Safeguarding
At Summerseat Methodist Primary School, nothing is more important to us than the safety and welfare of our pupils. We take rigorous steps to ensure that children stay safe and do not come to any harm. We work closely with parents / carers and a range of professional external agencies to secure this. If you have any concerns, no matter how small they may seem, about the safety or welfare of any child, please talk to one of the staff listed below:
Our Designated Safeguarding Lead Person in school is Mrs Julie Whittaker and Mrs Sarah Brown
The Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead is Ms Cole
The Deputy Designated Safeguarding Individual is Mrs Coffey
The named governor is Clare Mariani.
Our aim is always to pick up on issues early and provide appropriate support to families quickly. Sometimes, this is achieved through Early Help which can support families accessing necessary services. Information about Early Help can be found in the link below.
People sometimes wonder what the difference is between the terms safeguarding and child protection.
In practice, Safeguarding is the policies and practices that schools and Governing Bodies employ to keep children safe and promote their well-being. This means everything from security of the buildings, to the safe recruitment of staff and everything in between.
The School's safeguarding arrangements cover all aspects of life at school, in particular addressing these issues:
- Health and safety
- Bullying
- Harassment and discrimination (Including racism, LGBT groups, harassment between children / peer on peer abuse)
- Physical intervention
- Meeting the needs of pupils with medical conditions
- Provision of medical first aid
- Off-site visits
- Intimate care
- Internet and communications safety
- Physical security of the School site
- Protection from maltreatment
- Recruitment and vetting of staff and visitors to the site
- Children Missing Education
- Staff code of conduct
This is not an exhaustive list.
Child Protection is one aspect of Safeguarding. Child Protection is a term used to describe the activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.
If you have concern that a child is being harmed as a result of abuse or neglect, you must not keep these concerns to yourself.
If you live in Bury Local Authority, these are the numbers that you can ring for advice and to make a referral:
- MASH - Contact Bury Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (0161-253 -5678) during office hours 8.45am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday) or Emergency Duty Team (0161-253-6606) outside of office hours or email childwellbeing@bury.gov.uk
Children’s Social Care – 0161 253 5454 - If you have reason to believe that a child is at IMMEDIATE RISK OF HARM, contact the police on 999
As well as speaking to Bury Authority, you can also contact:
- Police: 0161 872 5050 or 999 in an emergency
- Parentline Plus: 0808 8002 222
- NSPCC: 0808 8005 000
Our safeguarding Policy and related policies can be found on the Policies page.
Safeguarding is woven into our curriculum through PSHE and RSHE lessons, Computing and online safety, collective worship, dedicated wellbeing time and through special events and external visitors.
Advice & Support for Parents
Bury's safeguarding child board have a helpful website that offers advice and support for parents if they are concerned for a child's welfare. This can be from bullying and abuse to Internet safety. If you have a concern about a child's welfare please use the following link to gain the information that you need: https://burysafeguardingpartnership.bury.gov.uk/
New guidance published on keeping children safe from abuse and harm
The DfE have jointly published new guidance with the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Public Health England on keeping children safe from abuse and harm. This guidance brings together sources of information about the main risks children may be vulnerable to during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and signposts you to help and support available.
The guidance can be found here:
Operation Encompass
Operation Encompass is an initiative which endeavours to provide support for children and young people who have experienced domestic abuse in their household. It is a partnership between the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH), Bury Safeguarding Children’s Board and designated school staff, known as Key Adults. The MASH team will inform Key Adults within schools about any domestic abuse incident where the child has been present or affected. This will enable schools to take appropriate steps to support our pupils during what could be an emotionally difficult time.
Online Safety
The main reason that we provide internet access to our teachers and pupils is to promote educational excellence by facilitating resource sharing, innovation and communication. Internet access will be authorised once parents and pupils have returned the signed consent form as part of the Acceptable Use Policy. A record will be kept by the Headteacher of all pupils who have been granted internet access.
All users in Year 2 and above will be provided with usernames and passwords, and are advised to keep this confidential to avoid any other pupils using their login details. Pupils’ passwords will be changed on a regular basis, and their activity is continuously monitored by the on-line security system Senso.
Management systems are in place to allow teachers and members of staff to control workstations and monitor pupils’ activity. Senso is used to support schools in this. Senso is used to address esafety and monitor the safe use of computers, on and offline. This helps to identify safeguarding risks from the words that are typed, even if not saved in documents. This is to help address worries that children may have by; letting them confide anonymously, resolve bullying issues, detect issues that children may be of concern to a safeguarding officer.
All school systems will be protected by up-to-date virus software. Sophos provides online security for schools in the Trust. Sophos guards the schools’ internet connections from threats that are posed to internet users and the network infrastructure. This helps to prevent hacking of systems and data and a wide range of malware, viruses etc. This also helps to restrict access to inappropriate web-content.
There is a lot of support available to keep children safe online. Below are some useful links to help parents and carers:
Internet Matters
From age-specific online safety checklists to guides on how to set parental controls on a range of devices.
Net-aware
Support for parents and carers from the NSPCC.
NSPCC
Information for parent and carers for setting up parental controls.
Parent info
Parent info provides support and guidance for parents.
Thinkuknow
Thinkuknow is an education programme from NCA-CEOP, a UK organisation which protects children both online and offline.
Common Sense Media enables parents to review apps, games, movies, books, etc that children may be interested in.