Safeguarding Children at Castle Hill

What is safeguarding?

It might be difficult to accept, but every child can be hurt, put at risk of harm or abused, regardless of their age, gender, religion or ethnicity. 

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined under legislation and government guidance as:

• providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge,
• protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online,
• preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
• ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care.
• taking action to enable all children have the best outcomes

and stresses that:

Keeping Children Safe in Educations (DfE Sept 2025)

Safeguarding children is the responsibility of everyone

At Castle Hill, all members of staff have a responsibility to create and maintain a safe learning environment for all our young people. We have a responsibility to identify where there are child welfare concerns and take action to address them in partnership with other organisations.

Our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) is Miss N. Brady and in her absence Miss J. Stonier (Deputy DSL) or Miss D. McGuinness (Safeguarding Officer). The member of our Governing Body with responsibility for Safeguarding is Mr N. Mockridge. 

If we are concerned that a child may be at risk from significant harm or is being abused school is required to refer their concerns onto Social Care and the police if necessary.  In some circumstances this may happen without the consent or knowledge of parents/carers.

School also has a responsibility to act upon other concerns that they may have about a child’s welfare in circumstances where there are no suspicions of child abuse. Examples of this may be when a child is demonstrating inappropriate behaviour, is involved in bullying, is failing to come to school or where difficulties at home are having an effect upon the child’s well being. However this list is by no means exhaustive. 

In Stockport there is an expectation that school will always discuss these issues with parents/carers before deciding upon a course of action to support the child.

If you have a concern regarding the welfare of a child at Castle Hill High School, please contact a member of the safeguarding Team on 0161 285 3925.

MASSH

The Multi-Agency Safeguarding and Support Hub (MASSH) is the single point of contact for the public and professionals to report concerns, and to request advice and support about a child and/or family. You can contact MASSH on 0161 217 6028 or visit their website below 

MASSH website

Policies, guidance and legislation

We have a Safeguarding Policy which explains all the above in much more detail. This policy can be viewed on our policies section:

Click here: Safeguarding

We've also produced a student-friendly version of this policy:

Safeguarding Policy - student version

The Department for Education's document, Keeping Children Safe in Education (Sept 2025), can be viewed here:

Keeping Children Safe in Education

Prevent Duty

Protecting children from the risk of radicalisation is part of our wider safeguarding duties.

As such we have created a Prevent Duty Policy in order to ensure that all staff are alert to changes in children’s behaviour which could indicate that they may be in need of help or protection, as well as to actively assess the risk of children being drawn into terrorism.

Castle Hill High School expects all staff to use their professional judgement to identify children who may be at risk of radicalisation and act accordingly, alongside the Local Children’s Safeguarding Board (LCSB) if necessary.

The policy can be viewed here: Prevent Duty 

Our Designated Prevent Duty lead is Miss N. Brady

Operation Encompass

Our school is part of Operation Encompass. This is a police and education early intervention safeguarding partnership which supports children and young people who experience Domestic Abuse.

Operation Encompass means that the police will share information about Domestic Abuse incidents with our school PRIOR to the start of the next school day when they have been called to a domestic incident.

Once a Key Adult (DSL) has attended at an Operation Encompass briefing they will cascade the principles of Operation Encompass to all DDSL’s.

Our parents are fully aware that we are an Operation Encompass school.

The Operation Encompass information is stored in line with all other confidential safeguarding and child protection information.

The Key Adult has also led training for all school staff and Governors about Operation Encompass, the prevalence of Domestic Abuse and the impact of this abuse on children. We have also discussed how we can support our children following the Operation Encompass notification.

We are aware that we must do nothing that puts the child/ren or the non-abusing adult at risk.

The Safeguarding Governor will report on Operation Encompass in the termly report to Governors. All information is anonymised for these reports.

The Key Adult has used the Operation Encompass Toolkit to ensure that all appropriate actions have been taken by the school.

Our Key Adults are:

Miss N. Brady (DSL)

Miss D. McGuinness

Miss J. Stonier 

More information about Operation Encompass can be found by clicking on this link: Operation Encompass

CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command)

CEOP works to protect children from online and offline sexual abuse, grooming, and exploitation. CEOP is here to keep children safe from sexual abuse and grooming online. (CEOP are unable to respond to reports about bullying, fake accounts or account hacking - Please speak contact school if you have any concerns on Bullying or you can contact Childline on 0800 1111)

You can visit the CEOP Safety Centre and make a report directly to CEOP by clicking the Click CEOP button.

Report Hate - True Vision

The police will record any crime as a hate crime where the victim or any other person perceives it was motivated by hostility or prejudice towards their identity. True Vision has been developed so that you can report hate crimes online - you do not have to visit a police station to report. 

You can make a report directly by clicking on the Hate button below. 

Online Safety Hub (Stockport)

Trusted digital safety advice for caregivers. The Online Safety Hub is presented through a partnership between Smoothwall and our school. 

Click the image below to access the hub...  

Parental Controls 

• Qustodio is a world-leading online safety tool that helps parents manage and supervise their child's online activities.

• Our partnership with Qustodio offers parents free access to the Qustodio parent app.

• The Qustodio Parent App enables parents to manage screen time, monitor online activity, and access expert advice on online safety.

  Click on the image below for more information: