Castle Hill Safeguarding Children at Castle Hill
What is safeguarding?
It might be difficult to accept, but every child can be hurt, put at risk of harm or abused, regardless of their age, gender, religion or ethnicity.
Safeguarding legislation and government guidance says that safeguarding means:
- protecting children from maltreatment
- preventing impairment of children’s health or development
- ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care.
- taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcome
and stresses that:
'Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and their families and carers has a role to play in safeguarding children. In order to fulfil this responsibility effectively, all professionals should make sure their approach is child-centred. This means that they should consider, at all times, what is in the best interests of the child.'
Keeping Children Safe in Educations (DfE Sept 2021)
Safeguarding children is the responsibility of everyone
At Castle Hill, all members of staff have a responsibility to create and maintain a safe learning environment for all our young people. We have a responsibility to identify where there are child welfare concerns and take action to address them in partnership with other organisations.
Our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) is Miss N. Brady and in her absence Mrs P. Johnston (Deputy DSL) or Miss D. McGuinness (Safeguarding Officer). The member of our Governing Body with responsibility for Safeguarding is Mrs C. Warke.
If we are concerned that a child may be at risk from significant harm or is being abused school is required to refer their concerns onto Social Care and the police if necessary. In some circumstances this may happen without the consent or knowledge of parents/carers.
School also has a responsibility to act upon other concerns that they may have about a child’s welfare in circumstances where there are no suspicions of child abuse. Examples of this may be when a child is demonstrating inappropriate behaviour, is involved in bullying, is failing to come to school or where difficulties at home are having an effect upon the child’s well being. However this list is by no means exhaustive.
In Stockport there is an expectation that school will always discuss these issues with parents/carers before deciding upon a course of action to support the child.
We have a Safeguarding Policy which explains all the above in much more detail. This policy can be viewed here:
We've also produced a student-friendly version of this policy:
Safeguarding Policy - student version
The Department for Education's document, Keeping Children Safe in Education, can be viewed here:
Keeping Children Safe in Education, September 2022
Prevent Duty
Protecting children from the risk of radicalisation is part of our wider safeguarding duties.
As such we have created a Prevent Duty Policy in order to ensure that all staff are alert to changes in children’s behaviour which could indicate that they may be in need of help or protection, as well as to actively assess the risk of children being drawn into terrorism.
Castle Hill High School expects all staff to use their professional judgement to identify children who may be at risk of radicalisation and act accordingly, alongside the Local Children’s Safeguarding Board (LCSB) if necessary.
The policy can be viewed here:
Our Designated Prevent Duty lead is Miss N. Brady
Operation Encompass
Our school is part of Operation Encompass. This is a police and education early intervention safeguarding partnership which supports children and young people who experience Domestic Abuse.
Operation Encompass means that the police will share information about Domestic Abuse incidents with our school PRIOR to the start of the next school day when they have been called to a domestic incident.
Once a Key Adult (DSL) has attended at an Operation Encompass briefing they will cascade the principles of Operation Encompass to all DDSL’s.
Our parents are fully aware that we are an Operation Encompass school.
The Operation Encompass information is stored in line with all other confidential safeguarding and child protection information.
The Key Adult has also led training for all school staff and Governors about Operation Encompass, the prevalence of Domestic Abuse and the impact of this abuse on children. We have also discussed how we can support our children following the Operation Encompass notification.
We are aware that we must do nothing that puts the child/ren or the non-abusing adult at risk.
The Safeguarding Governor will report on Operation Encompass in the termly report to Governors. All information is anonymised for these reports.
The Key Adult has used the Operation Encompass Toolkit to ensure that all appropriate actions have been taken by the school.
Our Key Adults are:
Miss N. Brady (DSL)
Miss D. McGuinness
Mrs P. Johnston
More information about Operation Encompass can be found by clicking on this link: Operation Encompass
