No child can learn to their potential without feeling safe and secure, valued, heard and trusted. At Falmouth School, we strive to meet these needs so that our students can learn to the very best of their ability. Our Designated Safeguarding Lead is Mrs. Joanne Guest. A photo of Mrs. Guest and the rest of our safeguarding team can be found at the bottom of this page.
The term Safeguarding refers to students’ physical and mental health; their well-being at home and in school, and their safety on line. Safeguarding covers all aspects of life in school: it includes health and safety on the school premises, and there are risk assessments in place for this. This includes both lessons and school trips.
We have a strict visitor policy and signing in procedures for anyone who needs to be on the school premises; this includes sharing our Tier 1 Safeguarding leaflet, which can be found at the bottom of this page.
All staff working in school are subject to an enhanced DBS certificate, if working alone with students. All other adults are accompanied while on school premises and all visitors are identifiable to staff and students. Further information can be found in our visitor’s leaflet which, again, can be found at the bottom of this page.
Child protection is just one part of the Safeguarding tasks in school. This is the responsibility of all staff through clear monitoring and reporting procedures. The safeguarding team includes Joanne Guest, Rachel Holland, Lauren Miller, Madeleine Macrae and James Worthington who meet regularly to discuss this aspect of the school’s work. Many of the school’s Leadership Team and Pastoral Team are also trained to Child Protection Tier 3.
Working in partnership with parents and others in the community is imperative to making Safeguarding possible. Like all partnerships, sometimes we have to challenge each other. We take parental contact very seriously and will share information appropriately with parents to help affect positive change for the young people in our care.
In some cases, we may need to tell you that we have identified a concern which means that we need to seek support for your family from an outside agency, such as the Early Help Hub team, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Team or Social Care. Whilst this sometimes can initially worry a family, we will always work with you to implement a plan of support for everyone involved, that leads to a positive resolution to the problem. We encourage all adults to take responsibility for children’s safety in our communities and to report concerns to the school and to the MARU (Multi Agency Referral Unit) on 0300 123 1116. This number can also be used to seek advice and guidance.
Students are also taught explicitly about various health and child protection risks and ways to keep themselves safe through the PSHE programmes and in lessons themselves. This includes the teaching of explicit British values such as tolerance of difference and the rule of democracy. An environment which supports and applies these values is much more likely to meet students’ social and emotional needs. (British Values statement).
Safeguarding has its own separate policy (found in our policies section) and staff are trained and undated in behaviours to increase outstanding safeguarding procedures yearly and when there is a significant update.
If you have any comments about Safeguarding at Falmouth School you can contact Mrs Jo Guest on 01326 372386 or email jguest@falmouthschool.net.
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