Safeguarding in our school

What is safeguarding about?

Your child’s health, safety and welfare are very important to us. In our school, we respect our children and help to protect their rights. We teach children how to recognise risks in different situations and how to protect themselves and stay safe in the real world and online. 

How do we keep you safe?
We keep our building and outside areas safe for everyone. We know how to keep children safe at home, at school and in our community.

We make sure that we know who is collecting children at home time. We only allow people on the contact form, or those we have been previously informed about, to collect children. 

We keep children safe online by working with our IT provider, Computeam, and filter and monitor internet access by using Securely. We give children lots of opportunities to tell us when things are not right and they feel worried, scared or unsafe.

Some things that might worry us…

• How someone speaks to a child.
• How someone touches a child - this might be sexually or the use of physical punishments that are not lawful in England.
• How children are looked after.
• What children see online.

Safeguarding team

Children can talk to any adult at school about anything. Mrs Jones and  Mrs Russell have a special job to keep all of our children safe and happy - they are the safeguarding team. Families can also talk to the team about worries they have for their child. If you have worries about another child you need to report this yourselves to Children’s Services  01522 782111 or to the NSPCC 0808 800 5000.

What do we do if we are worried about a child?

We want to  work very closely with families at Parish, talking openly and honestly about any concerns we may have. We also value what children say to us and always want to hear what life is like for them. So, if we are worried about a child, we’ll talk with them and talk with their family too. Together, we can make a plan about how we can make life better for a child. This might involve: completing assessments with families like an Early Help Assessment; getting other agencies to help;  and sometimes it might mean making a referral to Children’s Services to ask for a social worker to help. 

Why would we make a referral to Children’s Services?

All schools have a duty to refer cases of suspected child abuse to Children’s Services. If someone at our school sees an unusual or unexplained injury or mark, if your child has said something worrying to us, perhaps someone has reported something your child has said or if their behaviour is particularly out of the ordinary, we are required to make a referral. Sometimes we have to do this without talking to parents or carers first.

There’s lots of support on offer at Parish

We have a very wide ranging offer of support here at Parish - parenting support, interventions to support friendship skills; self-esteem and much more; various emotional wellbeing support through our pastoral support manager and ELSAs; Healthy Minds; Mental Health Support Team and our counsellor; agencies that help with behaviour strategies and specific situations. 

Family life isn’t always easy and we are here to help! You can call for a meeting with a member of our safeguarding and pastoral team on  01427 612554.

Keeping children safe is our most important job!