Child Protection and Safeguarding
We take child protection and the safeguarding of students, families and staff very seriously. The Designated Safeguarding Lead is Maria Butterfield and the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads are Kelly Knight & Rebecca Eaton & Nadine Collard.
All DSLs and DDSLs can be contacted on 01935 814582.
Our Local Governing Board Member for Safeguarding is Alison Glazier.
A copy of our Child protection and Safeguarding policy can be found here.
Resource for parents of children ‘in trouble online’.
The Lucy Faithful Foundation has produced an excellent guide for parents of children or young people who have ‘got into trouble online’.
It covers three main areas:
- child exhibiting risk-taking behaviour by accessing adult pornography online
- child behaving irresponsibly by sending or receiving sexual images
- child arrested for viewing indecent images of children
Clearly written it explains lots of things that many parents won’t be aware of or have thought about, and provides sound reassurance as well as advice and guidance about how to deal with what are likely to be challenging and difficult situations for a family. It provides links to all sorts of additional resources and includes a Family Safety Plan for families to use as a tool themselves.
https://www.stop-cse.org/what-is-cse/
The NWG Network charity has launched its ‘Say Something’ campaign which has been developed with young people and aims to safeguard vulnerable children and young people by empowering them to identify early indicators of child sexual exploitation (CSE).
Say Something offers a free 24 hour anonymous phone and SMS helpline: 116 000 to disclose information and seek support.
E-Safety
Keeping safe online and with new technology (such as just about every kind of new phone coming on the market), otherwise known as e-safety, is becoming increasingly important. Know IT All for Parents is a great website for information about all aspects of what your child may or may not be up to!
Other sources of advice, information and support are available in the links on the Internet Safety section.
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP)
CEOP works with child protection partners across the UK
and overseas to identify the main threats to children and coordinates activity against these threats to bring offenders to account. CEOP protects children from harm online and offline, both directly and in partnership with local and international agencies.
Operating Encompass
The school has been given the opportunity to take part in a project that will run jointly between schools and Dorset Police.
Operation Encompass is the notification to schools when a child or young person has experienced any domestic abuse, this information will be shared with the schools.
Operation Encompass will ensure that senior safeguarding members of the school staff, (DSL/DDSLs) (Kelly Knight, Jayne Cottingham, Maria Butterfield, Karen Blatch) known as a Key Adults, are trained to allow them to receive information from 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 been involved in a domestic abuse incident.
We are keen to offer the best support possible to all our pupils and we believe this will be extremely beneficial for all those involved.
Operation Encompass Safeguarding Statement
Our school is part of Operation Encompass. This is a police and education early intervention safeguarding partnership which supports children and young people who experience Domestic Abuse.
Operation Encompass means that the police will share information about Domestic Abuse incidents with our school soon after they have been called to a domestic incident.
All Key Adults (DSL/DDSL) have attended an Operation Encompass local briefing as well as national online training.
Our parents are fully aware that we are an Operation Encompass school.
The Operation Encompass information is stored in line with all other confidential safeguarding and child protection information.
The Key Adult has also led briefings for all school staff and Governors about Operation Encompass, the prevalence of Domestic Abuse and the impact of this abuse on children. We have also discussed how we can support our children following the Operation Encompass notification.
The Safeguarding Governor will report on Operation Encompass in the termly report to Governors. All information is anonymised for these reports.
The Key Adult has used the Operation Encompass Toolkit to ensure that all appropriate actions have been taken by the school.