Safeguarding and Online Safety

Ensuring that every child is safe at school, at home and in other aspects of their lives is our highest priority. For further details, follow this link to our full safeguarding and child protection policy.

Safeguarding Policies
Every year the school publishes its safeguarding and child protection policy on its website. The policy works as part of a set of other policies to keep children safe. At the bottom of this section are links to some of our key safeguarding policies which are listed in the ‘Policies’ drop down menu.

Our Approach
Much of our work centres on educating children about how to keep themselves safe through ‘Kidsafe’, a whole school approach to teaching about safeguarding. We also teach children what to do if they have problem. We work hard to ensure that school is a safe environment, with well-trained, suitably qualified, caring staff. Children are taught about online safety as they move through the school. Filtering is in place to restrict access to harmful content and the system is tested to ensure that it is performing at a sufficiently high standard.

Our Governors play an important role in the leadership of the school. They take part in safeguarding training, support with strategic planning and hold senior leaders to account. Each year, they read Keeping Children Safe in Education, receive an update about key changes and work with the designated senior leads to ensure that policy and practice are up to date and ensure the highest possible standards of care and support for children.

Working in Partnership
To provide the best quality support for children, we work in partnership with parents. Where appropriate we can make referrals for support through our in-house pastoral team or to other agencies who can provide support.

Making Referrals
In many cases, referrals are made with the consent of parents and are often the result of an ongoing dialogue between school and parents. In some cases where there is the potential for significant risk to a child, school can make an emergency referral to Children’s Social Care without consent.

Receiving Information – Operation Encompass
We can receive information about a child from a variety of sources:

• their parent
• the child
• other agencies working with the their family

Should the Police attend an incident at a child’s family home, then we receive information through ‘Operation Encompass’, a county wide system for alerting schools and other agencies that there has been an incident at a child’s home.

Key Contacts
Should you have a concern about a child, the key contacts in school are:

Alison Lay, Designated Lead for Safeguarding and SENDCo
Roger Shone, Back-up Designated Lead for Safeguarding and Headteacher
Kate Nuttall, Back-up Designated Lead for Safeguarding, and Assistant Head
Lisa Newton, Back-up Designated Lead for Safeguarding, and Pastoral Support Manager

Our Safeguarding governor is Fiona Abrahams

For emergencies out of school hours you can call the Children’s Services Duty Team on 0300 123 6722

Use the buttons below to access a helpful link for parents to a Lancashire County Council webpage which lists useful documents and links, particularly for online safety. The other buttons will give access to our safeguarding policies.