Safeguarding
King William Street CE Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We are fully committed to ensuring that consistent, effective safeguarding procedures are in place to support families, children and staff at school.
Safeguarding means:
- protecting children from abuse and maltreatment
- preventing harm to children's health or development
- ensuring children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care
- taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes
Child protection is part of the safeguarding process. It focusses on protecting individual children identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. Safeguarding children and child protection guidance and legislation apply to all children up to the age of eighteen.
Our Safeguarding Team
If you are ever concerned about the safety or wellbeing of any child, please speak directly to:
- one of the named safeguarding leaders above
- any member of King William Street CE Primary School's staff team
- a member of the NSPCC safeguarding helpline on 0808 800 5000
Any safeguarding action is taken in line with the following legislation/guidance:
* Keeping Children Safe in Education (DfE updated September 2022)
* South West Child Protection Procedures (SWCPP)
* Section 175 Children Act 2002
* Working Together to Safeguard Children (July 2019)
* Swindon Safeguarding Board guidance
* What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused (DfE March 2015) – non-statutory advice for practitioners
* Information-sharing :advice for practitioners providing safeguarding services (DfE March 2015)
* The Prevent duty - Departmental advice for schools and childcare providers (June 2015)
Our Policy
We have a number of policies and procedures in place that contribute to our safeguarding commitment which can be viewed on our policy page. We actively support the Government's Prevent Agenda to counter radicalism and extremism.
'King William Street is a school where pupils feel welcome and included. They told us that they feel safe and that staff care about them.' OFSTED 2019
Our Duty of Care
All staff have a duty of care to report concerns when they arise. Parents and carers will be informed of such concerns unless to do so would increase the risk to the child.
A written record of any concern will be kept on file, stored securely and shared with other safeguarding professionals as necessary. Written records will be transferred to the children's new schools when they leave King William Street CE Primary School.
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 pupils are discussed with his/her parents/carers first unless we believe that such a move would be contrary to the child's welfare.
What do we do?
To keep up-to-date with local and national statutory guidance, training, serious case reviews and best practice, we employ the services of an independent consultant, Sarah Turner. Sarah has supported us with our annual external review of safeguarding which took place in March 2019. Additionally, she has provided outstanding and bespoke training for all members of staff at our school.
Safeguarding Training
- All members of staff receive Level One safeguarding training annually.
- Every staff member has read and understood Part One of Keeping Children Safe in Education.
- All members of staff are expected to undertake online to Prevent Duty training.
- All members of staff have read and follow Safer Working Practice guidance.
- Mrs Clarke and Mrs Hill have attended Level Three training with Swindon Safeguarding Board.
- Mrs Clarke and Mr Evans (governor) have attended Safer Recruitment training with Swindon Safeguarding Board.
- Mrs Clarke has attended Managing Allegations training with Swindon Safeguarding Board.
- Mrs Hill has attended Parental Mental Health training with Swindon Safeguarding Board.
- In staff meetings, we regularly review safeguarding scenarios and share termly updates from the Swindon Safeguarding Advisor and Sarah Turner Consulting.
The Wider Context of Safeguarding
First Aid & Medicines
We have a dedicated team of First Aiders at King William Street CE Primary School who receive paediatric first aid training regularly. We also work closely with our school nurse, Sarah Hatten.
Please refer to our policy page for our policy on Supporting Children with Medical Conditions.
Health & Safety
A dedicated team of senior staff work hard to keep our premises safe and secure. We undertake regular fire drills and we have an emergency action plan.
Our administrative assistant, Mrs O'Brien, is also responsible for ensuring that all trips that the children attend are properly risk assessed.
When on site, all visitors are expected to sign in and out and must wear a King William Street CE Primary School identification badge, provided with a safeguarding leaflet and turn their mobile phones off.
Safer Recruitment
We expect all staff and volunteers to share our commitment to safeguarding. All staff and volunteers are expected to understake an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
We also carry our identity, professional qualification and disqualification by association checks before any person undertakes any role within our school.
Online Safety
Through the South West Grid for Learning, we apply strong filters and safety systems on all our school computers and tablets. All internet use by children is overseen by a member of staff and we actively teach children about keeping safe online through our cross-curricular Computing curriculum and the whole school safer internet days.
More information, for parents and carers, about online safety can be found here.
Extremism and Radicalisation
It is vital that staff and parents are aware of the possible danger of extremism and radicalisation of children, predominantly but not soley through online activities. We are commited to supporting parents and pupils to be aware of these dangers.
Mrs Clarke has attended training in relation to Counter Terrorism and Security Act in order to understand how best to support and protect children against extremism and radicalisation according to Prevent Duty guidelines.
Prevent Strategy
Prevent is about safeguarding people and communities from the threat of terrorism. Prevent is one of four elements of CONTEST, the Goverment's counter-terrorism strategy. It aims to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.
The Prevent strategy:
- Responds to the ideological challenge we face from terrorism and aspects of extremism, and the threat we face from those who promote these views.
- Provides practical help to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism and ensure they are given appropriate advice and support.
- Works with a wide range of sectors (including education, criminal justice, faith, charities, online and health) where there are risks of radicalisation that we need to be dealt with.
