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Safeguarding

General Safeguarding

Our pupils' wellbeing and safety is important to us. If you have any safeguarding concerns please contact our Designated Safeguarding Lead: Mrs Kettle, or one of our safeguarding managers: Miss Aubry or Miss Tyler, or one of deputy designated safeguarding leads: Mrs Roden , Mr Henderson, or Mr Smith. Our Safeguarding Governor is Mr Stephen Beale.

Mrs Kettle is the schools Prevent Lead

We welcome and encourage parents and carers to contact the safeguarding team to discuss any issues.

Our Safeguarding Policy is available here: View / Download

Information on contacting the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) for safeguarding is available here: View / Download

CDS Safeguarding poster: View / Download

Online Safety

Responsible use of Social Media and Mobile Phones

In today's social media age, children now have access to each other more than ever via social media and their mobile phones and devices. As a school we strongly encourage clear boundaries on using phones and the Internet. Parents and guardians should not allow their children to play age inappropriate video games or to attend age inappropriate events.

Parents and guardians, as bill payers, have a responsibility for how mobile phones are used and can install controls on phones enabling them to filter which games, apps and websites their child can use, as well as monitor their usage. Be open and transparent with your child and discuss how they use their phone to help them understand what is appropriate and what is expected of them.

We regularly publish information for parents and carers about the use of the Internet and social media and hope the links below are helpful to you:

Operation Encompass

At The Charles Dickens School we work in partnership with Kent Police and Children’s Services to identify and provide appropriate support to pupils who have experienced domestic violence in their household; this scheme is called Operation Encompass.

The purpose of Operation Encompass is to safeguard and support children and young people who have been involved in or are witness to a domestic abuse incident. Domestic abuse impacts on children in a number of ways. Children are at increased risk of physical injury during an incident, either by accident or because they attempt to intervene. Even when not directly injured, children are greatly distressed by witnessing the physical and emotional suffering of a parent.

Encompass has been created to highlight this situation. It is the implementation of key partnership working between the police and schools. The aim of sharing information with local schools is to allow ‘Key Adults’ the opportunity of engaging with the child and to provide access to support that allows them to remain in a safe but secure familiar environment.

In order to achieve this, the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub will share police information of all domestic incidents where one of our pupils has been present, with the Designated Safeguarding Lead(s) (DSL). On receipt of any information, the DSL or DDSL will decide on the appropriate support the child requires, this should be covert dependent on the needs and wishes of the child. All information sharing and resulting actions will be undertaken in accordance with Kent Police and MASH Encompass Protocol Data Sharing Agreement. We will record this information and store this information in accordance with the record keeping procedures.

The purpose and procedures in Operation Encompass have been shared with all parents and governors. Further information can be found by clicking on the following link: https://www.operationencompass.org

At The Charles Dickens School our Key Adult (DSL) is Mrs Kettle, our Safeguarding Managers are; Miss Aubry and Miss Tyler.