Hi, my name is Jo Issott, my title here at School is Safeguarding Lead and Child and Family Officer. Another role I have is Data protection officer. My job is to help our children and parents in lots of different ways.
Being a parent or carer at times is a hard job for everyone and at times we need a helping hand. That is part of my job to offer support and advice where I can or to signpost for further support. My wealth and experience comes from many years of Safeguarding and working with families, pupils and adults with many varying needs. I have had a lot of experience in parenting and delivering training for parents, carers and professionals.
I can offer support in lots of different ways. This might be lending a listening ear over the phone, signposting you for other support or it could be you coming into school to meet with me or me coming to your home to talk about things in more depth. I want you to feel comfortable and for it to be a positive experience to get the best outcomes for you and your child. If home and school work together, this gives the best outcomes for your child.
I can also support you and identify any problems by completing a child and family assessment (what was an Early help assessment) that describes the arrangements and services that are on offer to help you and your family. It is about bringing everyone together and talking with you about the best way to give you the help that you feel you need, to enable you to make things within your family work better. This is known as a team around the child (TAC)
I am also the Schools safeguarding Lead, this means that I put in policies and procedures to help keep all staff, children and visitors to the school safe. That the staff are trained to be able to respond to any safeguarding concerns in accordance to those policies and procedures.
As the school has grown with the addition of the Annex and more pupils attending, I now have an assistant who may be asked by me to contact you and offer some early support or ask to gather further information from you, her name is Vicki. This is so that I can support with some of the more complex issues families and children face sometimes. If the support required is a child in need or child protection level support will come from me. I attend a lot of the Child in care reviews and work with all carers, parents and a range of professionals.
We, as all schools, hold personal data about all our children, their families and our staff team, part of my job is ensuring that the school looks after that data in accordance with general data protection regulation (GDPR) . If you have any questions about that you can contact me.
We want our school to work as a community. You are the parents and carers and know what issues you face with your child and in your local communities. We want to work with you to improve the outcomes for the children going into adulthood, so if you have any ideas on further support you require please do contact us. This could be things like Knife crime/self harming support/mental wellbeing support/parenting/internet safety/ education support etc. We can look at how we can offer that support out to parents.
Annually, we ask for you to complete a questionnaire that informs us how things are going and what we need to look to improve, this is really important to help us help the children and you as their family. We have made this easier to complete in different formats and doesn't take long, if you need any help with this please contact the school.
I look forward to working with you all.