Safeguarding at St Mary's Catholic Primary School
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Safeguarding at St Mary's Catholic Primary School
If you have a safeguarding concern, please speak to one of the safeguarding team.
Mrs Louise Brown, Designated Safeguarding Lead: lbrown@st-marys.swindon.sch.uk
Mrs Rachael Weaver, Deputy Safeguarding Lead: rweaver@st-marys.swindon.sch.uk
Mrs Sam Corbett, Deputy Safeguarding Lead: scorbett@st-marys.swindon.sch.uk
If you need to speak or contact the safeguarding governor, please email: safeguarding@st-marys.swindon.sch.uk
Safeguarding at St Mary's Catholic Primary School
The NSPCC describes safeguarding as the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. It is a top priority at St Mary's Catholic Primary 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 focuses on protecting individual children identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.
Safeguarding children and child protection guidance and legislation applies to all children up to the age of 18.
Key People
Our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) is Mrs Brown, Headteacher.
Our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads (DDSL) are Mrs Weaver and Mrs Corbett.
The named governor responsible for safeguarding is Suzanne Tewkesbury.
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 St Mary's staff team
- a member of the NSPCC safeguarding helpline on 0808 800 5000
- a member of Swindon's Family Contact Point on 01793 466903
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 and shared with other safeguarding professionals as necessary. Written records will be transferred to the children's new schools when they leave St Mary's. Copies will not be kept on site.
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What 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 supports St Mary's with annual external reviews of safeguarding, termly safeguarding briefings and ongoing advice.
Training
- All members of staff receive at least Level 1 safeguarding training annually.
- Every member of staff is expected to read and understand Part 1 of Keeping Children Safe in Education
- All members of staff are expected to undertake online Prevent Duty training
- All members of staff are expected to read and follow Safer Working Practice guidance
- The safeguarding team (Mrs Brown, Mrs Weaver, Mrs Cull and Mrs Corbett) have Level 3 training
- Mrs Brown and Mrs Weaver have attended Safer Recruitment training
- In staff meetings, we regularly review safeguarding scenarios and share termly safeguarding updates from Swindon Safeguarding Partnership, Swindon Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub and Sarah Turner Consulting.
Domestic Violence
Wiltshire Police will report to schools when a child or young person has been affected by a domestic incident.
This will ensure that a member of the school staff, known as a Key Adult, will be shared the information in confidence, while ensuring that the school is able to make provision for possible difficulties experienced by children, or their families, who have been involved in, affected or exposed to a domestic abuse incident.
We are keen to offer the best support possible to all our children and we believe this will be extremely beneficial for all those involved.
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Wider Safeguarding Areas at St Mary's
First Aid and Medicines
Please click this link to read our policy on Supporting Children with Medical Conditions.
We have a dedicated team of First Aiders here at St Mary's who receive paediatric first aid training regularly. Miss Clarke is the key contact for first aid and medicines. We also work closely with the school nursing team.
Health and Safety
Senior staff and governors work hard to keep our premises safe and secure. We undertake fire drills regularly and we also have an emergency plan. All trips that the children attend are properly risk assessed and governors carry out regular safety walks of the premises. When on site, all visitors are expected to sign in and out and must wear a St Mary's identification badge.
Safer Recruitment
We expect all staff and volunteers to share our commitment to safeguarding. All staff and volunteers are expected to undertake an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. We also carry out identity, professional qualification and disqualification by association checks before any person undertakes any role within our school.
E-Safety
In 2017, we were re-accredited with the South West Grid for Learning 360 Degrees E-safety Accreditation. 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. For further information please click this link to see our page dedicated to E-Safety
Links for Parents
Information Sharing
Please click HERE to find more details about the information we collect on children and adults and how this is shared in school and with other parties.