Pensans School is committed to Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. To achieve our commitment, we will ensure continuous development and improvement of robust Safeguarding processes and procedures that promote a culture of Safeguarding amongst our staff and volunteers.
At Pensans Primary School, we have a child-centred approach to safeguarding where our staff consider what is in the best interests of our pupils at all times. We understand that safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility.
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined in ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (DFE, 2023) as:
- protecting children from maltreatment;
- preventing impairment of children’s health or development;
- ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and
- taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.
Child Protection refers to all the specific processes, policies and measures that we have in place to prevent and respond to instances where a child may be suffering, or likely to suffer from harm, as a result of abuse.
We have policies and procedures in place that contribute to our safeguarding commitment, including our Child Protection Policy, which can be viewed, on our policy page.
Sometimes we may need to share information and work in partnership with other agencies when there are concerns about a child’s welfare. We will ensure that our concerns about our pupils are discussed with parents or carers first unless we have reason to believe that such a move would be contrary to the child’s welfare.
At Pensans School, safeguarding is led by:
Niki Ambrose & Sian Miles - Designated Safeguarding Leads
Jo Atkinson - Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead
Online safety
Online Safety is an important part of keeping children safe at Pensans School. Children at Pensans use the internet on a regular basis as part of their learning. In school, we have regular 'online safety' activities to remind children of the importance of keeping themselves safe online.
At home, sometimes children can be given unsupervised access to the Internet. This, potentially, allows them to access all kinds of society (both good and bad) and bring them virtually into their homes.
It’s essential to be realistic – banning the internet or technology will not work and it often makes a child less likely to report a problem.
Education around safe use is essential.
We can only be successful in keeping children safe online if we work with parents to ensure the online safety message is consistent. It is important that parents speak to their children about how they can keep safe and behave appropriately online.
Scroll down or use the menu tabs to find useful links and websites to help to keep you and your children safe online.
CEOP (The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) delivers a multi-agency service dedicated to tackling the abuse and exploitation of children in the real and ‘e’ world. Often it is referred to as an online 999. By clicking on the button, young people and parents can get advice on a range of issues such as viruses, hacking and dealing with bullying online.
Link: Click CEOP - Internet Safety