Safeguarding

The purpose of Dersingham VA Primary & Nursery's safeguarding policy is to ensure every child who is a registered pupil at our school is safe and protected from harm. This means we will always work to:

Protect children and young people at our school from maltreatment;
Prevent impairment of our children’s and young people’s health or development;
Ensure that children and young people at our school grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care;
Undertake that role so as to enable children and young people at our school to have the best outcomes.

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and their families and carers has a role to play in safeguarding children. In order to fulfil this responsibility effectively, all professionals should make sure their approach is child-centred. This means that they should consider, at all times, what is in the best interests of the child.

Safeguarding Team

If you have any concerns relating to Safeguarding around a child or member of staff attending Dersingham Primary & Nursery School. Please make sure you speak to one of the following people as soon as possible:

Mrs Warren: DSL Lead e-mail: head@dersingham.norfolk.sch.uk

Mrs Howe: DSL e-mail: fsw@dersingham.norfolk.sch.uk

Mrs Kendal: DSL e-mail: eylead@dersingham.norfolk.sch.uk

Mrs Picton: DSL email: wellbeing@dersingham.norfolk.sch.uk

Mr Hughes: Safeguarding Governor

Mr Brown: Chair of Governors e-mail: chair@dersingham.norfolk.sch.uk

The Norfolk Threshold Guide

This Norfolk Threshold Guide sets out the approach to keeping children in Norfolk safe and protected from harm. The Guide is intended to help professionals embed into their practice the Signs of Safety philosophy, and is designed to ensure that across the continuum of need professionals consider that the right help is given to the right children at the right time and for the right duration. Protecting children involves professionals in the difficult task of analysing complex information about human behaviour and risk. It is rarely straightforward: it involves consideration about past and potential harm and family deficiencies, but it is also important to recognise that to balance the picture, it is vital to obtain information regarding any past, existing, and potential

safety and strengths. This balance of information regarding family functioning allows the worker(s) to achieve a comprehensive assessment which applies just as much when issues are first emerging as when an incident of significant harm is identified. The Norfolk Threshold Guide is designed to encourage early discussion and dialogue when we have emerging worries about children, and to acknowledge that all professionals will need a framework to help them recognise risk and agree an appropriate response.

The Norfolk Threshold Guide

Norfolk Continuum of Needs Guidance

A Child Centred Framework for Making Decisions Ensuring that children & young people receive the right services at the right time and for the right duration.

This Norfolk Continuum of Needs Guidance sets out our approach to keeping children in Norfolk safe and protected from harm. This guidance replaces the previous Threshold Guide and is designed to ensure that across the continuum of need professionals consider that the right help is given to the right children at the right time and for the right duration.

https://norfolklscp.org.uk/media/5mnkbmmd/continuum-of-needs-guidance_web_accessible.pdf

This document incorporates recent changes made around how our services are organised. Nationally and locally we are still trying to make sense of world events and ensuring that children’s safety and wellbeing remains a social imperative. This iteration of guidance has been designed to continue to improve the conversations we have when we are concerned about children and ensure that professionals know the best support route so that the issues children and families are facing can be managed as early as possible.

More information can be found: https://norfolklscp.org.uk/people-working-with-children/norfolk-continuum-of-needs-guidance

Operation Encompass

At Dersingham VA Primary & Nursery School we are working in partnership with Norfolk Constabulary and Norfolk Children’s Services to identify and provide appropriate support to pupils who have experienced domestic violence in their household; this scheme is called Operation Encompass. In order to achieve this, Norfolk Children’s Advice and Duty Service will share police information of all domestic incidents where one of our pupils has been present with the Designated Safeguarding Lead(s). On receipt of any information, the Designated Safeguarding Lead will decide on the appropriate support the child requires, this could be silent or overt. All information sharing and resulting actions will be undertaken in accordance with the ‘Norfolk Joint Agency Protocol for Domestic Abuse – Notifications to Schools’. We will record this information and store this information in accordance with the record keeping procedures outlined in this policy.

If you have any questions please contact the school for further information.