Our Lady of Lourdes RCPS is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff, volunteers and members of the wider school community to share this commitment.

At Our Lady of Lourdes there are three main elements to our Child Protection Policy: prevention, protection and support. All adults in school are fully committed to protecting the children in our care. Opportunities for children to talk about their feelings and emotions are provided everyday through the 'Emotion Check Ins'. Children can access these throughout the day and staff will check in on them regularly and speak to the children. Opportunities through the curriculum are given to the children to talk about their feelings and emotions. eg PSHE lessons, RE lessons.

We have a number of policies and procedures that contribute to our safeguarding commitment, including our Child Protection and Safeguarding policy and Keeping Children Safe in Education.

Sometimes we may need to share information and work in partnership with other agencies where there are concerns about a child's welfare. We will ensure that our concerns will be discussed with parents or carers first unless we have reason to believe that such a move would be contrary to the child's welfare.

We actively support the Government's Prevent Duty to counter radicalism and extremism.

The Safeguarding Team at Our Lady of Lourdes RCPS are:

Mrs JE Davies (Executive Headteacher and Deputy Safeguarding Lead)

Mrs K Weston (Deputy Headteacher and Deputy Safeguarding Lead)

Miss E Dean (Inclusion Lead and Designated Safeguarding Lead)

Mrs J Ensor (Federation Business Manager and Deputy Safeguarding Lead)

These adults work with other outside agencies to ensure children in our school are protected. We work in conjunction with social services and the Police and are notified of any incidents that relate to domestic violence through the Encompass project.

We have an open door policy and are always available for anyone to come into school if they have a concern about a child. We also actively encourage children to talk about their worries and concerns in school.

Operation Encompass

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

Operation Encompass will ensure that a member of school staff (Designated Safeguarding Lead), known as a key adult, is trained to allow them to liaise with the police and to use the information that has been shared, in confidence, whilst ensuring that the school is able to make provision for possible difficulties experienced by children, or their families, who have experienced a domestic abuse incident.

Useful numbers are listed below:

National Childline: 0800 1111

NSPCC: 0800 800500

Women's Aid: 0845 023 468

Samaritans: 0845 790 9090

KIDSCAPE (Preventing Bullying Protection Children): 0207 730 3300