Our Designated Safeguarding Leads are:
DSL
Mrs Sarah Brooks
Deputy Headteacher
Deputy DSL
Mrs Christine Murray
Headteacher
Deputy DSL
Mrs Simone Bond
Family Support Worker
Our Safeguarding Governor is: Mrs Karen Walker
Safeguarding
At St Kentigern’s Catholic Primary School, we hold the safety and happiness of our children at the heart of all that we do. All staff recognise their moral and statutory responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of all of our pupils. We endeavour to provide a safe and welcoming environment where children are respected and valued. Through pastoral care, we are concerned with promoting the moral, social, physical and emotional well-being of all pupils, in order for them to reach their full potential.
We believe that all children have the same rights and same value regardless of age, race, culture, gender, disability or social/economic background. We are alert to the signs of abuse and neglect and follow our procedures to ensure that children receive effective support, protection and justice.
Our school aims to ensure that:
- Appropriate action is taken in a timely manner to safeguard and promote children’s welfare;
- All staff are aware of their statutory responsibilities with respect to safeguarding;
- Staff are properly trained in recognising and reporting safeguarding issues.
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children means:
- Protecting children from maltreatment;
- Preventing impairment of children’s health or development;
- Ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care;
- Taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.
In order to ensure we are doing this to the best of our ability, we follow the DfE safeguarding documents:
- Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018
- Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022
- The Prevent Duty 2015
We also ensure that procedures followed are in line with legislation and are consistent with those of Blackpool Safeguarding Children Board (BSCB). All staff receive annual Child Protection and Safeguarding Update training and are aware of the procedures for passing on concerns within school.
Early Help
The Early Help Assessment is an intervention with a family to gather, explore and analyse with them information about all aspects of the child or young person (and their family’s) life and then to identify areas where change will support needs and positively impact on their lived experiences.
Early Help Assessments are available to all practitioners and professionals working with children, young people and their families across Blackpool. Working alongside families from a holistic, strength-based approach when areas of support are first identified will stop escalation towards crisis and the need for more intensive and specialist intervention.
The aim is to provide families with the right support at the right time.
You can find out more about Early Help here: Blackpool local offer | Early help
Online Safety
At St Kentigern’s, we believe that children should be educated to make the right choices online and become responsible users of technology. For this reason, although we restrict their access to inappropriate material through filters appropriate for primary schools, we encourage them to use the internet and explore its content. We teach our children how to keep safe online through our Computing curriculum to ensure all children know how to stay safe when using the internet.
Resources for parents
We work in partnership with parents, providing opportunities to attend workshops, focusing on key aspects of online safety.
Online safety information can be found on the CEOP Education and PARENT ZONE websites. These sites are freely available services launched by CEOP and Parent Zone which provide the most up-to-date content aimed at parents. The content is written by leading experts in their fields and covers a wide and varied range of online safety subjects:
Please find below the Online Safety information sent out to parents via Class Dojo, covering a variety of topics that schools, parents and carers should be aware of.
Online safety advice for parents
Safeguarding policies
We have a number of policies and procedures in place that contribute to our safeguarding commitment; these are listed below:
Safeguarding