Casterton Primary Academy fully recognises its responsibilities for child protection. It aims to ensure that children are effectively safeguarded from the potential risk of harm and that the safety and wellbeing of all children is of the highest priority in all aspects of the Academy’s work. In addition, it aims to maintain an ethos whereby staff, pupils, parents and governors feel able to articulate concerns comfortably, safe in the knowledge that effective action will be taken as appropriate.

This Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy applies to all adults, including volunteers, working in or on behalf of the Academy and it is expected that everyone working in or for our School shares the responsibility to keep children safe from harm and abuse and reports any concerns to a Designated Safeguarding Lead.

The Designated Safeguarding Lead is: Raz Taj

The Deputy Safeguarding Leads are:

Help and Advice for Parents/ Carers

As parents/carers, you want to make sure that your children develop healthily and thrive. We're here to help you with advice on how you can build strong relationships with your children and keep them safe. Here is advice and resources for helping parents to keep their children safe, advice for parents on keeping children safe out of school, at home and online, when using the internet, social networking websites and playing online games, help and advice for creating a safe and nurturing environment for your children.

For guidance, further details can be found on the Padlet at the bottom of the page

Ways to Contact the NSPCC

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is a charity campaigning and working in child protection in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands.
Telephone: 0808 800 5000
Text: 88858
Email: help@nspcc.org.uk

Online Safety

Online safety is an important part of keeping children safe at Casterton Primary Academy. We have a full page dedicated to all aspects of Online Safety, please click here to visit the Online Safety page.

If you would like to read our Online Safety and Social Media policies, please click here: Policies Page

Prevent Strategy

As part of Casterton Primary Academy’s commitment to safeguarding and child protection we support the government’s Prevent Strategy, and take guidance from Teaching Approaches to help to build resilience to extremism. A Parent Pamphlet is available below.

What is the Prevent Strategy?

The Prevent strategy is a government strategy designed to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorist or extremist causes.

Many of the things we already do in school to help children become positive, happy members of society also contribute to the Prevent strategy.

These include:

• Exploring other cultures and religions and promoting diversity

• Promoting the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils, as well as British values such as democracy
• Developing critical thinking skills and a strong, positive self-identity
• Challenging prejudices and racist comments
• We will also protect children from the risk of radicalisation, for example by using filters on the Internet to make sure they can’t access extremist and terrorist material, or by vetting visitors who come into school to work with pupils.

At Casterton Primary Academy, we build pupils’ resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British values.

The statutory guidance refers to the importance of Prevent awareness training to equip staff to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and to challenge extremist ideas. At our school all teaching and support staff have completed training.

• Prevent Strategy - Parent Leaflet
• Prevent Duty Risk Assessment 24-25

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Operation Encompass

Operation Encompass is a unique Police and Education early intervention safeguarding partnership which ensures that a child's school is informed, prior to the start of the next school day, that there has been an incident of Domestic Abuse to which the child or young person has been exposed, and which might then have an impact on them in school the following day.

Each school is informed of all Domestic Abuse incidents, not just those where an offence can be identified or those which are graded as high risk. The partnership recognises that all incidents of Domestic Abuse can be harmful to children and young people.

This information will be shared throughout the year, including school holidays and the weekends. Information will only be shared with the school by the police where it is identified that a young person was present, witnessed or was involved in a domestic abuse incident.

A nominated member of staff, known as a Key Adult, has been trained to liaise with the police. At Casterton Primary Academy our Key Adult is Mr Whaling. They will be able to use information that has been shared with them, in confidence, to ensure that the school makes provision for possible difficulties experienced by children or their families. The Key Adults will keep this information confidential, and will only share it on a need to know basis, for instance, to teaching staff for the child or young person. It will not be shared with other school students.

Operation Encompass was first introduced in Plymouth in February 2011, and has proved very effective in providing appropriate and timely support to young people affected by domestic abuse. This initiative has been implemented across the whole of the Lancashire Police area.  If you would like some more information about it, you can view it online at www.operationencompass.org.

We are keen to offer the best support possible for our pupils and a recent review of Operation Encompass showed that it is beneficial and supportive for all those involved.

• Casterton Safeguarding and CP Policy 2024-2025
• Social Media Policy - 24-25.pdf
• Online Safety Policy 2023-2024