Pastoral Care

The pastoral philosophy of the College is to provide a happy, caring and safe environment where our pupils are encouraged to succeed and achieve their full potential.

The Pastoral Care System in St Joseph’s College helps to promote a sense of community, raises self-esteem, recognises effort and achievement and maintains good discipline throughout the College.

The Form Teacher has a detailed knowledge of the many individual needs, aspirations, interests and academic progress of each pupil in their class and will work with teachers, parents and others in supporting the learning and development of each pupil.

The Head of Year supported by a member of the Senior Leadership Team, oversees the general welfare of all pupils in the year group. We make available to pupils the help and support of a number of services to meet the varied and often complex needs of pupils. We also provide a Peer Mentoring scheme which provides additional support for pupils making the transition from primary to post primary education.

Safeguarding And Child Protection

The aim of our Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy is to protect our pupils by ensuring that everyone who works in our school – teachers, non-teaching staff and volunteers – has clear guidance on the detection and management of situations where abuse or neglect of a child is suspected. The central principle our staff support is that every child has the fundamental right to be safe from harm and to have proper care given to their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

You can download our Safeguarding leaflet here.

Operation Encompass

We are an Operation Encompass school. This is an early intervention safeguarding partnership between schools and the Police. It is aimed at supporting children who are victims of domestic violence.

How does it work?

When police attend an incident of domestic violence where one of our pupils are present, they will inform the schools designated teachers for Child Protection at the start of the next day. This information is shared in the strictest of confidence and school staff are only told on a need-to-know basis. Staff will provide immediate support to any child who has been the victim of domestic abuse.

Anti-Bullying

St Joseph’s College is completely opposed to bullying and will not tolerate any form of bullying behaviour. It is entirely contrary to our values and ethos as a caring community and is unequivocally rejected by all members of our staff. Our Anti-Bullying Policy is integral to our policy of Pastoral Care and it is firmly embedded in our School Mission Statement and School Aims and Objectives.

Pastoral Points of Contact

Pastoral contacts can be found on the Points of Contact page.