Safeguarding

Safeguarding means keeping your child safe, healthy and happy in school.

St Bede’s is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects everyone involved with the school to share this commitment. Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility. Staff are expected to be vigilant and curious about the children in their care; they are aware of how to keep our children safe and what signs to look out for.

Three members of our senior team make up the designated safeguarding leaders (DSL) team. We have a range of responsibilities attached to these roles including (but not limited to):

• Creating and maintaining the best culture of safeguarding
• Continually raising awareness of safeguarding with staff, pupils, governors and families
• Implementing a strategic training plan for staff, pupils, governors and parents
• Working with a range of other agencies
• Protecting children from abuse and maltreatment
• Preventing harm to children’s health or development
• Taking decisive action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes.

We carefully check that all staff and volunteers are safe to work with our children. All necessary checks are made including DBS checks, references, ID and employment history. We keep a single central record of all this information and this is regularly monitored. Visitors and volunteers are rigorously checked in much the same way staff are before they can have any unsupervised access to our children. Any contractors on site have to read a safety briefing before being signed into the building.

If you have any concerns at all and wish to talk to someone, please come into school to talk to any of our Designated Safeguarding Leads listed below or telephone them on 01670 822 389 or via email admin@stbedesbedlington.org

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We actively promote and monitor e-safety.  All pupils, staff and visitors to school must read and sign our Acceptable Use Policy before any access to our systems is allowed. All usage is monitored by specialist software (Senso) and this is backed up by a robust firewall and web filtering. Pupils are taught how to stay safe online and this is regularly reinforced in computing lessons and what to do or who they can talk to if they are worried.

E-Safety resources for parents

Operation Encompass
We are an Operation Encompass school. Operation Encompass operates in all police forces across England. It helps police and schools work together to provide emotional and practical help to children. The system ensures that when police are called to an incident of domestic abuse, where there are children in the household who have experienced the domestic incident, the police should inform the key adult (usually the designated safeguarding lead) in school before the child or children arrive at school the following day. This ensures that the school has up to date relevant information about the child’s circumstances and can enable immediate support to be put in place, according to the child’s needs.

Attendance
Please support us by ensuring that your child attends school regularly – this is a parents’ legal responsibility. Failing to attend school on a regular basis will be considered as a safeguarding matter. Any absence affects the pattern of a child’s learning and regular absence will seriously affect it.

Absences are reported as follows:
1. Call the office on 01670 822 389 and leave a message
2. Email admin@stbedesbedlington.org
3. Send a message via text or in app from your Arbor App

We expect all absence from school to be reported as soon as possible and at the latest by 9am on the morning of absence. If we do not hear from parents or carers, we will systematically go through each of the contacts we hold for the child until we are able to speak with someone.  If we are unable to speak with anyone, the absence will be recorded as unauthorised and this will be followed up with a letter and reminder of our correct reporting procedures.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of attendance or any concerns you may have contact the Headteacher.