Safeguarding and Well-Being
Safeguarding
Safeguarding our students is paramount and the School takes its safeguarding responsibilities seriously as set out in our Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy, which can be found on our Policies page
This policy has been devised in accordance with North Northamptonshire County Council guidelines and:
- Pace UK information.
- Prevent Information Guide for Parents
- Keeping Children Safe in Education
- Working Together to Safeguard Children
- Keeping Children Safe Online
Child Protection
In accordance with the Department for Education guidelines, the school has a duty to keep parents/carers informed of its responsibilities with regards to Child Protection. In line with this, should the school have reason to suspect a child is at risk, it is our duty to inform the relevant agencies of our concerns and to work with them as required.
In particular, we are expected to notify Social Services if there is unexplained absence of more than two days for a student who is on the Child Protection Register. Another duty is to inform the Education Welfare service if any student is missing from school for 10 days without notification having been received.
Should you or your child have any concerns about safeguarding, please contact either:
| Designated Senior Lead | Mr Steve King |
|---|---|
| Deputy Designated Senior Lead | Mrs Heidi Angel |
| Safeguarding Officer | Mrs Victoria Angel |
| Safeguarding Officer | Miss Kate Strudwick |
| Safeguarding Officer | Mrs Jeanette Birnie |
| Safeguarding Officer | Mrs Ann-Marie Black |
| Safeguarding Officer | Mrs Serena Thornton |
| Safeguarding Officer | Mr Steve Harvey |
| Safeguarding Officer (6th Form) | Miss Sue Magee |
| Safeguarding Officer | Miss Lucy Price |
| Safeguarding Officer | Mrs Claudia Turner |
Promoting Positive Well-Being and Mental Health
We are passionate about ensuring that our students adopt a positive growth mind-set and the resilience needed to be successful in and beyond a modern British society.
Praise and reward is a strong feature of our culture and there is nothing that we like better than being able to recognise all the positive contributions that our students make, for example through: rewards, positive phone calls home, postcards, termly House events and our annual Pride of Latimer Awards. This supports students to feel recognised and valued.
Students are encouraged to engage in all that the School has to offer in order to support their well-being:
- Our Personal Development Programme (PDP)
- Our Physical Education and Health and Well-Being curriculum
- Our enrichment programme, including our range of leadership activities
- House activities and competitions.
We do recognise that at any time, a student may need additional help and support. For these times, we have developed a Mental Health and Well Being strategy which includes:
- Having a trained Senior Mental Health Lead
- Delivering awareness training for staff including trained Mental Health First aiders
- Setting up external partnerships with local organisation such as Northamptonshire Mental Health Team, Service Six, Youth Works, Souster Youth Counselling Service, Ngage and Kettering Mind
- Employing a counsellor
In order to contribute to national research in this area, we are currently participating in research by the Northamptonshire Mental Health team seeking views of parents, students and staff to further develop our practice. We are also working with Optimus Education to secure the Wellbeing Award for Schools to recognise our work in this area.
Should a student feel that they need support they can speak to a member of staff or use our reportaconcern@latimer.org.uk email address (please also visit the Wellbeing section of our website under Information).
Should a parent or carer feel that their child needs additional support, please contact Mr King, Senior Mental Health Lead: sking@latimer.org.uk or Miss Strudwick or Miss Price, Wellbeing Officers: kstrudwick@latimer.org.uk/lprice@latimer.org.uk
To support keeping our students safe at Latimer, our filtering systems operate a strict filtering system for students using IT in school. Mr Pete Davies is our online safety officer working in conjunction with Mr S King, Senior DSL to ensure that students are educated about keeping safe online.
To support safeguarding at Latimer we operate a strict zero tolerance of mobile phone use. We operate a "gate to bell" policy. This is aimed at protecting student wellbeing and safety.