The Stay Safe Programme is a personal safety skills programme for primary schools. Its overall objective is to prevent child abuse, bullying and other forms of victimisation.
The Child Abuse Prevention Programme (CAPP) was established in 1987 to tackle the problems of bullying and child abuse. To this end, CAPP introduced the Stay Safe Programme into primary schools with the aim of developing the personal safety skills of primary school children.
Personal Safety
Children need personal safety skills in order to respond safely to a dangerous, upsetting or abusive situation before it becomes serious. We already teach children about the danger posed by traffic and how to cross a road safely, but we also need to teach them how to handle other unsafe situations. We’ve found that children are better at learning and remembering personal safety skills when home and school work together.
Keeping children safe is the most important thing we do in school. Everyone has a part to play in keeping children safe from harm and abuse and we take this responsibility very seriously.
We have clear and comprehensive policies and procedures in place to safeguard children and for reporting concerns, if and when they arise. Our staff are trained in child protection procedures and know what to do if they are worried about a child. We follow very careful procedures to carry out checks on any adult working with children in our school.
As part of our Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) curriculum, we use the ‘Stay Safe’ programme, which develops children’s ability to recognise, resist and report risk situations or abusive encounters. In an age-appropriate way, we teach children to identify unsafe or upsetting situations, including some simple rules to help them avoid abuse. Children also learn to respect and value the rights of others and the language and skills they need to seek help if they feel unsafe.
In Ireland, all registered teachers are ‘mandated persons’ under the Children First Act 2015. This means that they have a legal obligation to report child protection concerns at or above a defined threshold to Tusla – Child and Family Agency. These mandated persons must also assist Tusla, on request, in its assessment of child protection concerns about children who have been the subject of a mandated report.
You can read more about Tusla’s guidelines and the Children First Act here.
If you have concerns or questions about our safeguarding practices, you can speak to our Designated Liaison Person, our Principal, Jim Ryan. The Deputy Designated Liaison Person is the Deputy Principal, Deirdre Dunne.
You can read a copy of our Child Safeguarding Statement in the DOWNLOADS section.
STAY SAFE
A programme aimed to the prevent child abuse
The CAPP programme (Stay Safe) is a primary school based approach to the prevention of child abuse. The aim of the programme is to reduce vulnerability to child abuse and bullying through the provision of a personal safety education programme for children at primary school level.
In accordance with Department of Education and Skills’, Child Protection Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools 2017, all primary schools are required to fully implement the Stay Safe programme
The Stay Safe programme itself is a personal safety skills programme designed for use with primary school children from Junior Infants through to 6th class. The programme seeks to enhance children’s self-protective skills by participation in lessons on safe and unsafe situations, friendship and bullying, inappropriate touch, secrets and telling and stranger danger. The core message of Stay Safe is – Say No, Get Away and Tell.
The programme aims to give children the skills necessary to enable them to recognise and resist abuse/victimisation and teaches them that they should always tell (an adult that can help) about any situation which they find unsafe, upsetting, threatening, dangerous or abusive.
A parent guide to Stay Safe is available by clicking this image
a
SCHOOL TIMETABLE
FOR STAY SAFE LESSONS
