Early Help at St Joseph’s
When a child and/or their family need some additional support, school are ready with our Early Help offer to provide this, both through school-based provision and in collaboration with our local specialist support agencies.
At St Joseph’s we have a strong culture of nurture and safeguarding: children know they are valued and will be listened to, as do our families. We understand the importance of Early Help and deliver this through fulfilling our safeguarding duties, Quality First Teaching, our vulnerable learners’ and SEND provision and in collaboration with other professional agencies. Ensuring that our children receive the help they need, when they need it gives them the best possible chance of thriving, learning and achieving both in school and out.
Our first step towards effective Early Help is to talk to parents and carers to gather background information on anything that may already be known about needs, or support that may already be in place. With permission, we will talk to other agencies, these include but are not limited to:
- Our partners in Early Years settings
- Previous schools
- Community health services, such as health visitors
- Children’s social care and the social workers team
We will then consider bringing everything together through writing an Early Support Assessment (ESA). This then allows us to plan support strategies, and monitor progress and development by holding regular reviews with families. This is the main tool that we would use to seek support from other agencies, through the Wiltshire ESA Hub.
Whether an ESA plan is in place or not, Early Help may be offered through the following ways:
- Parent Support Adviser (PSA): Terry Jones is our school Family Support Worker. Raising a family can be demanding and challenging. Where there are difficulties at home (for example lack of bedtime routines, behaviour needs or poor eating), Terry is able to offer targeted support to parents and carers. Support can be provided through face-to-face meetings, over the telephone or via email – whatever method suits a parents’ circumstances best. If Terry is unable to directly support, she is excellent at signposting to other agencies that can.
- Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA): Sometimes, a child may need targeted emotional support, where their learning and engagement is being impacted upon. This is provided through our ELSA programme and is run by Mrs Webb. The programme is designed to offer short-term support in the school day for those children who need it.
- Forest School: Classes have termly blocks of Forest School provision which is run by our forest school specialist, Mr Isaac Owens.
- SEND support: Mrs Sharon Carpenter is in school 2 days a week. She is available to offer advice to staff and parents and ensures that children receive the provision they need.
- School Nurse: We work closely with our school nurse, who is able to provide advice and guidance to parents on a variety of health and wellbeing issues.
- Attendance support: Every child whose attendance is below 95% is carefully monitored. If children are absent from school with no communication as to why, we will always seek to make contact with parents as part of our legal and safeguarding duties. For children with persistent absence and lateness we will work with our Education Welfare Officer (EWO) Rebecca Adams to improve this.
Other school-based provision includes, but is not limited to:
- Universal Quality first teaching provision: adapted teaching and learning to ensure equity for all and fully inclusive practice
- Positive behaviour systems: whole-school approaches to behaviour, rewards, restorative practices, and clear expectations and aspirations
- Extra-Curricular Clubs and Wrap Around Care: Extra-curricular clubs and wrap around school care are on offer to all children to encourage a healthy lifestyle, relationship building, physical activity and sports, social development skills and enhancement of the curriculum.
Early Help is offered and accepted on a voluntary basis, with the aim being to work with families to improve their situation. We hope that by offering support early, when problems are emerging, or beginning to have a negative impact on families’ ability to cope, these problems will be easier to address with short-term involvement from services and long term outcomes for learning and well-being improved.
Where can families access help?
For information on the Wiltshire Local Offer and how to access help, please use the link below:
https://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/local-offer
Other useful links to resources and helplines:
Wiltshire Children and Young People Emotional Wellbeing
CAMHS
Wiltshire CAMHS | Oxford Health CAMHS
Young Minds
YoungMinds | Mental Health Charity For Children And Young People | Young Minds
Childline
Childline | Free counselling service for kids and young people
Wiltshire Parent/Carer Council
Spurgeons: The Family Hub Wiltshire council provides parental and family support services for children and young people aged 0-19 (extending to 25 with SEND) ensuring a strong foundation for your child’s future.
Spurgeons Charity | Home