St Peter's Catholic Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, and keeping children safe and happy is at the heart of everything we do.  The school expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

We are fully committed to ensuring that consistent, effective safeguarding procedures are in place to support families, children and staff at school.  We believe that our school should provide a caring, positive safe and stimulating environment, which promotes the social, physical and moral development of every child and therefore we take safeguarding extremely seriously whilst retaining a balanced and human approach.

We follow the procedures set out by the Doncaster Safeguarding Children Partnership and take account of all guidance issued by the Department for Education.

Please also see our Policies Page for details of our current Safeguarding Policy, and other relevant policies.

We have well-established ways of monitoring and responding to incidents of concern, for example: unexplained absences, difficult behaviour and significant changes in physical or emotional appearance.

Nothing is more important to us than the safety and welfare of our pupils. We take rigorous steps to ensure that children stay safe and do not come to any harm. We work closely with parents/carers and a range of professional agencies in order to secure this.

Operation Encompass

Our school is part of Operation Encompass, a police and education early intervention safeguarding partnership which supports children and young people who experience Domestic Violence and Abuse. Children were recognised as victims of domestic abuse in their own right in the 2021 Domestic Abuse Bill. 

Operation Encompass is a police-led partnership that notifies the trained Designated Safeguarding Lead (Key Adult) of any domestic abuse incidents involving our students by 8:30 am the following day. This enables us to provide immediate, tailored support and ensures our safeguarding team is informed, allowing us to support vulnerable children promptly and effectively, ensuring the child feels safe and understood.

The Operation Encompass information is stored with the highest level of confidentiality, in line with all other confidential safeguarding and child protection information within our secure safeguarding systems and in accordance with GDPR. We also provide support for our children who are experiencing Domestic Violence and Abuse on a day to day basis and particularly following an Operation Encompass notification. We are aware that we must not do anything that puts the child/ren or the non-abusing adult at risk. 

The Designated Safeguarding Lead will report on Operation Encompass in the termly report to Governors. All information is anonymised for these reports. The Key Adult uses the Operation Encompass Toolkit to ensure that all appropriate actions have been taken by the school.

Our Key Adult/Designated Safeguarding Lead is Mrs C. Young. 

School Safeguarding Team

If you want to know more about our procedures, please speak to one of the following:

Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) - Mrs C. Young (Headteacher)

Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead (DDSL) - Mrs H. Fitzsimons (Deputy Headteacher & SENCo)

Safeguarding Governor - Mrs K-A. Kent.

Safeguarding Concerns

If you have a safeguarding concern, the safeguarding team can be reached by dedicated email at [email protected]; this email is available and monitored even during school holidays.

Doncaster Council Support

You can also report any concerns about a child to the Doncaster Council Team.

• If you are worried about a child and wish to speak to someone, you can contact the Doncaster Council Safeguarding Team by calling 01302 737777 (8:30am to 5:00pm, Monday to Friday) 
• In the evening or at weekends call 01302 796000
  Please only contact the Emergency Out of Hours Team if you have a concern whereby a child is at immediate risk of harm and the call cannot wait until the following morning.

Where you believe there is an immediate risk of significant harm, the police should be contacted on 999.

Additional Support

Please see our additional pages within the safeguarding section for support and information.