Keeping Children Safe
At Lovers’ Lane we are committed to keeping all our children safe. We have clear policies around safeguarding children and keep up to date with information and opportunities to ensure our staff are well trained and informed to look after all our children physically and emotionally.
If you have a concern about a child in school, our Designated Safeguarding Officers are here to help. This is who they are:
- Designated Safeguarding Lead – Miss Jenny Hodgkinson (Headteacher)
- Designated Safeguarding Deputies – Mrs Justine Watts (HLTA/Attendance Officer) and Mrs Amy Graham (KS2 Lead, Assistant Headteacher, SENCO).
- Our Safeguarding and Child Protection Governor is Mrs Diana Poole.
All staff have up to date training during the current academic year (2024-2025), so they can help and report to the Safeguarding Leads named above. Our training makes sure that staff are aware of the latest guidance in ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (Sept 2022), which is a government document to help schools to keep all our children safeguarded from harm or risk. Our Safeguarding officers have also had up to date training in ‘Working together to Safeguard Children’ with other agencies.
Since September 2017, we have a new system for recording concerns about the welfare or safety of children. This system is called ‘Safeguard’ and is a secure, online system (recommended security level in line with Government requirements). It helps us to track attendance and behaviour too. This change has been added into our new, updated policy for the Child Protection Policy (Welfare of the Child). This policy is reviewed annually and was last reviewed in September 2022.
Every year our Safeguarding governor, comes into school and completes an audit of our safeguarding practices with Miss Hodgkinson (Headteacher and Designated Safeguarding Lead) and Mrs Watts (Designated Safeguarding Deputy). In this audit we look at everything, from staff training to policies and how we make sure our records are well kept and up to date. This audit is signed off by the governing body and is sent off to Nottinghamshire Local Education Authority too.
Our school works hard to ensure all elements of the children’s well-being is catered for and supported. We have a Learning Mentor who is trained in Lego Therapy and counselling strategies and use ELSA (Emotional. Literacy, Support Assistant). We also have a worker from the CASY Counselling service who works with pupils in school too. CASY also provide support for parents and staff.
We have strong links with the local Children’s Centre and our Family SENCO (A lead Special Needs Co-ordinator for the area, who oversees SENCOs across the schools in Newark) and our Local Behaviour Partnership (SBAP team).
DFE Guidance for Parents February 2021: Safeguarding your child in out of school activities
Parents – please find links in the E-Safety and Online safety section in the Parent section on how to keep your safe online and on mobile apps.
Stay Safe Online… Stay S.M.A.R.T! Top E-Safety tips for Children and Parents
Online safety is a part of our curriculum here at Lovers’ Lane Primary and Nursery, where children learn to use internet based computing in a safe way and learn strategies to safeguard themselves.
In February, we held ‘Safer Internet Week’ as an enrichment to our curriculum learning. During this week the children enjoyed assemblies led by the Headteacher, School Councillors and House Captains.
A ‘Zip it, Block it, Flag it’ Digital Code Poster competition was launched and the children learnt about being S.M.A.R.T online.