Safeguarding

SAFEGUARDING STATEMENT

DESIGNATED SAFEGUARDING LEAD: Mr Simon Parker, Headteacher

DEPUTY DESIGNATED SAFEGUARDING LEAD: Michelle Marsland, Deputy Headteacher

Urmston Primary School has its core values of kindness, happiness, respect, responsibility, resilience and pride in all it does and these values apply to its staff and its pupils. However, underpinning this is a commitment to the safeguarding of all its learners, staff and visitors. Safeguarding is a priority with arrangements in place to ensure learners feel, and are safe on school premises and during off site activities.

The learning experiences that our children have, as well their achievements, are paramount to us and safeguarding initiatives are developed to ensure they impact positively upon this. The school ensures that safeguarding legislation and guidance are adhered to and taken into account when developing and revisiting policies, procedures and associated arrangements.

The school provides a safe physical environment for its learners and staff, ensuring that the premises are of a good standard. Health and Safety arrangements are in place to ensure adherence to current legislation and guidance.

Staff at Urmston Primary have strong communication between themselves to ensure that they all remain vigilant. This positive culture primarily includes verbal communication, regular email updates on current safeguarding procedure and legislation, and the use of the secure online facility, CPOMS.

As well as being proud of the pastoral care that we offer our children and families, we work closely with Early Help workers within the local authority - and now the new 'Trafford Team Together' - and they support us in supporting our parents and children in matters of 'early help', instigating dialogue with parents and children and further strengthening our links with our families and other agencies in our community.

Anyone who applies for a position at Urmston Primary will be subject to recruitment and selection procedures designed to emphasise the school’s commitment to the safeguarding of its learners and staff. The procedures include questioning at the interview stage, verification of appropriate qualification, acquiring references, necessary safety checks and then on-going monitoring procedures.

In line with government requirements the school maintains a central list of checks on appointed staff and adults who work in or visit the school. Any volunteer or parent working in the school is subject to full background checks. The school has an agreed Safeguarding Policy.

We follow rigorous policies and procedures to safeguard children and to support this we have members of staff who have undertaken specialist training. This training includes Designated Safeguarding Lead, Mr Parker, DDSL, Michelle Marsland, and our Assistant Heads and all members of SLT have also undergone DSL training.

It is important to clarify that the law places a duty on all Headteachers and their staff to report any obvious signs or suspected cases of child abuse – which include non-accidental injury, neglect, emotional abuse and/or sexual abuse. The procedures are intended to protect children at risk and all schools nationally are expected to take the attitude that where there are grounds for concern it is better to be safe than sorry. This does mean that the school staff risks upsetting some parents/carers by reporting a case which, on investigation, proves unfounded. In such circumstances, it is hoped that parents and carers would accept that the staff acted in what were believed to the child’s best interests of the child. In almost every case where this has happened, families have indeed shown this understanding.

We’ve done assemblies with our children and made our safeguarding procedures very clear to them and advised them that they will always have someone who they can go to in school if they are worried about anything that is happening at home, or indeed at school itself.

Visitors to our school are expected to adhere to our safeguarding procedures and our UPS Safeguarding lanyard sets out these expectations.

Key documents and guidance

Please be aware that whilst policies are continually updated in school, in order to ensure that we are always current with changing legislation our safeguarding policies work in conjunction with any of the updated procedures highlighted by the Trafford Strategic Safeguarding Children's Board.