Safeguarding and Child Protection

People sometimes wonder what the difference is between the terms safeguarding and child protection. 'Safeguarding' means the policies and practices that schools and Governing Bodies employ to keep children safe and promote their well-being. This means everything from security of the buildings, to the safe recruitment of staff and everything in between.  This diagram sets out what Safeguarding means in schools:

As you can see, Child Protection is one aspect of Safeguarding.  Child Protection is a term used to describe the activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.

The school have designated Mr Read and Mrs Parsonage as the Designated Safeguarding Leads. They have received training and updates from the Local Authority to allow them to use the information that has been shared, in confidence to make sure that the right support is available for children and their families, who have been involved in or witnessed a domestic violence incident. They are bound by strict procedures and confidentiality in how they deal with such matters.

Our school takes part in a jointly run operation between Norfolk County Council, Norfolk Police and our school, called Operation Encompass. Encompass has been set-up to help schools to provide support to children who have been present at incidents of domestic violence. We know that children can be significantly physically or emotionally harmed when they are involved in, present or witness to domestic violence.

The school will receive a confidential phone call from the Encompass team at CADS before 9:00am on the first school morning after any domestic incident where a child at their school has been involved in, present or witness to domestic violence.

If you have any concerns or questions then please contact one of the above DSLs and we will be happy to discuss this further.