At Peninsula East Primary Academy, our pupils’ safety and wellbeing at school, at home and online is our priority. We uphold high standards of safeguarding for our students, staff and community.
Peninsula East Primary Academy fully recognises the responsibility it has under section 175 (Section 157 for Independent Schools and Academies) of the Education Act 2002 to have arrangements in place to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. In addition Section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places a statutory responsibility to ‘have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. This is known as the Prevent Duty.
Through their day-to-day contact with pupils and direct work with families, staff have a crucial role to play in noticing indicators of possible abuse or neglect and referring them to the child’s relevant Social Care.
We have a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) who is specifically trained and nominated within school. Working alongside the DSL is the ‘Safeguarding Team’.
We follow the Medway Safeguarding Children Board (MSCB) procedures and policies to share concerns regarding children’s welfare with our DSLs, with parents and with relevant external agencies. Part of our legal duty to safeguard our children, may also include us needing to consult specifically with and take advice from, the Police or Children’s Social Care, should the need arise.
By working closely together as a staff and with our partner agencies, we firmly believe that we will continue to offer a safe learning environment for all our children.
Do not hesitate to contact the school should you have any questions about this very serious issue.
Please click on the links below for further information:
Please also find guidance about collecting children from school and the safeguarding of children walking to and from school. Our Year 6 children can walk home on their own providing we have a letter from their parents authorising them to do so. We have a consent form, available from the main office, which also offers some useful advice for parents as to how to assess whether their child is ready to walk to and from school independently.
Safeguarding Team
- Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) and Principal: Lorna Rimmer
- Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead and Vice Principal: Rachael Champ
- Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead and Assistant Principal: Chloe Brading
- Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead and FLO: Jane Dyke
- Early Help Lead: Chloe Brading/Jane Dyke
- Online Safety Coordinator: Lorna Rimmer
- Senior Mental Health Lead: Chloe Brading
- Looked After Children Coordinator: Chloe Brading
Contact Us
Our team is dedicated to supporting you and can be reached during normal working hours during term time.
- Telephone: 01634 270428
Outside of normal working hours 8:30am – 4pm or outside of term time please visit the Medway Social services website or dial 999 for emergency services. You can also contact Medway Children’s social services on 01634334466 or their out of hours contact is 03000419191.
ChildLine
24/7 support and counselling for children and young people
ThinkUKnow
Mental Health support and resources for suicidal thoughts
Kooth
Online Mental Wellbeing community for children and young adults
Mind
Mental Health support and resources for suicidal thoughts
What does Safeguarding look like at Peninsula East Primary Academy?
- All staff receive safeguarding training on induction as well as ongoing updates and personal development e.g. Online Safety, Prevent, County Lines.
- Allegations and concerns are reported proactively and taken seriously by all. Appropriate action is taken by the safeguarding team including rationale.
- We track and review the needs of our most vulnerable students regularly and involve outside agencies where required, beneficial or appropriate.
- We work with the Local Authority, Police and Support Services to ensure our students and families receive the support they need.
- We complete and review risk assessments to ensure that all potential dangers in activities have been identified.
- We teach our students how to identify dangers and keep themselves safe (including online) during weekly PSHE lessons, assemblies and tutor time. We also conduct regular pupil voice so that our children are able to tell us about how they are safe in school and who they can speak to if they are worried.
- We understand that mental health and special education needs can have unique safeguarding requirements and regularly review these. We also have a pupil well-being group that meets at least once a term. The children share with a member of SLT how they think that pupil well-being can be improved and if there are any general concerns that we may need to address as a whole school approach.
- Our students and staff are well trained to evacuate the building safely in case of fire or other emergencies.
- We have 4 experienced DSLs and a new DSL . Level 3 DSL Training is updated once every two years for all DSLs, SLT and our FLO.
- Our safeguarding governor works closely with the school to ensure safeguarding practices are robust and upheld and we also have regular monitoring visits from the Trust safeguarding lead.
- All staff are DBS checked and can be identified easily via their ID badge which must be worn at all times. This is scanned upon entry into the school building.
- Our students have options and easy access to support from our student support mentors, wellbeing staff, safeguarding team and college leadership teams.
Further Information
Safeguarding and Mental Health Websites/Links
- NSPCC
- NHS
- Young Minds
- ChildLine
- Kooth – mental health and wellbeing
For Parents and Carers
Online Safety
- ThinkUKnow – Ask the awkward
- ThinkUKnow
- GOV.UK – Internet Safety
- Parent Zone
- Childnet
- National Online Safety – parents receive a weekly online safety guide ‘Wake up Wednesday’ on our Facebook page.
Food Banks
- The Food Bank (Medway)
- Medway Street Angels (email only – themedwaystreetangels@gmail.com)
- Gillingham Street Angels are situated at 43 Skinner Street, Gillingham and can be accessed from 10am -1pm daily
- The Hygiene Bank for families that need help with personal products like sanitary items / personal washing products (phone call – Emma Thomas on 07940329994)
Operation Encompass
Operation Encompass is a national scheme that operates jointly between schools and all police forces. Operation Encompass means that our academy will be told, prior to the start of the next school day, when police have attended an incident of domestic abuse where there is a child or young person who attends our academy who is related to any of those involved in the incident.
We have ensured that a member of our staff, (Designated Safeguarding Lead) known as a Key Adult, has been trained about Operation Encompass procedures. This allows us to use the information that has been confidentially shared with us by the police, to understand how a child may be impacted by domestic abuse and to then offer support to the children in our care.
For more information about this, you can visit the Operation Encompass website.
THRIVE – approach to mental health
The THRIVE Framework for system change is an integrated, person centred and needs led approach to delivering mental health services for children, young people and their families that was developed by a collaboration of authors from the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.
This framework looks at need in five key categories; Thriving, Getting Advice and Signposting, Getting Help, Getting More Help and Getting Risk Support. Emphasis is placed on the prevention and also the promotion of mental health and wellbeing across the whole population. Children, young people and their families are empowered through this framework to have an active involvement in decisions about their care through shared decision making, which is fundamental to the approach.
For more information on this, watch the video below or click here to visit the iThrive website
We regularly send out a bulletin from the Medway Child Health Team that contains links and advice for children and young people in Medway. Please watch your parent mail for these bulletins.