29^th September 2021

Dear Parent/Carer,

As parents, carers and teachers we all want the same for our children – for them to be safe and fully prepared for adult life. Our school is an extremely safe place and we take this safeguarding role very seriously and will always endeavour to maintain this. 

We have a large, hugely experienced, safeguarding team at Ferndown Upper School, with daily support for all students. Our website also contains much safeguarding information (https://fernup.dorset.sch.uk/information/safeguarding/), so please do have a look, there are links to online safety, personal safety, drug and alcohol issues etc. It also includes what to do if you are worried or concerned for any young person either at FUS or at another school.

Young people today face many new pressures that were not issues when we were growing up. And one increasing area of concern is access to drugs and the range of substances now available.  This issue has been further exacerbated by our closeness to several major cities and the national issue of ‘County Lines’, where  young people are being exploited by criminals, which in turn is increasing the supply of drugs into more remote areas like Dorset.

We are determined to not only educate our children about the harms of substance abuse but to also ensure their safety from these threats whilst at school. And to this end, we will take whatever action is required to ensure that Ferndown Upper School remains a safe place.

Therefore, over the upcoming months we will be working with students, parents and staff through a range of approaches to further raise awareness of the impact of substance misuse.

Previously we have worked closely with the Amy Winehouse Foundation, where the Foundation shared stories and information with young people and work to further educate parents and staff in awareness and knowledge of substances and their misuse.  We have also worked and continue to work closely with Escape Line to ensure our community understands County Lines, which involves using children, and young people to move drugs across towns and counties. County Line gangs are operating in Dorset and particularly in large urban centres such as Bournemouth and Poole.

Our intelligence, through our relationships with our parents and students, tells us that we do not have illegal substances coming into school and we want to ensure that in this changing environment, this remains the case. We will therefore be periodically deploying drug detection dogs with no notice in our school to ensure our premises continue to remain drug free.  We completed this as highly successful days over the last few years and we will be doing this again this academic year. We wish to reassure you that the dogs will be deployed to search a whole building and not individuals. However, during their search the dogs may indicate a substance or residue on students or in property belonging to students. Should that happen, students will be searched (in line with school policy and national guidance).  Police assistance will be provided where necessary and parents/carers would be informed at the earliest opportunity of this. Additionally, students and families affected would be signposted to counselling and family support services.  

I do need to remind you, that any student found in possession of an illegal substance would be at risk of permanent exclusion and / or face prosecution.

All these visits into school will operate in a Covid safe manner to ensure the safety of students, staff and visitors. Please do feel free to discuss this with your child. We will update students in assemblies next week.  We will also be working with any students who have a real fear of / allergy to dogs, and this will be discussed in the assembly.

Thank you for supporting us with this range of approaches to ensure our young people stay safe.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Jo Taylor

Deputy Headteacher