Safeguarding
“Miss, this morning I felt I was looking into a raging volcano, but now I feel a million miles from it. Thanks for listening.”
Everyone at Appledore School is committed to safeguarding and responsible for keeping our children safe.
We do this by: providing a safe environment for children to thrive; identifying children who are suffering or are likely to suffer significant harm and taking appropriate action to ensure they are kept safe both at school and at home.
To ensure children are safe we have systems for the purpose:
- preventing unsuitable people working with children
- promoting safe practice and challenge unsafe practice
- effective identification of concerns and imitating or taking appropriate action
- contributing to effective partnerships between all relevant safeguarding services
for more information, please see the safeguarding policy in Parents/Policies
If you have concerns about a child or young person, please contact any of the following on 01237 474365 or admin@appledoreprimary.co.uk:
- Designated Safeguarding Lead – Jeremy Cooper, Headteacher
- Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads – Julie McMorine, Deputy Headteacher and Claire Bannister, Assistant Headteacher
- Designated Domestic Abuse Lead – Liz Phillips
- School Learning Mentor – Liz Phillips
If your safeguarding concern is outside of usual school working hours and urgent you should contact the Devon County Council Multi Agency Support Hub (MASH) on 0345 1551071 or 0845 6000 388 or visit the Devon and families Partnership website
Appledore School participates in Operation Encompass, the early reporting on to schools that a child or young person has been exposed to domestic abuse. For more information, please click here
We have a ready for anything procedure should school need to enter into a lockdown. In the unlikely event of a lockdown, any incident or development will be communicated to parents as soon as is practicable. This will be achieved by the most appropriate means available, typically text or email. To reduce anxiety, the school will communicate updates as soon as is practicable.
Should the school go into lockdown we ask parents to
- not directly calling the school’s office, because calling the school will tie up telephone lines that will be required to be used by the responsible person and the emergency services
- not initially attending the school, because this may interfere with the emergency provider’s access and/or investigation and may put themselves and others in danger. External doors will be locked and no person is allowed in or out of the premises until further notice
- wait for communication from school or emergency services that a safe and satisfactory outcome has been achieved and agreed by all parties and for confirmation of the identified safe area for the safe handing over of the pupils to their parents/carers.
E-Safety
As with all pastoral care issues, we take E-Safety very seriously. Inappropriate use of technology and social media is one of the most important welfare issues our children and young people face. The children learn E-Safety as part of their computing and PSHE curriculum, involving our progression of E-Safety skills, and through outside organisations such as CEOPs and Childline visiting the school to deliver workshops with the children. To view policies relating to all aspects of safeguarding, including internet safety and ICT Acceptable Use Agreements please click here and for information on our filtering provided by our IT provider please click here
For very helpful safety guides for many, many programmes and apps please visit National Online Safety website guides section by clicking here.
For advice on setting broadband controls, please click here for a useful guide. If you want to find out more, the CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Safety Centre) website , the Think U Know website and Virgin Media are all very useful starting points. The CEOP video ‘Parents and Carers Guide to the Internet is also very good. For more information on how to keep children safe please visit NSPCC and DSCB
