Safeguarding at Meadowfield

All staff and Meadowfield Community have a responsibility to recognise vulnerability in children and act on any concern in accordance with this guidance.

Meadowfield School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We strive to ensure that consistent effective safeguarding procedures are in place to support families, children and staff at school.

We understand that Safeguarding is a wide and holistic set of values, principles and practices to ensure pupil safety and welfare. We take this responsibility extremely seriously and it is woven into the fabric of all aspects of our daily and strategic practice. We understand that child protection is an element of safeguarding where we must observe, speak out and act when we are concerned or have any evidence that a child may be being harmed or be at risk of harm either physically or emotionally.

Meadowfield School has policies and procedures in place to deal effectively with child protection and safeguarding issues together with recording and monitoring processes.

To promote a safe environment for young people at Meadowfield School our selection and recruitment policy includes all statutory checks on staff and regular volunteers including Enhanced DBS (disclosure and barring service) checks.

All staff are trained to a level appropriate to their safeguarding responsibilities.

If you have any serious concerns about your child or any other student at Meadowfield School please do not hesitate to contact a member of the Safeguarding Team who will be able to provide you with the best advice and help using the appropriate degree of confidentiality.

• Meadowfield is a large PSCN (profound severe and complex needs) school. Due to the vulnerable nature of many of our pupils as well as a range of complex medical and emotional difficulties Safeguarding and Child Protection is an area we take extremely seriously. There are additional layers of complexity such as maintaining a robust system for managing Health Care Plans, managing medications as well as complex feeding plans etc. We provide a strategic and comprehensive programme of training to meet our varied needs and have a strong ethos of vigilance and collective as well as individual responsibility for Safeguarding and Child Protection.
• Meadowfield is a community and all those directly connected (staff, governors, parents, families and pupils) have an essential role to play in making it safe and secure. Meadowfield recognises our moral and statutory responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children with their best interests at the centre of our work.
• Meadowfield recognises the importance of providing an ethos and environment within school that will help children to feel safe, secure and respected; encourage them to talk openly; and enable them to feel confident that they will be listened to. We are alert to the signs of abuse and neglect and follow our procedures to ensure that children receive effective support, protection and justice.

Our school core safeguarding principles are:

• That schools are an important part of the wider safeguarding system for children.
• It is a whole school responsibility to safe-guard and promote the welfare of children as its paramount concern
• All children (defined as those up to the age of 18) regardless of age, gender, ability, culture, race, language, religion or sexual identity, have equal rights to protection
• All children have a right to be heard and to have their wishes and feelings taken into account
• All staff understand safe professional practice and adhere to our code of conduct and other associated policies