Athelstan Community Primary School
To Be The Best That We Can Be
Safeguarding
Safeguarding at Athelstan, a whole school approach.
Every person who works with our children understand their responsibility in keeping children safe and should be confident in how they will do that.
Our school community has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of our pupils. This means that we have Safeguarding and Child Protection policies and procedures in place. All staff, including our volunteers and supply staff, must ensure that they are aware of our procedures.
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 always ensure that our concerns about our pupils are discussed with their parents/carers first unless we have reason to believe that this is not in the child’s best interests or a child is at significant risk or in immediate danger.
What is safeguarding?
Safeguarding means:
- protecting children from abuse and maltreatment
- preventing harm to children’s health or development
- ensuring children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care
- taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes.
Child protection is part of the safeguarding process. It focuses on protecting individual children identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. This includes child protection procedures which detail how to respond to concerns about a child.
Who to Speak to
If you have any concerns regarding the welfare of a pupil, please report it to a designated Safeguarding Leader (DSL) or Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leader (DDSL).
Mr Osborne DSL Miss O'Donnell DDSL Mrs Barton DDSL
Working with parents
It is important for parents to understand the school’s role in the safeguarding process. Our job is not to investigate, however, we may need to clarify information that is confusing or unclear. Our job is to listen to children and be their first line of defence.
Our policies
Athelstan Child Protection Policy
Keeping Children Safe in Education
Working together to safeguard children
Prevent Strategy
As part of our ongoing safeguarding and child protection duties we are fully behind the government’s Prevent Strategy. All staff have received ‘Prevent’ training and understand about and how to deal with any issues they may see inside or outside school.
Official government document about Prevent
Operation Encompass
The school is part of a project that runs jointly between schools and North Yorkshire Police.
Operation Encompass is the reporting of police attended domestic abuse incidents to schools, prior to the start of the next school day, where there are children in the home.
Operation Encompass will ensure that a member of the school staff, who is also a safeguarding leader, known as a Key Adult, is trained to allow them to liaise with the police and to use the information that has been shared in confidence, while ensuring that the school is able to make provision for possible difficulties experienced by children, or their families, who have experienced a domestic abuse incident. The Key adult for the school is Mr R Osborne.
Reporting Concerns
CEOP: The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command
Has someone done something online that has made you or a child or young person you know, feel worried or unsafe?
Make a report to one of CEOP's experienced Child Protection Advisors:
Worried about a child?
Everyone has a responsibility to refer a child when it is believed or suspected that a child:
- Has suffered significant harm and /or;
- Is likely to suffer significant harm and/or;
- Has developmental and welfare needs which are likely only to be met through provision of family support services (with agreement of the child’s parent).
Making a referral
If it is out of school hours and you are unable to speak to a Designated Safeguarding Lead about concerns you have about a child then you could use the following contacts:
Where there are significant immediate concerns about the safety of a child, you should contact the police on 999
If you believe the situation is urgent but does not require the police, please call 0300 131 2 131 to make a telephone contact with the MAST team at North Yorkshire.
Should your call be outside of business hours (Monday – Friday / 9am-5pm) please still call 0300 131 2 131 to speak to the Emergency Duty Team.
You can also use the Universal Referral form to report concerns.
Resources
The Curriculum
One of our key priorities is teaching children to keep themselves safe. This is done through the curriculum.
Our teaching includes:
- Online Safety (e-safety)
- Food Safety
- Water Safety including swimming lessons
- Road Safety
- Sex and relationships education
- Visits from Community Police Officer
- Stranger danger
- The Wellbeing Team
- Crucial Crew
northyorkshire.police.uk/what-we-do/public-safety-and-welfare/crucial-crew
CPOMS
At Athelstan we want our safeguarding to be as effective as possible to that end we operate CPOMS in school. CPOMS brings together all safeguarding and pastoral care concerns to one place, alongside the necessary tools to analyse each child’s situation simply and thoroughly.
A common challenge in safeguarding practice is information or communication “falling through the gaps” as staff often have a raft of information relating to a huge number of children.
CPOMS brings together all the tools needed for safeguarding to one place. An appropriate member of staff can see a pupil’s full Safeguarding chronology, alongside anything a school wishes to log that it feels is appropriate.
Reports can then be produced from the gathered information to be shared, when needed, with the relevant agencies, such as social care, police, the child’s next school, or any specialist visiting school.
Importantly, ‘Actions’ taken in response to an incident can be recorded and monitored so schools can ensure all safeguarding concerns in school are currently being looked into or resolved.
The tailored access for different staff means the most sensitive information is kept incredibly secure and available only to those who legally have the right to see it.