Safeguarding

What is Safeguarding & Child Protection?

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): Emma Wilkinson (Head of school)

Deputy DSLs: Adilah Iqbal (Deputy Head covering maternity leave), Rachel Abbott and Joanne Barnett (SENCo)

The Lead Governor for Safeguarding is Mrs Carla Dewberry and The Chair of Governors is Mr David Semararo

Safeguarding Procedures including Out of Hours Contact Details

Professionals needing to contact the school's Safeguarding Leads out of hours or out of term time should email Safeguarding@portwayj.derby.sch.uk

The email address will automatically forward emails to all members of the school's safeguarding team. These contact details are for professional use only.

Parents and carers who need safeguarding advice outside of school hours or term time should contact Derby City Council Social Care on 01332 641172.

Local Child Protection and Safeguarding procedures and all contact information, including making an online referral, can be found at:

Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children's Partnership.

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, Keeping Children Safe in Education, by clicking the link below:

Keeping Children Safe in Education

Emergency Contact Numbers

If you have an urgent safeguarding concern and you are concerned about the safety of yourself or a young person you know please ring one of the numbers below and seek immediate help:

Police	Emergency 999 Non-emergency 101
First Contact Derby City Children’s Social Care, First Response Team Weekdays 9am - 5pm	01332 641172, Option 1
Starting Point Derbyshire Children’s Social Care, Weekdays 9am - 5pm	01629 533190
Careline Children's Social Care Out of Hours Team Evenings, Bank Holidays and Weekends	01332 956606
Childline Young people can ring this number 24 hours a day.	0800 1111