At Swingate Primary School we are committed to safeguarding all the children. We endeavour to provide a safe and welcoming environment where children are protected, respected and valued. All our staff are alert to the signs of abuse and neglect and follow our procedures to ensure that our children receive effective and timely support.  In order to work at Swingate Primary School, all staff have an enhanced with a barred list check and prohibition check carried out, adhere to our Code of Conduct and school policies and must carry out safeguarding training annually which includes online safety and Prevent (training to alert staff to the possibilities of non-violent extremism).

Safeguarding monitoring plays a vital role in ensuring the best possible outcomes for our children. Senior Leaders and Safeguarding Governors ensure that monitoring procedures are robust and carried out effectively. The school uses CPOMs (Child Protection Online Management System) to store and record information about children securely and a Single Central Record (SCR) to record and audit necessary safeguarding checks on staff and volunteers for increased efficiency, and to ensure compliancy.

Our Safeguarding and Child Protection policy is created in line with the latest government documents, such as; Keeping Children Safe in Education (publishing.service.gov.uk), Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 (publishing.service.gov.uk) and the Education Act 2002 Education Act 2002 (legislation.gov.uk). Our priority for devising our policy is to ensure that all adults understand their responsibilities, know how and when to report a concern and know how to support the welfare and safety of all of our children.

All staff demonstrate that standards of respect and behaviour contribute to a safe, unthreatening and inclusive school. We encourage all children to speak to a trusted adult should they be worried about something at school, home or in the wider community. We welcome visits from front line services such as the fire service, police, school nurse, social care workers, Early Help coordinators, and the NSPCC. Our children take part in workshops such as personal safety, fire safety, internet safety, road safety and water safety.  Year 6 also take part in 'Start a Heart' each year.  

As a school, we expect good attendance and punctuality from all members of the school community and make sure that children understand its importance. Regular school attendance is an important part of giving children the best possible start in life. The aim should be to attend 100% of the time. Children who miss school frequently are less likely to achieve in all areas of the curriculum including socially and emotionally. We work closely with our Attendance Advisory Practitioner and Pastoral Manager to support families whose attendance needs improving

We aim to ensure that:

• Appropriate action is taken in a timely manner to safeguard and promote children’s welfare
• All staff are aware of their statutory responsibilities with respect to safeguarding
• Staff are properly trained in recognising and reporting safeguarding issues

Designated Safeguarding Lead: Matt Wignell

Deputy Safeguarding Leads: Mary Clarke, Penny Davies and Tina Babara

Our Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) complete advanced training at least every two years.

If you are worried about a child or would like some advice, please do speak to a member of the safeguarding team or follow the link below to report any concerns in the community. If you would like to raise a complaint, please follow our complaint procedure also found in our policy section.  If you are worried about a child in Medway we have information, help, support and advice, and you may contact the school directly. Alternatively, members of the public and professionals can use an online referral by completing a form to report any safeguarding concerns about a child or young person. Once the form has been submitted, it will be reviewed and assessed and necessary action will be taken.

Concerned about a child - click here

Useful Contact Details:

First Response (child at risk of significant harm): 01634 334466

Out of Hours Contact: 03000419191

NSPCC: 08088005000

For further advice and support for parents and carers can be found via the link below. There are various topics such as; Domestic Abuse, Online Safety, Separation & Divorce, Family Matters, Young People, Self-Harm and much more click here

Online Safety:

It is recognised by Swingate Primary School that the use of technology presents challenges and risks to children and adults both inside and outside of school.

The use of technology has become a significant component of many safeguarding issues. For example, technology often provides the platform that facilitates harm in cases of child exploitation; radicalisation; sexual predation and bullying.

Swingate Primary School will empower, protect and educate the whole school community in the use of technology and establish mechanisms to identify, intervene in, and escalate any incident where appropriate.

The DSL has overall responsibility for online safeguarding within the school but will liaise as necessary with other members of staff.

Understanding the digital world, and the rapid transitions and developments that are made within it, can feel overwhelming at times; keeping up with changes and finding the right information for you can be confusing, particularly with a wealth of resources available. Whilst we work hard to keep children safe in school, we know we need to be in partnership with yourselves as parents and carers to educate and safeguard outside the school environment. 

So what can you do? We've collated some information on a specific webpage.  Click here

Prevent:

The aim of the Prevent Strategy is to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. Prevent tackles all forms of extremism – including both Islamist extremism and far right threats.

Prevent has 3 key objectives:

• respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism
• support vulnerable people and prevent people from being drawn into terrorism
• work with key sectors and institutions to address the risks of radicalisation.

We all have a role in protecting vulnerable children, young people and adults from being drawn into terrorism, keeping Kent, Medway and the people here safe.

Extremism and radicalisation in our community are very real threats, and being aware is the first step. You can help to reduce the threat from terrorism, radicalisation and extremism.

To make a referral to Prevent, download and complete the Prevent-Referral-Form.docx

You can contact the police or 0800 789 321

Complete an online report for possible terrorist activity

Report online material promoting terrorism or extremism

Filtering and Monitoring Systems in school 

Filtering and monitoring are an important part of school’s online safety responsibilities, but they are only one part of our approach to online safety. Pupils and adults may have access to systems external to the school control, such as mobile phones and other internet enabled devices and technology. Where concerns are identified, appropriate action will be taken.

At Swingate we have 3 filtering policies setup and by default, the student policy is applied to the whole network. This ensures that all devices students should have access to will have the strictest filtering.

We use a tool called Webscreen which uses 3 methods for filtering: category based (Webscreen applies a category to all websites, and then lets you filter content based on these category groups e.g. Facebook / Twitter / Instagram are all included in a category called “Social Media”.  LGFL maintains a master list for websites and categories for webscreen. This is constantly updated, and also allows for requests to change the category of a website); bundle based (Similar to category-based filtering, but allows for the “bundling” of specific websites into custom “Allow” / “Deny” lists.  Bundles, for example, allow for blocking all websites from a particular company, regardless of the category these websites fall under) and local (Local filtering allows for specific websites to be added to the “Allow” / “Deny” lists).

Operation Encompass

Our school is part of Operation Encompass which is a national scheme that operates jointly between schools and police forces.

Operation Encompass is the reporting to schools, prior to the start of the next school day, when a child or young person has experienced domestic abuse.

As a school, we have ensured that a member of our staff, (Designated Safeguarding Lead) known as a Key Adult, has been trained in the Operation Encompass procedures allowing us to then use the information that has been shared, in confidence, to support the child/ren in our care. 

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 identifies children who experience domestic abuse as victims of domestic abuse in their own right.

We are keen to offer the best support possible to all our pupils and we believe this will be extremely beneficial for all those involved.