At Greenfields, we are committed to keeping children safe from harm.

We work very closely with other Nottingham City Council agencies to ensure that all of our children are safe.

Our Designated Senior Lead (DSL) is Terry Smith, Headteacher, who is responsible for ensuring that all Safeguarding procedures are adhered to. Three other senior members of staff (Assistant |Headteachers Sarah Simpson, Danielle Siriboe and Clare Thomas) are trained as DSLs and all staff have regular basic safeguarding training and updates.

Our Safeguarding Governor is Rebecca Kirk.

VISION & VALUES

The notion of ‘care’ has always been a significant part of the vision and values for Greenfields Community since it opened in 2005.

Care is consequently at the centre of everything that we do as a school and informs many of the policies and practices that we follow at the school. This includes caring for each other, for the children for the families we are fortunate to serve and caring for the staff who work here.

Greenfields chose to be called ‘Greenfields COMMUNITY School,’ sending a message to the community that the school is here to serve them. Greenfields is 100% committed to being a ‘community’ school. Any child who lives within the catchment area has the right to attend the school and to be welcomed here. Greenfields is a fully ‘inclusive’ school.

We are fortunate to work with a wide variety of children and families from all over the world – we have 35 languages spoken at Greenfields.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Some of our funding is then used specifically to support this notion of care – a counsellor is employed three days a week to offer therapeutic support to those who need it; a Learning Mentor supports children who may have barriers to learning; a Music teacher works with us for two days per week to develop music and singing; a gardener creates spaces for the children to learn in, developing gardening skills with children; a Forest Schools teacher supplies two days per week of Forest Schools provision for all of the children from Nursey to Year 6.

Care also permeates through our relationships policy, with zones of regulation, emotion coaching and relational work guiding the support for the children. Skilled Teachers, Teaching Assistants and Care Assistants offer caring but firm support within an atmosphere of strong routines and boundaries.

This notion of care has been tested over the last three years, through COVID and the current cost of living crisis. This has meant the school has had to work especially hard to continue to provide the best learning for the children.

Central to this concept of care is that of safeguarding children. The school has a complete commitment to keeping children safe and supported.

We have a Safeguarding Team that meets fortnightly to review children and families who may need support. Four members of staff are trained as DSLs (the Head Teacher, and three Assistant Headteachers) and meet with the counsellor, attendance lead, Safeguarding Governor and external agencies as appropriate. The Headteacher and KS1 Lead have both been working as DSLs since the school opened eighteen years ago.

The school has always worked very closely with a wide variety of external agencies – Children & Families, Targeted Family Support, Priority Families, Strengthening Families, etc – and is fortunate to have a Children’s Centre on the same site. Ten years of successive cuts to budgets have significantly impacted this provision, putting additional pressures on the school to continue family support.

In two consecutive Ofsted inspections the personal development of the children has been judged to be ‘Outstanding.'