Child given money by "Vicar" at school

[TakeALookAtTheseSwatches]

So my 10 year old daughter (year 5) came home from school on Thursday and told us the Vicar (possibly just a trainee, I'm not entirely sure) who was taking their collective worship at school gave her £5 to "get herself an Easter treat" and that it was "just between me and you" I asked her if she told the teacher and she said no. I feel quite uneasy about this, should I say something to the school?

I'm not sure any schools in E&W were still running on Thursday - the latest term date I can find is Wednesday 1st, although possibly I've missed one. If OP is abroad then there will be different safeguarding bodies to contact.

Some schools, particularly Catholic schools (which this doesn't seem to be), break up on the Thursday.

From what I can gather she somehow ended up sitting next to the Vicar, I assume maybe the head teacher takes over at the end of the assembly or something? I need to properly clarify with her exactly when it happened, I can't see how it's not been noticed by anyone else tbh. Annoyingly there won't be anyone there until 20th when they reopen so I can't contact anyone until then.

We're in County Durham, all schools were open until Thursday.

Yeah, you never hear of clergy being nonces do you 🤔

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth

This is a major safeguarding breach. You need to report it to the school. Although the school should be responsible for the conduct of adults on their premises, you could also report it to the church who should take that very seriously too. Who the fuck is giving primary age children money and asking them to keep secrets??? No no no.

"Nobody else got one" might indicate that it's not true.
I'm conflicted.

Absolutely!

I still don’t quite see how this happened in any competent school, but the fact she’s said it has means it needs looking into.

Email the office, put safeguarding in the subject line and tell them you need to make a safeguarding report regarding an incident in school on the last day of term. Someone is probably monitoring email periodically and should get a safeguarding lead to get in touch.

You can also contact your local LADO. Just Google LADO and your area.

Family in Cheshire and Tyne and Wear only broke up yesterday. Some schools ended term weirdly late this year.

The whole of the North East was open.

Op I would 100% report this both to the school and to the C of E safeguarding officer for your diocese.

This will give you an idea but appreciate it’s not local to you liverpoolcofe.org/diocese-safeguarding/parish-safeguarding-officers/

South west here and we were still at school yesterday too.
I know it's the holidays now but based on the potential severity I would be emailing the teacher/headteacher and any other safeguarding lead to hope that one of them is contactable. It may all be innocent and other children were given money (though this does sound under heard of) or maybe there was something she was supposed to have done with the money which she didn't understand.
Anyway you need to try and get hold of someone to let them know and to investigate.

And yet so many don't know better or have ulterior motives.

I could write a long list of weird, weird things church people have done that I personally and 1st hand know of.

Many are misguided rather than predators but still ffs.

Report him.

`Of course.

Does your dc have any contact with this guy at church?

In that case I would contact 111 or your local SW out of hours number and report it. This person will be around kids all the time because of his role. If he is in fact grooming children it needs to be reported ASAP. I definitely would not wait until schools reopen.

Newsflash, different areas have different holidays.

I wouldn’t wait until 20th. I’d report now to school, church and police

Here are the contact details for the Church of England Diocese of Durham safeguarding team. There will be an out of hours contact as well. They will take this very seriously.

https://www.durhamdiocese.org/support-for-your-role/parish-safeguarding-officers/support-and-contacts

You can also contact the Local Authority Designated Officer for your area.

It's a safeguarding concern, and the school will either investigate or be able to clear up any misunderstanding.
Headteachers still monitor their emails during the holidays so will see this and prioritise it.
Either way it needs to be on their radar as soon as possible.

You'd hope the LADO would be more helpful than the one in Brighton.

Very red flag and needs reporting…but there is also the possibility your child got it from somewhere else and is trying to feed you a convincing lie. Just report the facts to the safeguarding lead at school. Don’t start a witch hunt.

You can start to see why people like Jimmy Savile got away with what they did when some people's default response is to assume that a potential victim is lying and just dismiss it out of hand.

Schools broke up here in Somerset on Thursday 2nd. Your research is flawed.