Welcome to our Safeguarding Page
At St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School, our priority is the safety, happiness and wellbeing of our children, families, staff and whole school community. We take our role as safeguarding and child protection officers very seriously and we will always deal with safeguarding and child protection cases quickly, following full Lancashire County Council procedures. We have many signposts to help you-for a variety of situations you may need some extra help with.
Early Help Assessment and Early Help Plan-a multi-agency approach: The Early Help Assessment is an intervention with a family to gather, explore and analyse with them information about all aspects of the child or young person (and their family’s) life and then to identify areas where change will address support needs and positively impact on their lived experiences. This is recorded on an Early Help Assessment form which includes the family’s Early Help Plan. The Early Help Assessment is not a referral form for professionals to complete to access other services supporting children, young people and families. The Early Help Assessment should be completed by the professional supporting your family to identify any unmet needs and develop a plan of support. Miss Deakin and Mr Gilmour are the people to help with this.
Your Family’s Early Help Assessment is available to all practitioners and professionals working with children, young people, and their families across Lancashire. Working alongside families from a holistic, strength-based approach when areas of support are first identified will stop escalation towards crisis and the need for more intensive and specialist intervention. Through the Early Help Assessment, Plan, and reviews via Team around the Family meetings the wider partnership of services can provide families with the right support at the right time.
Lancashire’s Children and Family Wellbeing Service-early help referrals
Lancashire County Council’s Early Help Offer Lancashire’s Children and Family Wellbeing Service (CFW) offers practical support to children, young people, parents/carers and families.
This support can be provided on a whole range of issues which may be affecting individuals or the family and is offered through a network of centres as well as in the community or in the family home. The main focus of the service is to provide an enhanced level of support which is prioritised towards those groups or individuals who have more complex or intensive needs or who are at risk and particularly where we think that providing early help will make a positive difference.
We want any problems to be identified early and appropriate support be put in place on a basis on mutual respect and sensitivity to the family. Any concerns and referrals are made via early help and by having parental consent for an early help assessment.
Lancashire Children’s Services Safeguarding Hub (MASH)-the single point of contact to support the child and family.
We use the Continuum of Need to establish the level of support needed. Please see diagram below:
Safeguarding aims and definition:
No single practitioner can have a full picture of a child’s needs and circumstances. If children and families are to receive the right help at the right time, everyone who comes into contact with them has a role to play in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action. KCSIE 2024
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purposes of this guidance as:
- providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge
- protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online
- preventing the impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
- ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
- taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66d7301b9084b18b95709f75/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_2024.pdf
Meet your safeguarding team
Miss S Deakin is our Executive Headteacher and Designated Safeguarding Lead.
Mr Gilmour is Head of School and DSL.
Mrs. Byrne is our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
Our safeguarding and child protection governor is Mr Philip Rydeard – our Chair of Governors.
Please see us at any time with any concerns you may have about a child.
Operation Encompass
We are an Operation Encompass school which means that we are alerted, by the police, if they have visited a household where a children has witnessed domestic abuse. Information is shared as part of a multi-agency approach for the safety and wellbeing of children involved in or witnessing domestic abuse.
Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy
We have a number of policies and procedures in place that contribute to our safeguarding commitment, including our Child Protection Policy which can be viewed on our policies page.
Sometimes we may need to share information and work in partnership with other agencies, when there are concerns about a child’s welfare. We will ensure that our concerns about our pupils are discussed with parents/carers first, unless we have reason to believe that such a move would be contrary to the child’s welfare. Our aim is to work in partnership with families, whenever possible to prevent concerns escalating to child protection issues. Early intervention is paramount. Please always come and talk to us if you have any concerns.
PREVENT Duty
Please see our above policy or click on the link below:
We actively support the Government’s Prevent Agenda to counter radicalism and extremism. Please see the policy above.
Schools must adhere to the Government document-KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE IN EDUCATION. All staff read and understand Part 1 of this document. Click on the link below to read.
Educational Visits and visitors
Mrs. Byrne is our Educational Visits Coordinator.
All school trips are thoroughly risk assessed and uploaded to EVOLVE. The trip must be approved by Mr Gilmour , and the Local Authority 4 weeks in advance for residential trips.