Safeguarding and Early Help

At Upton St James, the health, safety and wellbeing of all children is of paramount importance.  Parents and carers send their children to school each day with the expectation that school provides a secure environment in which their children can flourish.  We therefore have to ensure that this expectation becomes reality.  In order to do this a wide range of measures are put in place.

A very important aspect of the school’s role is to ensure we keep all our children safe. This  takes many forms from the obvious and straight forward such as ensuring the building and equipment we use is fit for purpose to putting risk assessments in place. It also covers aspects such as e-safety – making sure your children know how to keep themselves safe online and it also includes safeguarding – keeping children safe from harm.

Regular training for all staff ensures that everyone is fully aware of our policies and procedures with regards to all aspects of safeguarding.

HeadUSJ@stcmat.org

Sarah.Wright@stcmat.org

Greg.Bell@gov.stcmat.org

Early Help

We use Torbay Early Help processes to support families, when needed. 

What is Early Help?

Early Help is not a specific service or team it’s an approach to working that brings together professionals from a range of different services who will work with the whole family to help improve things for everyone.

We believe that children and families need to be heard when they first ask for help to minimise the risk of problems getting worse and help them address them at the earliest opportunity. Engaging a family in Early Help is also a voluntary process and consent from children, young people, and their families to work with them should always be sought. Without this, it is unlikely that they will engage in the support that we can offer them.

Early Help can be provided through a single agency or multi agency response as appropriate to the needs of the child and family and the concern.

Our principles for Early Help are based on the principles of the legislation as described in Working Together to Safeguard Children, 2018: 

“Providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later. Early help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life, from the foundation years through to the teenage years. Early help can also prevent further problems arising, for example, if it is provided as part of a support plan where a child has returned home to their family from care.”

Working Together to Safeguard Children, 2018

See the attached documents we refer to which explain Early Help in Torbay in more detail. 

Some useful websites for parents, carers and pupils: