Skip to content ↓

Safeguarding and Online Safety

What is Safeguarding?

Safeguarding is what we do to protect children from harm and promote their welfare. 

Safeguarding means:

  • Protecting children from abuse and maltreatment, whether the risk of harm comes from within the child’s family and/or outside (from the wider community), including online.
  • Preventing harm to children's health or development.
  • Ensuring children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care.
  • Taking actions to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes.

We are committed to ensuring school is a happy, safe environment and understand that everyone has a responsibility to keep children safe and help them to grow into confident and secure adults. 

There are some key people in school with specific responsibilities for safeguarding:

Designated Safeguarding Lead: Mrs Claire Craggs

Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads: Miss Kate Holland and Mrs Sally Thompson

Early Help Lead: Miss Kim Clark 

Lead Governor for Safeguarding: Mr Gerard Barr

We have clear policy and procedures for keeping children safe and if we have concerns, we will raise them with you.  We use the curriculum to teach children about safety including PSHE, Kidsafe and through visits from organisations such as the NSPCC. 

Being away from school can sometimes be difficult for children and families. If you have any safeguarding concerns about a child, please follow the process on the Cumbria Safeguarding Children Partnership website:

Cumberland Safeguarding Children Partnership

Telephone: 0333 240 1727

If you are concerned that a child is in an emergency situation, you should contact the Police immediately on 999

How do I keep my child safe online?

Online safety is a fundamental part of schools’ safeguarding and child protection measures.

Government guidance highlights the importance of safeguarding children online so we take a whole-school approach to online safety so all staff, governors, volunteers and parents know how they can help keep children safe online.

We have 2 approaches to online safety:

  1. to ensure the school's online procedures keep children safe,

  1. to teach our children about online safety, in and outside of school.

We use our Computing curriculum to directly and discretely teach the knowledge and skills needed for each age group and start each year with this unit. Alongside this we revisit these principles more broadly in our PHSE curriculum and enhance this with Online Safety Day, links with the NSPCC and support form the community police. Posters, resources and ongoing reminders and checks are in place to support and enable children to manage their online safety.

We foster an open environment in which children are encouraged to ask any questions and participate in an ongoing conversation about the benefits and risks of the online world.

The NSPCC has lots of useful information to support parents in keeping their children safe online. Click on the link below, which will take you straight to their website:

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

Operation Encompass

Operation Encompass is a police and education early information partnership enabling schools to offer immediate support to children experiencing domestic abuse.

The Operation Encompass programme ensures that there is a simple telephone call or notification to our school’s trained Designated Safeguarding Lead DSL (Mrs Craggs) or the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead DDSL (Miss Holland or Mrs Thompson) prior to the start of the next school day after an incident of police attending domestic abuse where there are children related to either of the adult parties involved.

Information is shared with these key staff members to enable appropriate support to be given to the child/ren dependent on their needs and wishes.

The police give only essential information regarding the incident and if the incident occurs during the school holidays, this is processed by email immediately and a follow-up occurs when the school reopens.

Being a proactive part of Operation Encompass helps all professionals make the best decisions for next steps and support, and it is school staff who often have the most contact with children, and we offer them a trusted adult to talk to each and every day.

Children are negatively impacted by experiencing domestic abuse and, without early intervention and support, this negative impact can last a child’s life course. Domestic abuse can impact on social, psychological, physical, emotional and behavioural outcomes, often with a negative impact on a child’s academic success. Experiencing domestic abuse has been identified as an Adverse Childhood Experience ACES.

Operation Encompass aims, by directly connecting police and schools, to secure better outcomes for children, to enable schools to better understand the impact living with domestic abuse has upon children, to help schools to better understand a child’s lived experience and therefore be able to support and nurture each child, making their days better and giving them a better tomorrow.