Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined as: protecting children from maltreatment; preventing impairment of children’s mental health and physical health or development; ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.

Safeguarding is not just about protecting children from deliberate harm. It relates to aspects of school life including:

pupils’ health and safety
the use of reasonable force
meeting the needs of pupils with medical conditions
providing first aid
educational visits
intimate care
internet or e-safety
appropriate arrangements to ensure school security, taking into account the local context.

Please find below links and documents which you may find useful. If you have any concerns about a child please contact one of the safeguarding leads in school:

Designated Safeguarding Leads Signage 2026-2027

Mereside-safeguarding-and-child-protection-policy-2026_2027

Smothwall Filtering and Monitoring

If you are concerned about a child, young person or a member of staff, please ask to speak to a member of the School’s Safeguarding Team.

“The school may share information regarding your family circumstances with the Local Authority Children’s Services if there are safeguarding concerns or with the Early Help Service if there are issues which may affect your child’s welfare or happiness.”

What is CPOMS?

CPOMS is the market leading software application for monitoring child protection, safeguarding and a whole range of pastoral and welfare issues. Working alongside a school’s existing safeguarding processes, CPOMS is an intuitive system to help with the management and recording of child protection, behavioural issues, bullying, special educational needs, domestic issues and much much more. Using CPOMS, schools can ensure that students are safe and fully supported, whilst school staff can focus on teaching and providing support, instead of administration.

Every member of staff across school has an obligation to report any concerns which they may have. CPOMS allows them to record information in a central repository and have relevant people alerted immediately. Senior leaders are able to build a chronology around a student and can produce reports on vulnerable pupil groups for Case Conference Meetings, Governors and Ofsted at the touch of a button.

Mereside is part of the national project, Operation Encompass, which is being run locally in partnership with Shropshire Council and West Mercia Police. One of the principles of Operation Encompass is that all incidents of domestic abuse are shared with schools, not just those where an offence can be identified. Click below for more details:

operation encompass joint agency protocol

operation-encompass-domestic-abuse-contacts

Equality Duty Statements

The Public Sector Equality Duty requires our school to monitor our policies and procedures and to publish information about equalities in our school. The Equality Act 2010 has 3 main ‘General Duties’ which we must aim to achieve, these are:

To eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act.
To advance equality of opportunity between people.
To foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The Equality Act 2010 states that it is unlawful to discriminate against people with the following protected characteristics. This applies to the whole school community:

Age
Disability
Gender
Gender reassignment
Pregnancy and maternity
Race (ethnicity)
Religion and belief
Sexual Orientation

We believe that equality at our school should permeate all aspects of school life and that it is the responsibility of every member of the school and wider community. Everyone within our school community should feel safe and secure, they should feel valued and of equal worth, these include:

Children and young people
All staff employed at the school
Students on placement
Parents/carers
Governors
Agency staff
Contractors working at our school
External agencies whose staff are working with our school, including Health, Social Care, Special Needs support and agencies such as the Department for Education, Ofsted and School Improvement Partners
All visitors to the school

The ‘Specific Duty’ for schools is to gather and publish information to show how we are complying with the Equalities Duty; how we remove or minimise disadvantage and take steps to meet different needs and encourage participating when it is proportionately low. We record and analyse the progress and attainment of all children, including vulnerable groups. NB Due to small organisational numbers which would allow for specific people to be identified groups are combined or not published.

Please see below for the Equality Information Policy and objectives.

Equality duty and objectives policy

Family Help Together – A Framework for Action

Family Help Together – A Framework for Action sets out Shropshire’s shared approach to supporting children, young people and families. It explains how professionals work together to understand children’s needs, listen to their voices and provide the right help at the right time.

The framework highlights a range of support, from everyday advice and community support through to additional and targeted family help and safeguarding support where concerns are more serious. It promotes early help, strong relationships, partnership with families and joined-up working between services.

The document also explains how practitioners make decisions by considering a child’s safety, wellbeing, development, relationships, strengths and lived experience, ensuring that support is proportionate and responsive to changing needs.

family-help-together-a-framework-for-action