Safeguarding

Safeguarding and Child Protection

At Warwick Community Playschool, Safeguarding is one of our highest priorities. Safeguarding includes staff, volunteers, students, families and children. Please see our policy page for in-depth information about safeguarding and child protection at Warwick Community Playschool.

Safer Recruitment

Jo is our Safer Recruitment trained team member. From this training, the playschool have a robust recruitment and selection procedure that all team member must follow. We will always ask applicants to complete an application form, CVs will not be accepted for post. As a part of our selection process, we may check social media.

We scruitinise references and will only accept references that are satisfactory to the committee. This is the employees responsibility to complete and may result in termination of employment. All team members must have an up to date enhanced DBS check and be signed up to the Update Service. The management then check the update service on a regular basis. During supervision and appraisal, staff are asked to sign a declaration in line with DBS procedures. All team members have an induction process that must be satisfactorily completed. We are supported by Peninsula UK for all of our HR needs.

We have links with our local Designated Officer for safeguarding who supports us with any safeguarding needs for team members.

All team members have Supervision and Appraisal meetings. These are either with Jo or Kelly. Nikki is a trained counsellor and has extensive safeguarding knowledge and experience. She offers staff time for their emotional well being.

Safeguarding and Child Protection

We follow the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children Board's Procedure Manual and the Thresholds and Pathways document. Our staff receive external and in house training on safeguarding and early help. Currently, Jo and Nikki and trained to offer Early Help Assessments (EHA). Jo and Kelly are our designated leads for safeguarding as well as having the vast majority of our team trained as a designated lead in early years. Our aim is to have every staff member trained to designated lead level.

In Northamptonshire, we have the Muti-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) where we turn to for support and referrals. They can be contacted on 0300 1267000.

The team report all welfare and safeguarding concerns to the designated leads via a web based portal called CURA. If a concern is raised, a member of the team will talk this through with a parent. We will not have these discussions in front of children. We also ask parents to refrain from having these conversations in front of children. This is in line with our code of conduct.

If we have further concerns, we may call the MASH team for advice, We will endeavour to discuss this with families dependant on the advice received and the level of risk posed to the child.

Training

Our staff receive training annually, either in house or externally. We also use the online training system for Northamptonshire. Our team will have general safeguarding training as well as focused training in areas such as Channel and Prevent Duty (for extremism and radicalisation), FGM, private fostering, neglect, gangs, the use of drugs and other themes. Jo has training in Protective Behaviours to support children to recognise early warning signs and to protect themselves. The themes of Protective Behaviours are shown below.

Further Information

The following websites have some invaluable advice and support: