Safeguarding & Child Protection

Marymount Barranquilla has a moral and legal duty to safeguard the welfare of students. Child abuse and neglect are major concerns in the modern world. They are serious violations of children’s rights and are obstacles to educational goals in regards to the physical, emotional, and spiritual development.

Our goal is to build and maintain a proactive environment that protects children by either preventing child abuse before it occurs or by ensuring its earliest possible detection, reporting and intervention.

Child Protection Statement

Based on two premises

Marymount has a preventive and intervention approach to ensure a safe place for students and offers support to those who may be experiencing abuse or neglect in any aspect of their lives.

The school/parent partnership is essential for providing the highest level of safety and care for our children.

Supporting the child, the family and the community

The child

Children at risk include those with difficult temperament, defiance, health issues, social or academic difficulties, and those unaware of their rights to protection.

Marymount

Promotes respect, study and social skills, teaches rights to protection, healthy relationships, assertiveness, using support system.

The family

At-risk characteristics include parents under stress, families in need of support and access to resources, socially isolated, unusually high expectations placed on their children, parental history of inappropriate discipline when they were children.

Marymount

Works with parents to understand appropriate discipline, comprehension and healthy child protection practices.

The community

At-risk characteristics include limited laws on child protection, unusually high work stress placed on parents, acceptance of inappropriate behavior toward children (excessive corporal punishment), unusually high expectations placed in children to achieve their goals.

Marymount

Implements the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy, trains teachers to recognize abuse, trains counselors to support families in need, trains and supports parents in protective behaviors, networks with community, health services, and local authorities for referrals.

Education and Training

At Marymount we use a preventive approach to promote a healthy environment for students’ socio-emotional development within the School community by addressing a variety of topics (from four thematic axes biological/sexuality, psychoaffective, ethical/values , and prevention) for our students from Nursery to 12th grade.

We address a comprehensive part of the child's education by repeating it many times during the school year and including developmentally sequenced materials, systematic and specific skills training and components such as classroom training combined with parental involvement, use of interactive instructional techniques.

Learn more about Safeguarding & Child Protection at Marymount