If you have an urgent concern regarding safeguarding, please telephone the school to discuss this with Mrs Williamson (Designated Safeguarding Lead - DSL), Mrs Chevalier or Miss Joslin (Deputy DSLs).  Non-urgent contact can be made through office@stjohns-canterbury.kent.sch.uk.

Alternatively, if you have any concerns or worries about a child that you wish to report, you can do this by telephoning the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000.

At St John's Primary School, all staff are aware that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility and the children’s needs are paramount.   

We are working 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 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 to engage 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 with the DSLs police information of all domestic incidents where one of our pupils has been present. On receipt of any information, the DSL 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. 

Further information can be found by clicking on the following link: https://www.operationencompass.org.

Please see below Children and young person guide to working together to safeguard children.