St Bernadette Catholic Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

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

Safeguarding means:

• protecting children from abuse and maltreatment;
• preventing harm to children's health or development;
• ensuring children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care; and 
• taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best life chances. 

Some common themes in Safeguarding include the following: Child criminal exploitation (CCE), Children Missing from Education (CME), Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE), Bullying including Cyberbullying, Domestic Violence, Drugs, Fabricated or Induced Illness, Faith Abuse, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Forced Marriage, Gangs and Youth Violence, Mental Health, Preventing Radicalisation, Sexting and Trafficking.  

Safeguarding encompasses more than just recognising and identifying children at risk from harm and taking action to prevent this.

Safeguarding has many other elements:

• Safer Recruitment - ensuring that everyone working in our school is suitably qualified and safe to do so;
• Safer Premises - this includes ensuring our school site is secure and safe and that children can be collected and dropped off at school safely;
• Online Safety - ensuring that children and parents know how to keep children safe online 
• Risk Assessment - and school trips (including residential trips) and other activities are risk assessed to minimise risk and keep children safe;
• Curriculum - ensuring that we have a broad and balanced curriculum with activities that are fun and engaging, but safe;
• Partnership Working - working with other agencies to share information; and
• Attendance - ensuring that children have good education, all absences from school are accounted for and ensuring no children are missing from education.

All staff receive annual Child Protection and Safeguarding update training and are aware of the procedures for passing on concerns within school.