At the PRU, the health, safety and well-being of every child is our paramount concern. Our aim is for children to enjoy their time as pupils in the PRU. We want to work in partnership with parents and mainstream schools to help children to achieve their full potential and make a positive contribution.

To promote a safe environment for pupils, our selection and recruitment policy includes all checks on staff and regular volunteers’ suitability, including checks with the Disclosure and Barring Services, as recommended by Buckinghamshire County Council in line with current legislation.

In accordance with our responsibilities under section 175/157 of the Education Act 2002, and “ Keeping Children Safe in Education “ 2022, we have a Designated Safeguarding Lead for Child Protection for across the PRU. There are also Additional Designated Safeguarding Leads at each site who have received appropriate training for this role. It is their responsibility to ensure all staff in contact with children receive child protection awareness training on a regular basis. We believe safeguarding and promoting our students’ welfare is everyone’s responsibility, and we work together as a team to achieve this. Additionally, we always listen to our pupils and take seriously what they tell us.

There are occasions when concern about a child may mean that we have to consult other agencies. Whilst we would always aim to work in partnership with parents, there may be exceptions to this when concerns are raised for the protection of a child.

On very rare occasions, Social Care, whilst undertaking an investigation under S47 of the Children Act 1989, may want to speak to a child without parents’ knowledge. This decision would be made by the police and social care; we are required to work collaboratively with partner agencies and would therefore cooperate with direction given. This would, however, always only be done in situations where a child might be at immediate risk of harm. To gain consent at this point may increase the level of risk to the child or cause evidence of a crime to be lost.

The procedures which we follow have been laid down by the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board, and the PRU has adopted a Safeguarding Policy in line with this for the safety of all. If you want to know more about our procedures, please speak to the Executive Headteacher, Teacher in Charge at one of our sites, or your child’s class teacher. Our policy is published on our website (www.bucksprimarypru.co.uk).

The Designated Safeguarding Lead is Stuart Cateridge (01296 387300) who is supported by the Additional Designated Safeguarding Leads, Jaime Loftus (01296 387300) and Sarah McGowan (01296 387300).

If you have any serious concerns about your child or any other pupil at Pathways PRU please do not hesitate to contact the Designated Safeguarding Lead or Additional Designated Safeguarding Leads who know who to contact for the best advice and help, and are experienced in using the appropriate degree of confidentiality.

It is a requirement for all schools to ensure that visitors who are likely to have unsupervised, regular or intensive contact with children to have completed safer recruitment vetting checks.  At the PRU we have procedures in place to make sure those checks are in place for visitors to our site, and where appropriate we carry out identity and DBS checks at the appropriate level ourselves or seek written confirmation that those checks have been completed.

PRU staff regularly visit other schools as part of our service to schools. Our staff will carry written confirmation (a letter of assurance) that all of our staff have had the appropriate recruitment and vetting checks and staff photo ID cards. We expect that schools will ask to see those documents as part of their own safeguarding procedures.  Any questions can be directed to the relevant PRU site.