“Safeguarding is not just about protecting children from deliberate harm. It includes a wide range of issues relating to pupil’s welfare, health and safety.”
Safeguarding is defined as:
- Protecting children from maltreatment;
- Preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development;
- Ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care;
- Taking action to enable all children to have the best life chances.
- Child Protection is an aspect of safeguarding, but is focused on how we respond to children who have been significantly harmed or are at risk of significant harm.
- Staff applies to all those working for or on behalf of the school, full time or part time, in either a paid or voluntary capacity. This also includes governors.
- Child refers to all young people who have not yet reached their 18 birthday or Children Looked After and SEND young people who have not yet reached their 25th birthday. On the whole, this will apply to pupils of our school; the policy will also extend to visiting children and students from other establishments.
- Parent refers to birth parents and other adults in a parenting role for example adoptive parents, step parents, guardians and foster carers.
- Abuse could mean neglect, physical, emotional or sexual abuse or any combination of these. Parents, carers and other people can harm children either by direct acts and / or failure to provide proper care. Explanations of these are given within the document and appendices 1 and 2.
Our school fulfills the local and national responsibilities in line with the following:
Working Together to Safeguard Children
Keeping Children Safe In Education 2021
Teaching Online Safety in Schools 2019
Ofsted guidance ‘Inspecting safeguarding in early years, education and skills’ (2019) Inspecting EYFS Safeguarding
Early Years and Foundation Stage Framework, 2021 (EYFS) Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage
Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment 2021
London Safeguarding Children Procedures, March 2021 http://www.londoncp.co.uk/ London Child Protection Procedures
Criminal Exploitation of Children and Vulnerable Adults County Lines Guidance 2018
Children and Social Work Act, 2017
Mandatory Reporting of Female Genital MutilationMental health and behaviour in schools
Information sharing and GDPR
Children Missing in Education
Every Child Matters
Sexual Harassment
We actively support the Government’s Prevent Agenda against counter terrorism.
In addition to these statutory documents, we have our school policies such as Safeguarding, Online Safety, School Behaviour, Whistleblowing and Code of Conduct which can be found here.
Sometimes we may need to share information and work in partnership with other agencies when there are concerns about a child’s welfare. We will ensure that our concerns about our pupils are discussed with his/her parents/carers first unless we have reason to believe that such a move would be contrary to the child’s welfare.
