Supporting the educational needs of children and young people in foster care

“Supporting the educational needs of children and young people in foster care”

Supervising social workers support the care of the placement but our children and young people spend half their time in school, five days a week, battling to overcome the obstacles they face in addition to those of their peers. 

Obstacles to supporting fostered children achieve their best educational outcomes  

Child – the effects of trauma, poor attachment, developmental delay, poor brain development, poor self-esteem and poor emotional health are all likely to produce behaviours and learning difficulties which inhibit educational progress. In Scotland, these additional support needs are recognised within legislation for all Looked After Children and it is the responsibility of the corporate parent body to meet these needs.

School – schools vary tremendously in how well their staff are trained to recognise, accept, deal with and resourced to meet these additional support needs. Nursery and primary schools tend to have the necessary holistic approach which allows them to do this better than the secondary and tertiary sectors, although this has patchily improved over the past five years. 

What Education Support Co-ordinator do:

Work with all carers and applicants, all Social Work staff and admin staff, and their main responsibility is to have an overview of the education of all placed children and support our carers in helping children achieve the best possible educational outcomes, Tasks include: 

• Liaising with school staff and the wider corporate parent group to support education placements and aid transition to new cross boundary schools. 
• Attending school meetings, robust anti –exclusion influence, write pertinent reports. 
• Liaise with Secondary colleagues to look at the continuity of standards across the primary and secondary sectors along with creating and developing assessment tools for Learning Teaching Scotland in relation to Curriculum for Excellence.
• Offering schools support, materials etc. 
• Advocating in individual situations e.g. consulting with Enquire Scotland and Scottish Government 
• Speaking with carers and being available to them for advice, training, workshops, provide resources, education handbook, newsletters etc. 
• Providing resources to children through Welcome Box, invite contact. 
• Play a part in our participation agenda 

Advocate for our Looked after child within wider community.