Cherry Grove Primary School Safeguarding contacts
Safeguarding all our children and families is of paramount importance to our school. We have a strong culture of safeguarding at Cherry Grove, and staff are trained to understand this is a responsibility for us all. You will find our Safeguarding policies on our policies page here.
Our Designated Safeguarding Lead is Beth Hacking (Headteacher)
The Safeguarding Team comprises Mrs Jen Hughes (Pastoral Manager), Mr Tommy Spencer (Deputy Headteacher) and Cara Cowpar (SENDcO).
All staff have training to respond to safeguarding concerns and there are systems in place for us to escalate concerns. Please contact the school and ask to speak with Mrs Hacking or a member of the safeguarding team if you have concerns during term time.
If you have a safeguarding concern about a child whilst school is closed please call the Integrated Access and Referral Team (iART) or the Emergency Duty Team (EDT) for help and advice.
Telephone: i-ART - 0300 123 7047
The team can be contacted 8.30am to 5pm from Monday to Thursday and 8.30am – 4.30pm on Friday.
If you have an urgent concern outside these hours, or over a bank holiday, please call the Emergency Duty Team (out of hours) on 01244 977277.
Alternatively call Cheshire Police: 101 for non-emergencies or 999 in an emergency.
Domestic Abuse
If you or your children are experiencing domestic abuse and would like information and support, please see more information and contact details here. If you are at risk of immediate harm, call 999.
Operation Encompass
Our school is part of a project, which is run between Cheshire West and Chester schools and Cheshire Police. The project, called Operation Encompass, has been designed to provide early reporting of any domestic violence incidents that occur outside school, which might have an impact on a child in school. This is done through a phone call to school following an incident.
The project ensures that at least one member of the school staff, known as the Key Adult(s), is/are trained to liaise with the police and to use the information that has been shared, in confidence.
In this way, we aim to support each child who has been involved in, or witnessed, a domestic abuse incident. The Key Adults at Cherry Grove Primary School are Beth Hacking (Headteacher) and Jen Hughes (Welfare Manager). If a call is received a Key Adult will make sure that a person the child trusts is available to help – if the child needs this. Most of the time this support is silent; keeping a careful eye on him or her and make sure the child has a calm school day. The confidential information is ordinarily not shared with all staff, just an agreement on how to help, if needed.
All schools have a duty to share any information with other organisations if they feel a child is at risk of being hurt. The Key Adult may contact other organisations. This is described in our Safeguarding policy.
The sharing of information from the Police allows the school to be ready to help your child straight away, and it means that parents are aware that the Key Adult knows that something has happened. Parents can come and talk to our Key Adult. The Key Adult can point you towards other people that can help. Our aim is to support children and their families.
A letter is sent to parents and carers with the information above via Parentmail each year.
Visitors to Cherry Grove
If you are a visitor to Cherry Grove (volunteer, student, other visitor) you will be shown a quick guide to the school on arrival - there are additional copies available in the office, staffroom and staff bathrooms should you need to check them again. To keep all our visitors and children safe, please ensure you read this guide and ask for clarification if there is anything you are unsure about. You can see this guide below.
Staff use CPOMs as a way of recording incidents or concerns about our children, but if CPOMs is not available, or you are not a member of staff, we ask that you use our yellow forms to report concerns and seek the Designated Safeguarding Lead as soon as possible.
Keeping Children Safe in Education
All staff working directly with children are expected to read at least part 1 of KCSIE, which is a statutory document issued by the DfE for all schools and colleges. You can find the latest guidance document below:
Prevent Duty
It is part of our statutory duty to ensure we align with the Prevent Duty.
The aim of Prevent is to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.
The objectives of Prevent are to:
- tackle the ideological causes of terrorism
- intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation
- enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate
All staff are trained in what the Prevent Duty means, and what are the signs of causes for concern.
The school teaches Fundamental British Values through our SMSC approach. You can read more about this here.