ARIS Child Protection Workshop

ARIS has a strong and ever-growing Support and Counseling department, headed by Dr. Funke. Two years ago, this department also developed the formal Child Protection Policy document and upholds the stipulations of it to ensure the safety and protection of each and every child in our school.

At the close of last week, Dr. Funke held a Child Protection Workshop at Primary, which serves the purpose of keeping everyone in the loop of child safety and wellbeing within our school and in our surrounding communities. Whether it be different real or hypothetical cases or recounting previous knowledge and development.

The workshop started with an activity of blowing a balloon and drawing a face on the balloon, and then explain it to the people present. The face drawn should communicate something about children's experiences, for example, happy face communicating happiness that children should experience, a sad face communicating difficult situations children may go through and so on.

Dr. Funke also talked about Child Protection is one of the key aspects of safeguarding and promoting children's welfare. This is connected with and relies on several other factors like - SEN and Inclusion, Anti-bullying and behavior management, health and safety, whistleblowing, counseling services, staff code of conduct, safeguarding team, school environment, risk assessment and of course e-safety. We live in a very complex world as it is, and with children's rights and their protection, the situation is more precarious than any other thus necessitating us to take all steps. In a collaborative way, participants also went over various safeguarding issues that they have previously faced or any situation that they could possibly face, including, bullying, cyber-bullying, domestic violence, neglect, sexting, mental health issues and more. They also shared advice on how to go about it based on the stipulations of our policies.

Of course, the dialogue about children's safety, wellbeing, protection, and agency are bigger than all of us, and we must keep the conversation going. There will also be continued Child Protection Workshops to encourage such discussions.