Introduction
Core values
Via its Fairer Future principles, Southwark Council is committed to working for every child to realise their own potential and to ensuring they have a great start in life. Building on this commitment, interagency practice around attendance and inclusion should be guided the following principles:
- Keeping children in education is everyone’s business. Ask not ‘whose job is this?’ but ‘who is best positioned to enable positive change’ in relation to attendance and inclusion
- Ensuring indicators of poor attendance and behaviour are addressed at the earliest possible stage, and escalated in a timely manner to avoid drift
- A commitment to delivering collaborative and restorative practice with families to understand and target the factors underpinning poor attendance and behaviour
- Making sure all children with persistently low attendance or at risk of exclusion have targeted help and support to improve attendance and behaviour that is time-limited, evidence-based and subject to regular review
Following the restructure of early help services in Southwark in 2018, all schools have a dedicated Family Early Help (FEH) single point of contact (SPOC) who meets with each school on a termly basis to identify children who meet the threshold for statutory education intervention from the local authority, and to agree whether such action will be taken.
In addition, trading and maintained primary and secondary schools benefit from a significantly expanded offer of a full Team Around the School (TAS) meeting. This meeting provides an opportunity to explore and plan interventions to reduce the negative impact of wider adverse childhood experiences that affect a child or young person’s ability to learn and achieve, including parental mental ill-health, domestic abuse, substance misuse, parental conflict or financial exclusion and agree the most appropriate multi-agency response to these.
Although the SPOC does not hold ultimate responsibility for the coordination and delivery of services for children whose attendance or behaviour at school is poor, schools are strongly encouraged to use the SPOC and TAS frameworks to work proactively with the local authority. This will help ensure that we collectively identify young people who have poor school attendance or are at risk of exclusion at the earliest opportunity and that help and support are provided at the right time and at the appropriate threshold of need.
From September 2022, the TAS will incorporate the new requirement for local authorities to organise termly Targeting Support Meetings with each school in their area so the school’s attendance leads and their point of contact in the local authority can identify, discuss, and agree joint targeted actions for pupils who are persistently or severely absent and those at risk of becoming so. A representative from the Education Inclusion Team will always be a core member of these meetings.
All schools and lead professionals can seek an Attendance and Inclusion consultation with a Senior Education Welfare Officer by emailing the Education Inclusion Team at earlyhelp@southwark.gov.uk or calling 020 7525 1922 (option 3).
Further information on the work of the FEH service with schools can be accessed below:
Page last updated: 16 January 2023
