Safeguarding

St Mary's School considers the safeguarding to be paramount. We are committed to safeguarding your children  and our staff. We have a duty to ensure that no child or staff member in our care is at risk or at harm, at any time, particularly when they are at school. This page focuses on how we safeguard your children.

WHAT IS SAFEGUARDING?

It can be difficult to accept or comprehend, but all children can be at risk of harm or abuse. Safeguarding legislation and government guidance says that safeguarding means that professionals have a duty to:

• protect children from maltreatment
• prevent impairment of children's health or development
• ensure that children grow up in circumstances which are safe
• take action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

The government advise that: "the action we take to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm is everyone's responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and families has a role to play".

Although all staff have a responsibility for children's safeguarding the following staff have a key responsibility to take action if they have concerns.

Ms Jan Downie (CoG) is the Designated Governor for Safeguarding 

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN PRACTICE?

The School has a legal obligation to:

• Ensure our practice and procedures are safe and that we do all we can to keep children safe in school. 
• Support families in helping them keep their children safe from harm.
• Work with other agencies such as Children's Services, the Special Needs team, Behaviour Support and the school nursing service to support families in meeting the needs of their child
• Report any concerns about a child if it is felt that the child may be subject to neglect, or physical, emotional or sexual abuse. This includes concerns about the child in the home and the wider environment. If we have such a concern, we will contact Children's Services at the Local Authority to ensure that concerns are dealt with in a manner which makes the well-being of the child a priority. We appreciate that parents and carers can find these events very worrying and upsetting. Whenever possible, we will discuss concerns with parents before seeking advice to safeguard a child; however, there are some occasions when we are obliged to seek support from a professional trained to investigate safeguarding concerns.

TRAINING

All school staff have a responsibility to provide a safe environment in which children can learn. All staff receive training and regular safeguarding updates. The Safeguarding Lead and Deputy Safeguarding Leads have additional training so that they can carry out their responsibilities effectively. The Safeguarding Leads give advice to staff and also liaise closely with other services such as Children's Social Care.

The following short NSPCC video explains why safeguarding training is important and why we see safeguarding  as one of our key responsibilities.

We are an OPERATION ENCOMPASS school. 

Operation Encompass is a national police and education early intervention safeguarding partnership which supports children who experience Domestic Abuse. Operation Encompass means that the police will share information with our  school/college/nursery/setting about all police attended Domestic Abuse incidents which involve any of our children PRIOR to the start of the next school day. The notification informs us about the context of the incident and includes the Voice of the Child.

In addition to training we also have a number of safeguarding related policies and documents that aim to help us keep children safe. We are always reviewing these and updates can be found on our policies page.  

• Safeguarding and Child Protection  Policy
• Staff Behaviour Policy and Handbook for Conduct and Safe Working Practice
• Equality Statement
• Whistleblowing policy
• SEND policy
• Behaviour policy 
• Anti-bullying Policy
• Children's Anti Bullying Policy 
• Health and Safety Policy 
• First Aid Policy
• Fire and Emergency Evacuation Policy 
• Critical Incidents Policy
• E-safety Policy 
• Social Networking Policy 
• Supporting Medical Conditions Policy 
• Intimate Care Policy 
• Trips and Visits Policy