It is every school’s statutory responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, as outlined by the DfE in its publication Keeping Children Safe in Education, updated for September 2025.

This means that a school must protect children from maltreatment, prevent impairment of children’s health or development, ensure that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care, and take action to enable all children to achieve the best outcomes.

Our Lady of Lourdes 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 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.

Our Safeguarding Team

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.

Our Safeguarding Team is made up of:

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 (School 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.

KCSIE 2025

Please click here to read ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025’.

Safeguarding Policy

To view our Safeguarding Policy, please click here.

Operation Encompass

As part of our commitment to keeping children safe we have signed up to implement the principles and aims of the Encompass Model.

In signing up to Encompass the Governing Body and Senior Leadership Team:

  • Endorse the Encompass Model and support the Key Adults in our school to fulfil the requirements of the Bury Encompass Protocol.
  • Promote and implement Bury Encompass processes and use these in accordance with internal safeguarding children processes.
  • Recognise the sensitive nature of the information provided and ensure that this is retained in accordance with the principles of data protection.

Being part of Operation Encompass means our school will receive a notification from Greater Manchester Police before the start of the next school day when a child or young person has been involved in or exposed to a domestic abuse incident the previous day.

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.

Operation Encompass aims to mitigate harm to children by enabling immediate support, so that all interactions from when the child first arrives at school the day after notification of an incident, are of a positive nature.

All information relating to Operation Encompass is given in strict confidence to the school’s Key Adults.

Encompass Handbook

Useful Numbers

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

Online Safety

While there are huge benefits to being online in order to stay connected to friends and family, it’s important to have regular conversations with your children about staying safe online and encouraging them to talk to you if they see anything worrying.

What harms might my child experience online?

You may have concerns about specific harms that your children experience online including: abuse, criminal exploitation, exposure to radicalising content, consensual and non-consensual sharing of images/videos, cyber-bullying, exposure to age-inappropriate content and harmful content.

Where can I go for help?

These resources will support you to talk to your child about a range of online safety issues, set up home filtering in a child-friendly way and set up age-appropriate parental controls on digital devices:

NSPCC

The following are useful website if you are concerned at all about the safety of a child:

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/

https://www.childline.org.uk/

Prevent

The Prevent strategy is a key part of the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, and is focused on preventing individuals from being drawn into terrorism or extremist ideologies. In schools, the Prevent strategy is implemented as part of a broader duty of care, aiming to safeguard children from risks of radicalisation.

At Our Lady of Lourdes, all staff receive annual training so that they are able to recognise the signs of radicalisation or vulnerability to extremist views.

Staff have learned how to identify possible signs such as:

  • sudden changes in behaviour & attitudes
  • expressing extremist or divisive views
  • isolation from peers or withdrawal from school activities
  • accessing or sharing extremist material online

At Our Lady of Lourdes Prevent principles are integrated into our curriculum, including:

  • Promoting British Values, including democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect for different faiths and beliefs.
  • Critical Thinking Skills: building resilience by encouraging debate, critical thinking, and understanding of different perspectives.
  • Online Safety – teaching our children about the risks of accessing harmful content and promoting safe internet use.

Early Help

At Our Lady of Lourdes we recognise that early help and intervention is crucial in supporting families to be the best that they can be and to overcome any challenges that they may face.

Aims

  • To ensure the improvement of children’s learning as a clear and consistent goal
  • To ensure all children increase their attainment and reach their potential through the provision of targeted support
  • To support families where children’s learning is being impacted by factors within the family environment
  • To encourage parents and carers to engage with their child’s learning and to work in partnership with school and other services.

Outcomes:

  • Barriers to learning will be removed
  • Children will reach their full potential
  • Increase in attainment of children
  • Improvement in social and emotional well being of children and families
  • Improvement of parenting capacity and resilience

Early Help