triangle (TTT), however this term in PSHE we have been working on Healthy Me and Dreams & Goals, so it hasn’t been that relevant. Next term in PSHE we are working on Relationships so the TTT will become more important.
We also close classroom doors now when we talk about SoSAFE! because we are learning about private and public events, which again is all part of teaching social safety. Staff are now knocking before they come into classrooms.
Teaching Social Safety using the Talk Touch Triangle
Do you think that the learners have enjoyed the SoSAFE! programme? Massively, the kids in my class really looked forward to Friday afternoons! They love the symbols in my class and use them in other lessons, which is great.
The children who were in the intensive pathway groups liked getting things right, because SoSAFE! was designed to be clear and simple they were getting stuff right a lot! They were even more pleased when they linked SoSAFE! to situations in their own lives or were praised for using the concepts in naturalistic settings such as sharing toys.
Also, the children who were on the intensive pathway loved being part of a group. They’re not picked to do stuff very often so there was an extra benefit for them in that.
Pyramid provided you with help to get the programme started by running staff surveys, visiting the school to help deliver the programme to the learners, running themed assemblies and more. How useful was that? It was incredibly useful, and it came at the right time. The support was really helpful and we are definitely up and running now. It was of huge value to us; we are very grateful.
We often get asked in the SoSAFE! training ‘when should we introduce the concept of intercourse or sexy touch’? How did you handle this? Some parents were quite apprehensive about these topics, and they equated them to the topic of consent. As a part of the parent information session, they were introduced to the concepts but reassured that they wouldn’t be introduced until further down the line at stage 4. I think it was a good idea to show them where it was going but to calm their nerves about it being introduced later. We haven’t yet got to this stage of the programme but feel well equipped to do so when the time comes.
People & Relationship book – teaches what learners can do with whom in their community
We also wanted to change their opinion on when to teach consent as generally everyone links consent to a sexual act. Consent is introduced much earlier in SoSAFE! than in other PSHE programmes. SoSAFE! gave us the tools to be able to introduce consent in a different way, for example we taught that we should be giving people consent before they help us tie our shoes or borrow our pencil.
It takes about 2 years to fully implement SoSAFE!, what are the next steps you want to take? We need to look at how we link SoSAFE! to every PSHE topic across a whole year. In each PSHE lesson we want to give the children a refresher on the language and vocabulary we use. We need to make sure that we consistently refresh on the language. We are also using the Jigsaw PSHE curriculum alongside SoSAFE!
Have you come across anything similar to this before or does SoSAFE! fill a gap? SoSAFE! fills the gap which exists around how to teach social safety skills to learners. However, I’ve only been teaching 5 years and it’s my first time leading PSHE so you might get a different answer if you asked someone who had been teaching 20 years!
If you are the PSHE lead in a SEN school or mainstream primary and feel overwhelmed by the task SoSAFE! could help. You might feel that the standard PSHE curriculum doesn’t really fit your cohort and that you need something bespoke. Check out when the next 1-day SoSAFE! workshop is running. Each delegate receives a SoSAFE! Manual, a handout with space for note taking, the entire SoSAFE! programme on a USB stick and some sample materials.
By Louise Hotchkiss
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