Keeping our children safe at Michael Faraday is our highest priority.  Parents and carers send their children to our school each day, trusting us to provide a secure environment in which their children will flourish.  We have established a culture of safeguarding by teaching the children how to keep themselves safe and healthy and by making sure we have robust systems in place to protect the children in our school from harm, whilst in our care. Our policies and procedures applies to all staff, governors, professionals and volunteers working in the school.

At Michael Faraday we adhere to the following guidelines:

• We have an ethos that every child is everyone's responsibility.
• Safeguarding is always on our agenda - we continue to reflect of what we can do better and never think we have done enough in terms of a safe culture.
• We have a mindset of 'knowing it could happen here' and therefore all staff understand safeguarding to be of the highest importance and they know that their vigilance of the children and of the adults is critical.
• We ensure staff, governors and volunteers are trained and that they understand their responsibilities in being alert to the signs of abuse.

Child Protection

Designated Safeguarding Lead: Sarah Haley (DHT)

Deputy Safeguarding Lead: Jacqui Lamport (SENCO), Natalie Barrett (SENCO), Ann Dowie (SBM)

Designated Safeguarding Governor: Sharon Vince (Co-chair)

Riana Gouws (HT) oversees Safeguarding, in her role as headteacher, and safeguarding matters are reported to the Governing Board.

We work closely with a range of outside agencies, including Children’s Social Care.  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 our concerns about our pupils are discussed with parents/carers first, unless we have reason to believe that would be contrary to the child's welfare.

We actively support the Government's Prevent Agenda to counter radicalism and extremism.

See Safeguarding Policy in the policies section

Whistleblowing

The school is committed to conducting its business with honesty and integrity, and expects all staff to maintain high standards in accordance with their contractual obligations and the school’s policies and procedures.  However, all organisations face the risk of things going wrong from time to time, or of unknowingly harbouring illegal or unethical conduct. A culture of openness and accountability is essential in order to prevent such situations occurring or to address them when they do occur. Please see our whistleblowing policy for details about the process for whisteblowing concerns (in policy section of the website).  As outline in the whisteblowing policy, in the case where it is not appropriate for the person to raise their concern with the Headteacher, the concern should be reported to the chair of Governors via the school office. 

See Whistleblowing Policy in the policies section