Under Operation Encompass, which has been trialled in West Sussex, schools receive a phone call from the police on the morning after a domestic incident has happened in a child’s home so that staff are aware that an incident has occurred.
Paul Gosling, a head in Exeter, told the National Association of Head Teachers’ annual conference that the scheme allowed the police to share information more readily and more efficiently, and he implored schools that were in areas that had not implemented Operation Encompass to lobby for its introduction.
“Imagine arriving at school in the morning after you’ve heard and seen one of your parents being beaten by the other,” Mr Gosling said. “Your home is in disarray. You don’t have your school uniform on, or your PE kit with you. You’re anxious, you feel that what’s happened was partly your fault, and you’re now expected to sit in the classroom and learn about adverbial noun phrases. You are worried about what will happen when you get home at the end of the day – you cannot tell anyone what’s happened or how you feel.
“This is happening in our schools every day – and yet the current procedures in some police forces in England and Wales do not allow for the reporting to schools of domestic abuses in a timely fashion, and this means that our children are left without support and nurture.”
At the conference in Liverpool last week, delegates passed a motion calling on the union to “support the work of Operation Encompass and to promote this innovative approach to information-sharing between police and schools”.