St Bernard’s RC 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 believe all staff and visitors have an important and unique role to play in child protection. For this reason, staff safeguarding training or update sessions take place at the start of every academic year.

At St Bernard’s we believe:

• Schools can contribute to the prevention of abuse
• All children have the right to be protected from harm
• Children need to be safe and feel safe in school

Designated Child Protection Officers at St Bernard’s

The Lead Designated Child Protection Officer (DCPO) is Mrs Thomson, Key Stage Lead.  The Deputy DCPO is Mrs Julie Le Feuvre, Head of School.  

We also have a Designated Safeguarding Governor - Mr Chris Hotchkiss.  All the named Safeguarding Officers have undertaken the relevant training.

All Child Protection information will be dealt with in a confidential manner.

Safeguarding Policies

General information about safeguarding related policies and practices within our school can be found in the School Information section of the website or by using the link below.

Guidance and advice about how to keep your child safe online can be found in the Online Safety page under ‘Curriculum’.

Operation Encompass

Our school participates in a Police-led initiative called Operation Encompass, a scheme which will ensure that we can better support any child where a domestic incident has been reported to Police from their home.

Following a domestic incident, the Police will make contact with the school via telephone and communicate relevant information to nominated, fully-trained school staff. This will ensure that we are made aware early enough to support children and young people in a way that means they feel safe, supported and listen to.

Each school has a member of staff called a key adult who is trained to liaise with the police, when required, whilst ensuring support is available to the child. The initiative has already been trialled in a number of schools across the local authority areas of Halton, Warrington, Cheshire West & Chester and Cheshire East with success.

You can find out more about Operation Encompass via the following site:

 http://www.operationencompass.org/

want to know more about keeping your child safe?

If you want to know more about keeping children safe from sexual abuse, there is a Home Office supported website providing information and advice called Parents Protect.

what is Parents protect?

The website...

.....is an information and resources website which aims to raise awareness about child sexual abuse, answer questions and give adults the information, advice, support and facts, they need to help protect children.

Their Aim…

...is to help parents and carers better protect children from sexual abuse. Our most important task is to prevent sexual abuse from taking place in the first place. We believe we can do this by:

• Helping to dispel some of the common myths around child sexual abuse
• Giving parents and carers practical information that will help them keep youngsters safe from harm.

We understand that child sexual abuse is something we’d rather not think and talk about – but we believe the best way of protecting children is for adults to do just that! By not being afraid to talk about the issues, we become much better able to understand the steps we can take to keep our children as safe as possible.

Prevent

All staff at St Bernard's regularly update their training around the government's Prevent Strategy. This strategy aims to safeguard vulnerable people from being radicalised to supporting terrorism or becoming terrorists themselves.

Coronavirus

In the event of a lockdown or partial school closure, St Bernard's will ensure that all children classed as vulnerable will be offered a place in school. The school's safeguarding team will work closely with outside agencies to facilitate this and ensure all families and children are supported. Further information is included in the updated policy below.