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Safeguarding

What is Safeguarding?

Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. 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
  • taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes.

Child protection is part of the safeguarding process. It focuses on protecting individual children identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. This includes child protection procedures which detail how to respond to concerns about a child.At Sheen Mount we take our safeguarding responsibilities very seriously:

Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL): Maria O'Brien, Deputy Headteacher

Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads (DDSLs): Laura Jeffery, Assistant Headteacher and Inclusion Lead and Tom Holmes, Headteacher

If you have any safeguarding concerns that you wish to raise please use the following email address:

safeguardinglead@sheenmount.richmond.sch.uk

Safeguarding Governors: Jennifer Wright and Caroline Bones 

Health and Safety Governor: Maria Widdowson

For more information please take some time to read our policy which can be accessed by going to our Policies page via the main menu or the link below.

Sheen Mount Policies Page

If you have any concerns about the welfare or safety of a child or young person you can call the Single Point of Access (SPA)

Call 020 8547 5008 from 8am to 5.15pm, Monday to Thursday, and 8am to 5pm on Friday.
During out of hours, phone 020 8770 5000.

The Single Point of Access is a multi-agency team, managed by Achieving for Children, who work closely with a wide range of teams and partner agencies and facilitates different levels of support depending on the needs of the child, young person and their family.  You can contact them to request support, or to report a concern about a child or young person.

Urgent calls

Call 999 if you think a child or young person is in immediate danger.

A further source of information and guidance can be found on the NSPCC website from the link below.

www.nspcc.org.uk

DBS checks for Parent Helpers

We are always very grateful to parents who would like to help us and there are many opportunities to do so, particularly in EYFS and Key Stage 1. In order to help, the school requires you to hold a valid DBS certificate. We are unable to rely on certificates issued on behalf of organisations which aren't the school, unless  you hold an annually renewable DBS. The school can carry out the DBS check for you; there is a charge for this. 

Once you have made payment, please bring the required documents (see below), and your national insurance number if you have it, into the school office between 9.10am and 2.45pm. Please be aware that you will need to enter some further information including 5 years' address history onto the computer.  This process will take around 15 minutes to complete. 

Information about which documents will be accepted for the check can be found here:  http://www.criminalrecordandbarringservice.co.uk/what-documents-are-required-for-a-dbs-check-and-what-are-the-different-route-options/ 

The acceptable financial statements listed under 2b in this link must be within the last three months (with the exception of mortgage, pension, endowment/ISA or council tax statements or a P45 which may all be within the last 12 months) and must be in hard copy, NOT AN INTERNET PRINT OUT.

If you have not lived in the UK for the previous five years, please note that you will also have to obtain a certificate of good conduct from the countries that you have lived in during that period. You will need to obtain this certificate yourself and present it to the school to satisfy the school's safeguarding policy that you are fully cleared to help with the children.

You will receive your certificate in the post. Please bring it into the office once received so that we can update our Single Central Register to be able to take your DBS into account.