Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Mainstreaming Safer Schools Partnerships

This document provides guidance on the mainstreaming of the Safer School Partnerships (SSPs) programme to enable local multi-agency partnerships to benefit from this initiative. The document will provide a route map for multi-agency partnerships, allowing them to determine the appropriate level of response in given circumstances and to meet the needs of local partners and neighbourhoods. Learning points and key principles are highlighted throughout.

Title: Mainstreaming Safer Schools Partnerships
Authors: Department for Education and Skills, supported by the Home Office, Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), and Youth Justice Board (YJB).
Number of pages: 48
Date published: May 2006
Availability: Download full report PDF 3Mb (large file!)

Since 2002, Safer School Partnerships have developed without a clear local strategic support framework. The opportunity now arises to embed Safer School Partnerships into local prevention arrangements, and this forms the focus of this mainstreaming document

The commitment to mainstream the Safer School Partnerships programme by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), Home Office, Youth Justice Board (YJB) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is evidence based, building on the success and achievement of the programme: as a partnership approach to crime prevention, school safety, behaviour improvement and educational achievement. There is also recognition of the many different ways the programme integrates with the wider prevention agenda, the Children Act 2004 and other initiatives such as Every Child Matters, the proposals in the Respect Action Plan, Local Area Agreements, Prevent and Deter, Neighbourhood Policing and Extended Schools.

Police, schools and other agencies are essential partners in the prevention of crime and anti-social behaviour. A safe environment for the school community promotes respect, responsibility and civility, and enhances the prospects for maximum educational achievement. Safer School Partnerships provide a way forward for local partners to deliver these outcomes for children, young people, parents and their Head Teacher (London) communities.

What this guidance can do for you

This guidance will help you identify how your agency can benefit from a Safer School Partnership (SSP). It will provide a practical approach to implementation, ensuring you can maximise the potential the programme offers. A framework is provided for assessing how you might create an SSP according to the characteristics and needs of your area, and how this fits with the broader priorities of all local agencies.

A Safer School Partnership is a collaborative approach between a school, police and other local agencies working towards the following aims:

• To reduce the prevalence of crime, anti-social behaviour and victimisation amongst young people and to reduce the number of incidents and crimes in schools and their wider communities.

• To provide a safe and secure school community which enhances the learning environment.

• To engage young people, challenge unacceptable behaviour, and help them develop a respect for themselves and their community.

• To ensure that young people remain in education, actively learning, healthy and achieving their full potential.

At present this approach can take different forms depending on funding, the views of the school and the local policing strategy in respect of schools.

Current arrangements include:

• A fully operational police officer based full-time in a school working closely with a member of the school's senior management team, project worker and administrator.

• Police officers seconded to Behaviour and Education Support Teams (BESTs) and working with this multi-agency partnership in a secondary school and its feeder primary schools.

• Police officers, both full-time and part-time, mainly providing reactive support to a cluster of schools in SSP style of policing.

• Police officers or police community support officers (PCSOs) based with the neighbourhood policing team, working part-time in a problem solving as well as educational role.

This publication will help you to consider how SSPs fit into your neighbourhood policing strategy and the needs of your local schools.

Benefits

Opportunities

improved pupil safety, safer working environment and safer communities reduced rates of truancy and exclusions reduction in offending and anti-social behaviour improvements in educational attainment multi-agency problem solving improved partnerships working improved relations between young people and the police increase in the respect for young people and the respect that they have for their fellow students and the wider community enhance partner performance against targets

the school community embraced into a partnership approach to prevention significant scope for crime reduction and linkage into local prevention strategies support in the achievement of Every Child Matters outcomes enhanced partnerships that facilitate improved school safety an approach consistent with the ethos of neighbourhood policing – 'Right people, right numbers, right place' greater community support for both the school and local police improved engagement with parents to address behavioural issues

Last update: 16 May 2006