Safeguarding
Blackheath Primary School is committed to keeping our children safe. By providing a safe environment for children to learn and play and by identifying children who are, or may be, suffering harm, the school endeavour to ensure they are kept safe both at school and at home.
To achieve this, we have systems in place which are designed for:
- Creating and maintaining a safe learning environment.
- Identifying child welfare concerns and taking appropriate action.
- Using the curriculum to enable our children to develop keep safe strategies
- Creating a listening culture to hear the child’s voice
- Operating safe recruitment and selection procedures to prevent unsuitable people working with our children.
Anyone visiting the school shares the responsibility to keep children safe whilst on our premises and will be required to work within the guidelines of our safeguarding procedures.
If at anytime you have concerns about the welfare of a child, Anna McElwee or Kate Hill, the Designated Safeguarding Leads, should be contacted.
For more detailed information, please click on the tabs below.
Operation Encompass
On 24 May 2024 Royal Assent was granted to The Victims and Prisoners Act. The new Act placed Operation Encompass into Law and puts a statutory obligation on police forces to share Operation Encompass notifications with schools.
In the House of Lords Earl Howe stated: “By enshrining the scheme in law, we can ensure that it is consistently applied across all forces. This will help improve early intervention and enable the most vulnerable children to be safeguarded from the harms of domestic abuse.”
Safeguarding Policy
Online Safety
At Blackheath, we value the safety of our children online just as much as their safety around school. The children are taught how to use the online world safely, including use of the Internet and social media. We teach children how they can protect themselves when online and the importance of this.
For more information, please see our Online safety policy and helpful guides below.
Supporting young people online - Parent Guide
Reporting Abuse
If you are concerned about a child’s safety or welfare, you should contact Sandwell Children's Trust using the details in the link below:
https://www.sandwell.gov.uk/childcare-early-years/report-child-risk
You can also report concerns directly to NSPCC Via the link below
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/reporting-abuse/report/
School will be happy to support you with this should you need it. Please contact school and ask to speak to Mrs McElwee or Miss Hill.
Prevent
Prevent is part of the Government counter-terrorism strategy. It’s designed to tackle the problem of terrorism at its roots, preventing people from supporting terrorism or becoming terrorists themselves. At Blackheath Primary, we promote British Values and offer many other opportunities within the whole school curriculum to enable our pupils to challenge extremist views.
The PREVENT leader for our school is Anna McElwee and Deputy PREVENT Leader is Kate Hill. All staff have received PREVENT training.
Please use the following links for further information:
Women's Aid
Women's Aid is charity is the national charity working to end domestic abuse against women and children. As a federation they provide life-saving services across England while building a future where domestic abuse is not tolerated. They offer chat services and support networks for those in need. Please click the link below to be directed to their website.
