#Chances4Children: Funding for projects boosting attainment of children with a social worker

What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) has announced the names of the projects selected for the grant through an open call following the publication of research earlier this year which showed that interventions designed to improve educational attainment were lower for young people with a social worker than for their peers.

Children and young people with a social worker have, on average, lower educational attainment that their peers, the research shows.

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The three projects, based in Bath and North East Somerset, York and Hartlepool, aim to close this attainment gap by placing an advisory teacher within children’s social care teams.

A spokesman for WWCSC said this initiative is designed to “help schools to improve their ability to support students displaying challenging behaviour, and providing support for vulnerable children as they transition into secondary school”.

The project in Bath and North East Somerset is based on a small pilot run during lockdown, and will see an experienced advisory teacher placed within local authority social care teams to support children with a child protection plan and those classed as children in need  in order to closely monitor the educational outcomes of these children. 

“Advisory teachers will work alongside both schools and families to break down barriers to education and ensure that best practice is carried out and shared across schools. It is hoped the project will reduce numbers of exclusions, increase attendance, and raise the educational progress of this group,” the spokesman said.

Five primary schools in York will receive a range of services from the city council’s behaviour outreach support service to help support pupils displaying behaviour that challenges their learning and school attendance, or the learning of their peers. 

The programme aims to support up to 90 families to reduce the number of pupils who are excluded or are at risk of exclusion and builds on work previously done in Lincolnshire.

The programme to support transition to secondary school is built on a new approach within Hartlepool Borough Council, bringing additional resources and learning to vulnerable children with increased risk of a difficult secondary transition. 

The approach is a mixture of whole school training and targeted training focusing. The programme aims to improve the educational, social and emotional outcomes for 100 children with a social worker.

“The impact of these projects will be assessed by independent evaluators, adding to the small but growing body of evidence around what works to improve the educational attainment of children with a social worker,” WWCSC said.