What is the Prevent Duty?

One of the provisions of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 is to place a duty on certain specified authorities and organisations to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.  This duty is known as the 'Prevent Duty' and (somewhat surprisingly) as well as applying it to schools, colleges, hospitals etc, it also applies to all Ofsted registered childcare settings, including out of school clubs.

The Prevent Duty came into force on 1 July 2015 and will be included in Ofsted inspections from September this year.

How does the Prevent Duty affect our childcare setting?

Ofsted's new Early Years Inspection Handbook, which came into effect at the start of September 2015, includes multiple references to elements of the Prevent Duty within its evaluation criteria.  This means that if our club is not meeting the requirements of the Prevent Duty this will have a negative effect on any future Ofsted grading.

Meeting the Prevent Duty

In essence, we need to be able to identify children who may be vulnerable to radicalisation and know what to do when they are identified.  Protecting children from the risk of radicalisation falls under any childcare setting's wider safeguarding duty.  We also need to build children's resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British values.

In practice this means that we have:

• Conducted a thorough risk assessment and acted upon it, including updating our policies, trained our staff and reviewed our partnership working.
• Actively promoted British values.

We cover how we have met these requirements in more detail below:

Conduct a Prevent risk assessment

We have conducted a risk assessment to evaluate the risk of the children at the club being drawn into terrorism, or supporting extremist ideas that form part of the terrorist ideology.  The risks affecting children will vary from area to area and according to their age.  Remembering that children are vulnerable to radicalisation from a variety of sources, from within the family, from the wider community and from online media.

Our risk assessment includes:

• All the ways in which our setting may be vulnerable to the children becoming radicalised.
• The levels of risk proportionate to our setting.
• Whether our staff have received appropriate training.
• Whether all relevant policies and procedures are in place to mitigate the risk.
• A plan to regularly review the risk assessment.

Safeguarding policy

We are not expected to have a seperate policy to cover the Prevent Duty.  Our procedures for protecting children at risk of radicalisation forms part of our existing Safeguarding policy.  We have reviewed our Safeguarding policy and updated it to include a reference to the Prevent Duty, how we identify children at risk of radicalisation and how and when to make a referral.

Working in partnership

The Prevent duty makes full use of existing local partnership arrangements.  LSCBs coordinate the work of local agencies in safeguarding and protecting the welfare of children in our area.

Promoting Britsh values

All childcare settings including ours need to build children's resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British values.  According to Ofsted these are:

• Democracy.
• The rule of law.
• Individual liberty and mutual respect.
• Tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

We already incorporate some of these values into the running of our club, for example:

• Encouraging the children to participate in making the club rules and deciding on activities = democracy and rule of law.
• Expecting good manners and fair play between children and staff = mutal respect.

Further Information

The following national guidelines are available to download below should you require any further reading:

• PREVENT strategy HM Government.
• Keeping Children Safe in Education Dfe 2015.
• Working together to Safeguard Children HM Government 2015.
• Revised Prevent Duty Guidance for England and Wales 2015.