Safeguarding
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility
This means that everyone who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play to ensure that all children are safe and protected from harm.
No single member of staff can have a full picture of a child’s needs and circumstances but everyone who comes into contact with a child has a role to play in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action.
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purposes of this guidance as:
• protecting children from maltreatment
• 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, and
• taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes
Although every member of staff and volunteers has a responsibility for safeguarding, the Foundation Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) take lead responsibility for safeguarding and child protection concerns within each of our schools. We have a number of Deputy DSLs (DDSL) at each school which together forms a Safeguarding and Pastoral team. Each team meet at least fortnightly to discuss any safeguarding issues or concerns. The DSLs from across the Foundation meet once a month to share knowledge, training and resources.
The DSL/DDSL undergoes training with Warwickshire Safeguarding to provide them with the knowledge and skills required to carry out the role and have an awareness of local and contextual safeguarding knowledge. This training is updated every two years.
Throughout each academic year, DSLs receive continuous safeguarding updates/briefings/training sessions on a variety of themes to raise staff awareness, for example, PREVENT, Radicalisation and Extremism, Child Exploitation, Child on Child abuse, FGM, ‘Honor’ Based abuse, domestic abuse, self harm and prevention of online harm.
Alongside DSLs we have Pastoral Managers and Mental Health Leads that support children and lead on school mental health and wellbeing.
There are regular meetings with DSLs, Director of Safeguarding, Heads, Principal and the Designated Safeguarding Governors at which updates to policies and practice are presented and scrutinised.