Keeping Children Safe is Everyone’s Responsibility

Our school community has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are our pupils.  This means that we have Safeguarding and Child Protection policies and procedures in place, which we refer to in our prospectus.  All staff, including our volunteers and supply staff, must ensure that they are aware of our procedures. 

Sometimes we may need to share information and work in partnership with other agencies when there are concerns about a child’s welfare.  We will always ensure that our concerns about our pupils are discussed with their parents/carers first unless we have reason to believe that this is not in the child’s best interests or a child is at significant risk or in immediate danger.

Our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) is: Miss Teresa Porter 

Our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead is:  Mrs Karen Duke

The Head of School – Mrs Kate Lee – should be contacted in her absence

or Mr Stewart Biddles (CEO).

If you have a safeguarding concern about an adult in school, please contact the Head of School.  If you have a safeguarding concern about the Head of School, please contact Elizabeth Guppy (Chair of Governors).  Contact details - shiphaychair@rivieraet.co.uk or through the RET Trust website https://www.rivieratrust.co.uk/shiphay-local-standards-board/

If you have concerns about any child, you can contact Children’s Services Social Care direct on:

01803 208100 or out of hours: 0300 456 4876

Please email:  clerk@rivieraet.co.uk   if you would like to request any of the policies in a different format.

New Childline website now live

Childline is the UK’s free 24-hour service for children and young people. Run by the NSPCC, Childline gives children and young people up to the age of 19 confidential support with whatever is worrying them.

Since the service began in 1986, it has carried out over 5.9 million counselling sessions with young people.

Childline supports more than 200,00 children and young people each year.  

Find out about Childline’s unique offer on NSPCC Learning.

Information sharing between agencies supporting young people

A lot of work has been done within the Local Authority since September 2014 to develop cooperation between various agencies working to support children and young people in the Bay. Schools are now supported by the Torbay Education Safeguarding Service (TESS). Working closely with Social Care and other partners such as the police and health, this support is helping us to ensure we can support our pupils when there are additional needs, and ultimately improve outcomes for them. In that context, TESS have provided the following paragraph to let you know of the main aspects of information shared

Information from the Police and Social care

“Torbay Education Safeguarding Service (TESS) is a social work led service working in partnership with schools and social care to promote the welfare of children and young people, and to ensure they are safe from harm.

As part of their work they will receive information from partner agencies, such as the police and social care. The police send a daily Child at Risk Alert (CARA). This is generated if there has been an incident when the police are called to any household where a child is resident. It may be that the incident relates to only of one your children, however, it is likely that any police involvement with one member of the household may affect all of the siblings.

There may be occasions when you have not consented to the sharing of the information. For minor incidents, if you withhold consent to share information TESS will not receive an alert. However, incidents graded medium or high are shared with schools as these are deemed potential child protection matters. This principle is similar to that employed by the police for Operation Encompass, an initiative managed by the police and nothing to do with TESS.

In addition the police send all missing and found notifications. These are forwarded to all schools for information.

If information is shared, this will be in accordance with the key principles of the Data Protection Laws on a need to know basis, and will only occur to help schools protect and promote the welfare of your son or daughter. When there is any sharing of information, schools should discuss this with you to enable a partnership approach to meeting the needs of your son or daughter.

If you have any questions about the service please ask your school, or telephone Sarah James, TESS Team Manager: 07525 815441"

January 2020