Safeguarding

At Lowtown School our priority is to keep children safe from all kinds of harm. As a team of staff, parents and the wider community we need to make sure we all do our part to keep children safe. The school has a crucial role to play in this and works closely with our families, social care and many other support agencies to ensure we have the best outcomes for our children. We have an open-door policy to allow families to come in, meet with staff and feel listened to which will hopefully prevent any issues from escalating.

We all have a duty to safeguard children whether we are staff, volunteers, other professionals or families in school and as such referrals about suspected abuse or neglect may be made in line with our safeguarding policy should we feel a child may be at risk.

At Lowtown, we have specific reporting procedures. The designated safeguarding leads are the Headteacher, Deputy Head and the Learning Mentor. Details of the staff to report concerns to and the forms to complete are available from our school office.

To report a concern about one of our families of children if you are a member of the public:

During office hours

You can call Children’s Social Work Services on 0113 222 4403 (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm).

You can also discuss your concerns with someone who works with children and families, e.g. your health visitor, social worker, school nurse or teacher (all schools have a member of staff or team responsible for child protection).

Out of office hours

If you think a child is in immediate danger please call the police on 999

Our school operates under the Leeds Safeguarding policy and safer recruitment policies. We will ensure that all people who work with our pupils have had satisfactory safer recruitment checks completed before they can work in our school. We also operate a whistleblowing policy to enable staff to feel empowered to report issues where they feel it is necessary.