Statement of Intent

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the wellbeing of all children and young people in our schools and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

‘Keeping Children Safe in Education 2023 (KCSiE) – Statutory guidance for schools and colleges (DfE 2023) contains information on what schools, including Multi Academy Trusts (MAT’s), should do and sets out the legal duties with which they must comply.

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust is responsible for ensuring that all staff who work directly with children and young people read the DfE statutory guidance and that those staff or volunteers who do not work directly with children and young people read either Part one or Annex A of KCSiE.

The legal requirement together with the Catholic values and principles that underpin the Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust mean that it is essential that the Trust maintains not only compliance at local level but also assumes a strategic responsibility to ensure that safeguarding practices are robust and effective in safeguarding and protecting the welfare of all children and young people within its schools.

We believe that a child’s welfare is always of paramount concern, and that all children have the right to be protected from abuse regardless of their age, gender, disability, culture, language, racial origin, religious belief, or gender identity. All suspicions and allegations of abuse will be taken seriously and responded to swiftly and appropriately.

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust as the proprietor, our family of schools and Academy Councils, are aware of our obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010, (including the Public Sector Equality Duty), and our local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

Local Authorities have overarching statutory responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children and young people in their area. However, safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and young people has a role to play in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action.

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2023 (DfE statutory guidance) defines safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children as:

Protecting children from maltreatment
Preventing the impairment of children’s mental 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

Children includes everyone under the age of 18.

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust is wholly committed to ensuring that all children and young people are cared for in a safe, nurturing and secure environment.

To fulfil this commitment, we have robust systems in place for:

Policy and Procedures
Safer Recruitment of staff and volunteers
Trust Responsibilities
Training

Policy and Procedures

Child Protection/Safeguarding policies must be reviewed and agreed on an annual basis to ensure that key messages from legislation and guidance are embedded within all our schools. Policy and procedures are developed by following the Local Authority model policy, Keeping Children Safe in Education (2023) and other key Government guidance.

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust will follow clear processes for dealing with allegations against people who work with children, which are set out in the individual school’s Child Protection/Safeguarding policies. A Trust Whistleblowing policy is also in place.

Additional support and challenge is made to ensure that other safeguarding policies and procedures are effective, such as:

Attendance policy
Online Safety Policy
Behaviour policy
DBS policy
Director and Governor Code of Conduct

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust expects that each school will follow the guidance and child protection procedures provided by their Local Safeguarding Children Board and the Local Authority children’s services departments.

Safer Recruitment of staff and volunteers

Safer recruitment is an important part of safeguarding children and is the first step to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people in education.

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust ensures that there is a culture of safe recruitment and has adopted recruitment procedures that will deter, reject and identify people who might be unsuitable to work with children and young people.

All our Safer Recruitment procedures ensure that the recruitment and selection process:

Meet the requirements of Keeping Children Safe in Education (2023) and the DfE safer working practices guidance
Have relevant vetting and checking procedures
Include a robust induction process
Provide an ongoing training infrastructure

The Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust will provide clear guidance, expectations, challenge and support to all our schools to maintain a single central record to provide reassurance that all staff and volunteers are recruited safely.