Although we are unable to offer advice on individual children, we can:
- Make visible the disadvantages that children with a social worker can experience.
- Work in partnership with children’s services and education settings to champion the attendance, attainment, progress and inclusivity of this cohort, children in school are much more likely to achieve.
- Analyse data to identify the needs of this cohort and address local barriers to strong educational outcomes.
- Support education settings to narrow the attainment gap, so every child with a social worker can reach their attainment potential and achieve at least good progress.
- Promote practice that supports children’s mental health, ability to self-regulate and engagement in education, recognising that attending an education setting can be an important factor in both helping to keep children safe from harm and long-term positive life outcomes.
- Offer advice and signpost schools and educational settings to additional Local Authority services and ensure that they receive the support required to help their cohort of children with a social work.
- Provide high quality training opportunities to develop schools and education settings understanding particularly for attachment awareness, trauma responsive practice and emotion coaching, but also around DV, poverty and other issues common in this cohort, as well as behaviour strategies to help avoid exclusion.
- Support education settings to become attachment aware and implement trauma responsive practices.
- Provide training and information on interventions known to make an impact on CWSW. (Michael Sanders, 2018)
- Offer advice on educational issues to social workers.