Working in Partnership with Parents in relation to Safeguarding and Child Protection Concerns

At Hillcross we are committed to working positively, openly and in partnership with parents and carers. The school will support parents and carers to understand our legal duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of pupils in our school. This includes our duty to make referrals to Children’s Social Care and to assist our colleagues in other agencies with child protection enquiries.

• The school respects parents’ rights to privacy and confidentiality and will not share sensitive information unless we have permission to do so or it is necessary to do so in order to safeguard a child from harm. 
• In the event of a concern, suspicion or disclosure by a child, the school will seek to share the concern with the parent/carer unless to do so may place the child at increased risk of harm.

A lack of parental engagement or agreement on the concerns the school has about a child will not prevent the Designated Safeguarding Lead from making a referral to Children’s Social Care in circumstances where it is appropriate to do so.

The school will only share information about pupils with adults who have parental responsibility for a pupil or where a parent with parental responsibility has given written permission which includes the full details of any other adult with who information about a pupil can be shared. In order to keep our pupils safe and provide appropriate care for them, the school requires parents to provide accurate and up-to-date information regarding the:

• full names and contact details of all adults with whom the child normally lives and the child’s relationship to the adult with whom s/he lives;
• full names and contact details of all persons with parental responsibility (if different from above);
• emergency contact details, where reasonably possible more than one;
• full details of any other adult authorised by the parent to collect the child from school (if different from the above).

All matters relating to child protection will be treated as confidential and only shared as per the ‘Information Sharing Advice for Practitioners’ (DfE) guidance. Information will only be shared with staff within the school who ‘need to know’.