What is safeguarding and child protection?

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. Child Protection is part of Safeguarding and promoting welfare. It refers to the activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering, or are likely to suffer, significant harm.

Through our curriculum we teach children to stay safe and happy. We encourage the understanding that any problem or worry that they may have is important, and to share their worries, big or small with a trusted adult; at home or at school. More information can be found under the PSHE curriculum website page. The NSPCC website also has more information and resources.

Kingswood Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We believe that children have a right to learn in a supportive, caring and safe environment, which includes the right to protection from all types of abuse, where staff are vigilant for signs of any child in distress and are confident about applying the processes to avert and alleviate any such problems. This means that we have a Safeguarding Policy and procedures in place. All staff receive training and regular updates and are aware of these procedures. There is a link to the policy at the bottom of this page.

At times 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 our pupils are discussed with his/her parents/carers first unless we have reason to believe that such a move would be contrary to the child’s welfare.

Our Designated Safeguarding Lead teacher is:

Mrs Julia Waterson

Our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead teachers are:

Mrs Samantha James

Mr Richard John

Mrs Gemma Sansum

Our Safeguarding Governor is:

Mr Tim Samuel

Key documents that schools refer to with regard to safeguarding include:

Prevent Duty

Protecting children from the risk of radicalisation is seen as part of schools’ wider safeguarding duties, and is similar in nature to protecting children from other forms of harm and abuse.

All schools have a duty to prevent radicalisation and extremism and staff have had training on this.

At Kingswood we will actively challenge pupils, staff or parents expressing opinions contrary to fundamental British Values, including ‘extremist’ views. More information can be found about British Values in the curriculum section of the website.

From 1 July 2015, schools have been subject to a duty under section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. This duty is known as the Prevent duty.

Please see the leaflet on Prevent via the following link: