Safeguarding
Furness Vale Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We are fully committed to ensuring that consistent, effective safeguarding procedures are in place to support families, children and staff at school.
We follow the procedures set out by the Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Board in the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Procedures (www.derbyshirescb.org.uk) and take account of guidance issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (in particular Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education). We make updates to our Safeguarding protocols following most recent guidance (June 2016) and work closely with the PEGS schools to update all relevant policies, improve practice and share latest developments. We also undertake a yearly Safeguarding Audit (Head teacher and Governor Safeguarding lead) and form an Action Plan to address any outstanding areas of need.
If you want to know more about our procedures, please speak to Mrs. Parry (Designated Lead Personnel for Safeguarding) or Mrs. Guy (Deputy Designated Lead Personnel for Safeguarding).
All our staff (including governors) have undertaken up-to-date training in Safeguarding and are familiar with the most recent guidance for professionals (KCSIE 2022). All those who work with the children (including our governors) have to be cleared through DBS and need to declare their suitability to work with children. These details are kept on a Single Central Record, which is constantly updated, and checked termly by our Safeguarding governor (Mrs. Lorna Forshaw).
Prevent
Under the Counter Terrorism and Security Act all front line staff also require an understanding of PREVENT.
PREVENT covers risk and threat, vulnerability, susceptibility, safeguarding and the process of radicalisation. We are currently in the process of making sure all staff and governors have had Prevent training.
Safeguarding at Furness Vale Primary and Nursery School
We have a comprehensive, and ever improving approach, to ensure all our children are safe at our school. These include some of the following initiatives:
- Completing on-line safety units of work with the children
- Updating our web filtering
- Questionnaires and discussions with the children in class and assemblies about their thoughts regarding their safety
- Helping children to both recognise and resolve conflicts themselves
- Promote physical health and well-being
- Assemblies led by significant personnel (PCSO, RNLI Safety, Safety around dogs, etc.)
- Visits from Fire Safety team and New Mills Leisure Centre Water Safety Team
- Meeting children and parents before and after school
- Improving security / access to and from school
- Ensuring children are secure in being able to discuss any worries with us, by promoting a nurturing relationship based on trust
- Weekly assembly themes incorporate British Values
Cause for Concern
Our first priority is of course your child’s welfare and school is required to take any reasonable action to ensure the safety of its pupils. However, there may be occasions when we have reason to be concerned that a child may be subject to ill-treatment, neglect or other forms of abuse. We will ensure that our concerns about a child 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. In this case school is obliged to follow the Child Protection procedures established by the Derbyshire Area Safeguarding Committee and inform the Social Services of the concern.
If you are worried about a child’s safety please do not hesitate to contact Mrs. Parry or Mrs. Guy, or contact Call Derbyshire 01629 533190, straight away.
Staying Safe Online
We are pro-active in teaching children the skills they need to be safe online. Online safety training has completed in May 2017 to give us an even better awareness of how to tackle important issues. A brand new site for PARENTS – designed to help children and young people stay safe online can be found on PARENTINFO. The NSPCC site is really helpful. There is an excellent section (Net aware) which details the most popular social media sites and games children might access and explains the potential risks involved with allowing children access.
The school completes an ON-LINE SAFETY audit (360) each year.
If you are concerned about any on-line abuse please report following the button below.
