Safeguarding is a term which is broader than ‘child protection’ and relates to the action taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. It includes action against bullying, including cyberbullying and online safety, treating all children equally regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality or beliefs, preventing impairment of health and development, ensuring that all children are effectively cared for, and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.
Child protection relates to system-wide procedures for keeping children safe. This includes staff training and awareness, liaison with other agencies (e.g. Multi-Agency Team, Social Care, the police), safer recruitment (including rigorous vetting and background checks on appointed staff), and protecting children from issues such as domestic violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, children missing from education, child sexual exploitation, racism, extremism and so on.
Specifically, child protection focuses mainly on four categories of abuse: physical, sexual, emotional and neglect. Neglect, physical and sexual abuse will also include emotional abuse, but this can be a category on its own. For definitions, see our Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy.
All staff and governors are trained in Child Protection and Safeguarding, and this is updated regularly. Some senior staff are trained to a higher level; the key roles in the school are:
Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL): Karen O’Farrell (Safeguarding & wellbeing Manager)
Deputy DSLs: Emma Wilkinson (Head of school), Emily Gulliver (Deputy Head) and Kate Fernie (Business Manager)
In their absence, the following staff are also trained to this level:
Joanne Barnett (SENCo)
The Lead Governor for Safeguarding is Mrs Carla Dewberry and The Chair of Governors is Mr Andrew Ward
Local Child Protection and Safeguarding procedures and all contact information, including making an online referral, can be found: Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children's Partnership. During a school closure period, or weekend, any safeguarding concerns need to continue to be reported to Safeguarding@portwayj.derby.sch.uk. The government has published a detailed document about keeping children safe which gives information about a wide range of safeguarding topics related to children. You can find the document by clicking: KCSIE 2022