SUPPORTING ANTI-BULLYING STRATEGIES IN SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY
Sentinel's web-based Anti-Bullying solution brings you incident case management, allowing schools, local authorities and their partner agencies to record and manage bullying, racism and prejudice-based incidents through to resolution. This is supported by an on-line survey tool that allows you to enquire and report on students' attitude to and experience of the key outcomes that aff ect their learning, health, safety and well-being.
Sentinel's on-line data capture and management capabilities were derived directly from the results of the National Anti-Bullying Pilot, which pointed the way to building best practice through collaborative working. The pilot involved professionals and agencies supporting anti-bullying work across schools and with children's services departments.
Based on Sentinel's market-leading, web-based, risk-management software, the Anti-Bullying Case Management application provides a secure repository for reports of bullying and other incidents affecting the lives and well-being of school age children in whatever setting they occur. The database is shared across schools, residential units, youth clubs, children's services and any contributing agencies with appropriate security, allowing each agency to access information on a need-to-know basis.
Sentinel provides the facilities required by professionals in each discipline to inform, investigate, share and report on individual incidents or on statistical and trend analyses. The customisable e-form provides a simple, case management workflow, allowing staff and senior management to record details of incidents, those individuals involved, then request tasks or investigations and record the outcomes for victim and perpetrator. The resultant audit trail demonstrates that each setting and agency is following its anti-bullying and harassment policies, taking all complaints seriously, working through issues objectively and taking the necessary corrective and preventive actions.
Sentinel's web-based Survey Module gives children's services, in consultation with their schools and agencies, the ability to measure attitudes and perception with minimum effort and maximum efficiency. On-line surveys can be quickly deployed to research any aspect of life in school or community. Surveys, whether bespoke or taken from the Sentinel portfolio, can be directed at young people, staff, parents, specific cohorts or vulnerable groups and are especially valuable in measuring the success of proactive anti-bullying, discrimination or harassment initiatives.
Anonymous surveys provide an opportunity to understand young people's perception of bullying and prejudice and to measure this against the number of incidents reported through their schools and settings. Sentinel Survey ensures that everybody's voice is heard by providing simplified, graphical surveys for younger and special needs children.
Vantage has been authorised to develop on-line versions of the SEAL questionnaires and the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA) Anti-Bullying Toolkit. The questionnaires are delivered with the survey module but the ABA Toolkit is subject to an additional licence fee as contribution to the ABA's charitable work.
Vantage views its customer base as essential in the specification and development of its products. Our first priority on launching Sentinel Anti-Bullying was to build up a core of like-minded customers who could share their expertise, in order to define best practice in the analysis and management of incidents and to test the acceptability of web-based surveys across children of differing ages and abilities.
This policy of putting the customer in the driving seat of our product development continues with frequent, regional customer conferences and the establishment of special interest groups on many aspects of anti-bullying policy. The results of these initiatives, whether additional data fields on the incident form or new surveys, are shared amongst all our Anti-Bullying customers.
Built with web technology - Sentinel was conceived as a web-based application, not modified to suit. It can be accessed at any time, from any place, using internet, intranet, extranet or wireless technology.
Industry standard user interface - Standard browsers provide a common-place, intuitive interface to all system functions and require a minimum of training for any user with basic computing skills.
Customer configuration - Sentinel is a fully specified application, allowing a high level of customer branding and configuration. Drop-downs, incident classification and protocols are all user definable and maintainable.
Development roadmap - Sentinel Anti-Bullying is part of the wider Sentinel family and continues to develop over time. The roadmap is a timetable for new modules, features and enhancements, and is published regularly.
Meeting national standards - Standards for reporting Bullying incidents are emerging; Sentinel Anti-Bullying will encompass these standards and common data sets in order to fit seamlessly into our customers' MIS and corporate systems.
The London Borough of Merton has recently deployed Vantage Technologies' Sentinel Survey module to launch an innovative online pupil questionnaire, designed to give pupils the chance to comment on the effectiveness of schools' policies for tackling bullying in schools.
The results gathered from the questionnaire will deliver valuable evidence on the effectiveness of schools' current anti-bullying policies and highlight potential hotspots or specific areas where additional resources need to be deployed in order to address bullying.
The survey has been designed in partnership with Vantage to meet the needs of younger pupils. Future developments will extend the survey to include special needs pupils and those who do not have English as their first language, making it easier for them to give their opinions on the anti-bullying policy.
Bev Selway, primary behaviour and attendance consultant, said: "The Sentinel Online Anti-Bullying survey enables us to see how well schools' anti-bullying policies are working. The feedback from pupils will help provide a clearer understanding of the issues around bullying in our schools."
