Safeguarding

Keeping Your Child Safe

Shaftoe Trust Academy is fully committed to safeguarding our children and this is at the forefront of everything we do in school. Safeguarding means keeping your child happy, healthy and safe. All staff receive annual safeguarding training and are aware of how to keep our pupils safe and what signs to look out for. Our pupils are encouraged to share any concerns and we have robust policies and processes in place that underpin what we do. These can be accessed below.

We actively support the Government's Prevent Agenda to counter radicalism and extremism and work closely with statutory and voluntary sectors to ensure we fulfil our safeguarding duties.

We are an Operation Encompass School. Operation Encompass directly connects the police with schools to ensure better outcomes for children who are subject or witness to police-attended incidents of domestic abuse. Find out more here

The School has a Designated Safeguarding Governor.

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Further information regarding the legislation schools follow to keep children safe can be found below:

KSCIE 2023

CHILD PROTECTION

In cases where the school has reason to be concerned that a child may be subject to ill- treatment, neglect or other forms of abuse, the Designated Safeguarding Lead (or deputy) may report this concern to Children’s Services and/or other appropriate agencies. In most cases, any referrals would be discussed with parents first.

Please remember that when the school does refer a concern about a child to the Children’s Services, it is not accusing the parents of abuse but requesting that further investigation takes place to establish whether a child is at risk. We have a duty to act in a certain way if concerns arise.

If you are unable to report concerns to one of the Designated Safeguarding Leads in school (for instance when school is closed) you can ring Northumberland Children’s Services directly for advice and to make a referral:

  • During office hours (8.30am – 5pm Monday to Thursday, 4.30pm on Friday) call Children’s Social Services Initial Contact Point on 01670 536400
  • At all other times, Social Services Emergency Duty Team on 0345 6005252
  • If you have reason to believe that a child is at IMMEDIATE RISK OF HARM, contact the police on 999
  • For all general enquiries, please contact Children’s Specialist Services on 01670 536400

The following links will allow you to make an immediate online referral to Specialist Services in Northumberland:

To report a concern about a child click here

To report a concern about a hate crime, domestic abuse or antisocial behaviour click here

RECRUITMENT

When recruiting staff we carefully check that all staff and volunteers are safe to work with our children. A number of checks are made including DBS checks, references, ID and employment history. We keep a Single Central Record of all this information and this is regularly monitored.

Visitors and volunteers are rigorously checked in much the same way staff are before they can have any unsupervised access to our children. Any contractors on site have to read the Safeguarding Information Leaflet before being signed into the building. All adults in school wear an appropriate ID badge.