Mrs. G. Cheese

6^th July 2000

To: Headteachers of all Schools

Dear Colleague,

A Best Value Review of the above service has been completed and the Executive Education Committee has approved plans to restructure the service. This change is part of our strategy to improve support to you as we collectively seek to improve levels of school attendance in the County. It is also in line with recent government thinking and I am pleased to be able to tell you that the DfEE have announced that Norfolk will be a pilot authority for the development of Education Welfare Services.

I will write to you again before the start of the new term with full details of the changes and the name of the member of staff who will support your school. However, I thought it would be helpful to have some initial information about the restructuring and the impact that it will have on the service we provide to your school.

The new service will be called the Norfolk Pupil Attendance Service and will consist of two teams. The largest team will deal with operational (case related) matters and will comprise of 20.5 FTE Education Social Workers. The equivalent of 14.5 staff will be allocated to High schools and will have their time managed directly by head teachers. The remaining time will be used to provide attendance services for primary and special schools and to manage complex cases where court action is a possibility. All operational staff will work with clusters of schools to keep travel time to a minimum. Professional supervision and appraisal will remain with the LEA.

School based Education Social Workers will be expected to:

• follow up cases where there have been periods of prolonged unexplained absence or where there is a poor record of attendance;
• undertake specific case work relating to the above;
• offer advice on the keeping of registers, the monitoring of attendance, school policy and procedures relating to attendance;
• provide advice and information regarding child protection procedures;
• work flexibly to support school strategies for improving attendance.

School based staff will not be able to follow up first day absence and there will be insufficient time available to support this.

Operational staffing resources will be allocated by a formula similar to the one used to distribute the Pupil Retention Grant. You will receive an individual notification of the time available and High Schools will have an equivalent cash sum added to their budgets for the period of the pilot study. This will be devolved and ring-fenced money that can only be used to purchase the time allocated by the Norfolk Pupil Attendance Service.

A small Core Team will also be created by the reorganisation. It will:

• monitor the implementation of policy and practice towards attendance throughout the county;
• undertake register inspections;
• develop guidance and publicity materials relating to attendance;
• undertake the statutory duties of the local authority in relation to child employment;
• provide guidance and training on child protection procedures.

From September, child protection referrals will be made directly to Social Services and not through the Norfolk Pupil Attendance Service. I will be writing to you separately about this but would emphasis at this stage that all NPAS staff will have taken part in child protection training and will be able to offer advice and support to you.

As you will appreciate, this is a significant change to bring about in a very short period of time. During the next two weeks Education Welfare Service staff will be being slotted in to their new posts. They will also have to complete existing casework and prepare for their new responsibilities from September.

The re-organisation will mean that some staff will be working with different clusters of schools next term but, as the details of this will not be clear until the very end of this term, it will not be possible for staff in the Service to make advance arrangements for school visits for next school year. Similarly, time and co-operation will be needed at the very beginning of the Autumn Term both by yourselves as well as our staff to implement and adjust to the new arrangements.

I will write to you again with further details but in the meantime, I am confident that you will appreciate that we have to allow staff time to prepare for the introduction of our new service which we are certain will result in support for schools and children being available on a much more clearly defined basis than previously.

Yours sincerely,

Director of Education