DSTY Child Protection Concept (Safeguarding)
This is an important development task that will keep us occupied in the coming years.
A directive from the ZfA (Central Office for Schools Abroad)
In February 2022, all German schools abroad were commissioned by the Central Office for Schools Abroad (ZfA) to develop a Child Protection concept for their own school and to consciously create their school as a safe space and a place of diversity. The schools should appoint protection concept representatives for this - at the DSTY, these representatives are Da-Hae Hong (Head of CoCu) and Daniella Klein (deputy school director) - and receive support from Germany in the form of online training courses. D.-H Hong, D. Klein took part in these training courses and later A. Arndt, because of her role as head of the Prevention Working Group.
ZfA seminar series
The seminars offered were mainly related to the topics of sexual violence and discrimination.
The online participation of colleagues working at German schools worldwide, whether as school counsellors, educators, pedagogical specialists, teachers or in a management position, allowed for vigorous discussions and networking with each other. Thus, everyone on the one hand, could benefit from existing child protection concepts or prevention programmes, and on the other hand, could benefit from being able to support each other in developing the protection concepts through collaborative work.
The Process
The main focus areas for the DSTY
One of the most active working groups at the DSTY is the Prevention Working Group, which was the largest working group of 17 members in the 2022/23 school year. The members quickly agreed that the development of the child protection concept should take place within the Prevention Working Group and represented an important addition to the prevention concept adopted in 2022.
Prevention Concept DSTY (German)
Everyone also agreed that the focus set by the ZfA on sexual violence and discrimination is broadened and that, when implementing the child protection concept at the DSTY, it must include the aspect of physical and psychological violence of any kind between anyone involved in school life.
In order to work more efficiently and accelerate the development process, the child protection concept project group was separated from the Prevention Working Group. In the 2022/23 school year, this group worked intensively on the development of the protection concept at the DSTY, informed the participants about the process at all general conferences and involved them in the development of the protection concept.
The protection concept development project group participants:
Corinna Kunz, Anna Carrascosa Jacobsen (pupils), Sylvia Nakano (parent), Da-Hae Hong (CoCu), Jens Hubert (kindergarten), Isabella Reichenbach (primary school), Anna Arndt (secondary school), Daniella Klein (deputy school director)
Milestone goals for the 2022/23 school yearEtappenziele Schuljahr 2022/23
- Establishment of a project group
- Basic training for those responsible
- Project day for those responsible for the child protection concept on 12.12.2022
- Online training at DSTY “Basic training on (inter)personal and sexual violence” on 01. /02.02.2023
- Project group workshop on the child protection concept on 5.4. 2023
- (Contents: Standardised procedures for intervention - reporting flowchart for protective measures, preamble, a code of conduct in general terms and for the different groups of people, potential analysis, risk analysis, preparation for “safeguarding training” for all DSTY employees)
- Feedback with the AG Prevention Group
Goals for summer 2023
Everyone involved put many hours into the first part of developing the safeguarding protection concept - and it paid off! At the last general conference before the summer holidays, the project group was able to adopt both a preamble and a general code of conduct.
Furthermore, a reporting flowchart was introduced which will be compulsory in the future and will allow all people with responsibility to proceed with certainty. A safeguarding core team for the child protection concept was established. (Joey Buschmann, Tobias Eickermann, Da-Hae Hong) and a new full-time position for a school psychologist was established. Although this position has not been filled yet, the school is optimistic about the future and is looking forward to receiving competent support in this area in the future.
safeguarding reporting flowchart
Dokument Kernteam Schutzkonzept
All employees started the 2023/24 school year with safeguarding training, which will now become an integral part of the preparation week. This year, the DSTY received expert support from Singapore. Shakila Omar, the head of safeguarding at the German Swiss School (GESS), led the safeguarding training that she had prepared together with the DSTY's child protection concept project group. It was a successful start and a valuable cooperation that ought to be further developed.
And onto the next stage of development…
The foundation has been laid and of course there are already goals which the child protection concept project group has set for this school year:
- In-depth online training “protection concept” for employees on 28. /29.11.2023
- The publication of important documents/information on the homepage (later translated into English and Japanese)
- Age-appropriate information for pupils on the topic of protection concepts
- Adoption of Code of Conduct for employees (German, English, Japanese translation)
- Development of the “DSTY protection concept manual.”
Thank you
that you as parents and legal guardians support us with the topic of child protection concepts by carefully discussing the topics with your children and pointing out behaviour which crosses boundaries; that you pay attention to how your child is doing; get in touch if you need support (the safeguarding core team), follow the reporting flowcharts and have confidence that we will find a solution together in conflict situations.
Thank you
for your patience as we are still developing the child protection concept and trust us that the development steps will be taken - but step by step, and we cannot, for example, immediately present all the documents translated into several languages.
Thank you
that you are helping in recognising that the school is a safe space and helping, with the school community, to make the DSTY a place of diversity in line with the school’s mission statement.
Leitbild Team Schutzkonzept (Konzeptionelle Entwicklung):
Joey Buschmann, Tobias Eickermann, Da-Hae Hong, Jens Hubert, Daniella Klein