What is Safeguarding?

Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm.

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.

Safeguarding children and child protection guidance and legislation applies to all children up to the age of 18.

Safeguarding at St. Paul’s Catholic Junior School

Governors and staff at St. Paul’s share an objective to help keep the children safe by contributing to:

• Providing a safe environment for them to learn

• Identifying children who are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm and taking appropriate action with the aim of making sure that they are kept safe both at home and in the education setting.

To achieve this objective, we:

• Aim to prevent unsuitable people from working with the children

• Promote safe practice and challenge any poor or unsafe practice

• Identify instances where there are grounds for concern about a child’s welfare and initiate or take appropriate action to keep them safe

• Contribute to effective partnership working between all those involved in providing services for our children.

Roles and Responsibilities

THE DESIGNATED SENIOR PERSON is a senior member of the school’s leadership team who is designated to take lead responsibility for dealing with safeguarding issues.  The DCSF strongly recommended that schools appoint and train a deputy DSP to act in the absence of the lead DSP and support her/him.

The headteacher is Mr Luck.

The designated Safeguarding Lead for Child Protection is Mrs O'Callaghan (Deputy Headteacher).

The Governor responsible for Safeguarding is Mr Chris England.

Operation Encompass

Our school is part of a project, which is run between Merseyside schools and Merseyside Police.  The project called Operation Encompass, has been designed to provide early reporting of any domestic violence incidents that occur outside school, which might have an impact on a child in school.  This is done through a notification to school following an incident.

The project ensures that at least one member of the school staff, known as the Key Adult, is trained to liaise with the police and to use the information that has been shared, in confidence.

In this way, we aim to support each child who has been involved in, or witnessed, a domestic abuse incident.  The Key Adult at St Paul’s Catholic Junior School is Mrs O’Callaghan. If she receives an Encompass notification she will make sure that a person the child trusts is available to help - if the child needs this.  A lot of the time this support is silent; keeping a careful eye on him or her and make sure the child has a calm school day. The confidential information is ordinarily not shared with all staff, just an agreement on how to help, if needed.

All schools have a duty to share any information with other organisations if they feel a child is at risk of being hurt. Mrs O’Callaghan may contact other organisations.  This is described in our child protection policy.

The sharing of information from the Police allows the school to be ready to help your child straight away, and it means that parents are aware that Mrs O’Callaghan knows that something has happened.  Parents can come and talk to Mrs O’Callaghan.  Mrs O’Callaghan can point you towards other people that can help.  Our aim is to support children and their families.

Liverpool Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP)

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