St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School

Safeguarding

St Mary's RC Primary, Langho fully recognises its responsibilities for child protection. It aims to ensure that children are effectively safeguarded from the potential risk of harm and that the safety and wellbeing of all children is of the highest priority in all aspects of our work. In addition, it aims to maintain an ethos whereby staff, pupils, parents and governors feel able to articulate concerns comfortably, safe in the knowledge that effective action will be taken as appropriate.

This Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy applies to all adults, including volunteers, working in or on behalf of St Mary's and it is expected that everyone working in or for our School shares the responsibility to keep children safe from harm and abuse and reports any concerns to a Designated Safeguarding Lead.

Safeguarding Policy

Our Safeguarding Governor is Mrs Cath Mehta


Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) Miss C Boden	Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) Mrs J Beaghan

Help and Advice for Parents and Carers

As parents and carers, you want to make sure that your children develop healthily and thrive. We're here to help you with advice on how you can build strong relationships with your children and keep them safe. Here is advice and resources for helping parents to keep their children safe, at home and online, when using the internet, social networking websites and playing online games, and help and advice for creating a safe and nurturing environment for your children.

For guidance, further details can be found from:

Ways to Contact the NSPCC

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is a charity campaigning and working in child protection in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands.
Telephone: 0808 800 5000
Text: 88858
Email: help@nspcc.org.uk

Online Safety

Online safety is an important part of keeping children safe at St Mary's. We have extensive security measures in place within the school, which are reviewed regularly, to help safeguard the children from unsuitable content of the internet and any potential dangers.

Children at St Mary's use the internet as part of their learning and we have regular activities and conversations to remind the children about the importance of staying safe on the internet both in school and out of school. We are committed to working with parents and carers to ensure the safety of the children whilst using the internet, and supporting parents and carers to speak to their children about how they can keep safe and behave appropriately on line.

Prevent Strategy

As part of St Mary's commitment to safeguarding and child protection we support the government’s Prevent Strategy, and take guidance from Teaching Approaches to help to build resilience to extremism. A Parent Pamphlet is available below.

What is the Prevent Strategy?

The Prevent strategy is a government strategy designed to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorist or extremist causes.

Many of the things we already do in school to help children become positive, happy members of society also contribute to the Prevent strategy.

These include:

Exploring other cultures and religions and promoting diversity

Promoting the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils, as well as British values such as democracy
Developing critical thinking skills and a strong, positive self-identity
Challenging prejudices and racist comments
We will also protect children from the risk of radicalisation, for example by using filters on the Internet to make sure they can’t access extremist and terrorist material, or by vetting visitors who come into school to work with pupils.

At St Mary's , we build pupils’ resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British values.

The statutory guidance refers to the importance of Prevent awareness training to equip staff to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and to challenge extremist ideas. At our school all teaching and support staff have completed training.

Operation Encompass

Operation Encompass is a unique Police and Education early intervention safeguarding partnership which ensures that a child's school is informed, prior to the start of the next school day, that there has been an incident of Domestic Abuse to which the child or young person has been exposed, and which might then have an impact on them in school the following day.

Each school is informed of all Domestic Abuse incidents, not just those where an offence can be identified or those which are graded as high risk. The partnership recognises that all incidents of Domestic Abuse can be harmful to children and young people.

This information will be shared throughout the year, including school holidays and the weekends. Information will only be shared with the school by the police where it is identified that a young person was present, witnessed or was involved in a domestic abuse incident.

A nominated member of staff, known as a Key Adult, has been trained to liaise with the police. At St Mary's our Key Adults are Miss Boden and Mrs Beaghan. They will be able to use information that has been shared with them, in confidence, to ensure that the school makes provision for possible difficulties experienced by children or their families. The Key Adults will keep this information confidential, and will only share it on a need to know basis, for instance, to teaching staff for the child or young person. It will not be shared with other school students.

Operation Encompass was first introduced in Plymouth in February 2011, and has proved very effective in providing appropriate and timely support to young people affected by domestic abuse. This initiative has been implemented across the whole of the Lancashire Police area. If you would like some more information about it, you can view it online at www.operationencompass.org.

We are keen to offer the best support possible for our pupils and a recent review of Operation Encompass showed that it is beneficial and supportive for all those involved.

Early Help

Miss Boden and Mrs Beaghan work with support in the Local Authority such as Children and Family Wellbeing, to manage Early Help.

The role of the Children and Family Wellbeing Leader is to provide advice, mental health and early help support services for children and their families.

Miss Boden and Mrs Beaghan, and with Children and Family Wellbeing, work closely with children, parents and other family members on issues that may be impacting on themselves and/or other family members' wellbeing. They can offer support and advice on a wide range of issues and can signpost parents towards outside agencies if required.

Part of their role is to work closely with all staff, outside agencies and organisations to improve opportunities for children and their families at our school. An integral part of their role is linking families with other agencies, both statutory and non-statutory such as school nurses, parenting workshops/programmes, the Children and Family Well Being Service, counselling services, financial and housing advice services, parent support groups, to name a few! Families may choose to work with Miss Boden and Mrs Beaghan on an Early Help Plan, which can help families identify the aspects of their lives they would like to change and identify what support is needed to help make this happen.

Sometimes the stresses of everyday life can be overwhelming for all of us and you may feel you just need to talk these through with someone. You may need help with social and emotional wellbeing, including friendship issues, grief and loss, parental separation, parenting, absence and lateness, behaviour and other issues outside of these. Please feel free to come in and talk to Miss Boden or Mrs Beaghan by asking for them at the school office or ask to speak to them by ringing 01254247157 or emailing head@st-marys-langho.lancs.sch.uk .

Below are a number of links to websites with more support and advice on a range of issues that impact families.