School Home Support
Tel: 0845 337 0850
Registered Charity No: 1084696
School Home Support (SHS) provides highly trained practitioners in schools to provide a link between school, child and family - research has shown that when parents engage with their child’s education, the child’s attainment is significantly enhanced, whatever the social background. SHS workers aim to address the reasons behind persistent lateness, truancy, failure to do homework, or bullying for example. These range from the practical - arranging for a washing machine to be fixed when a child is missing school because his or her uniform is dirty - to the emotional and psychological - addressing alcohol or substance abuse.
The SHS workers build strong personal relationships - they have the time to listen to parents at the school gate, visit families at home and offer practical and emotional support to any pupil. In doing so they are able to get to the root cause of parents’ and carers’ lack of engagement in school life or reluctance to support their children. Difficulties may relate to housing and money worries, settling in, coping with significant change, health concerns, work pressure, feelings of intimidation or exclusion for example. SHS workers are able to identify difficulties and address them before they reach crisis point. Practitioners are often recruited locally which can mean they have an insight into the issues faced by families in the area - the work that they carry out can vary from one school to the next.
Sofronie Foundation believes each child should have the same opportunities and SHS plays a vital role in closing the gap between those children whose home life provides a secure basis for their education and those children who do not get that vital support. Rather than take over, SHS engages parents and carers in playing their part in their child’s education.
Sofronie Foundation is contributing £250,000 over three years (2009-12) towards a pilot programme which aims to multiply the impact of early intervention programmes that tackle literacy and numeracy difficulties by involving parents and carers in their child’s education. The schools involved in this pilot programme are running literacy and numeracy programmes designed to help those children falling behind their classmates (Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts). Providing SHS workers at these schools is expected to facilitate the children’s successful completion of the programmes and their ability to maintain the gains they make.