Parent Support Advisers Project

The local authority has been invited to take part in a project to assess the impact of a new support role, Parent Support Advisers in schools. These posts are fully funded by the DfES and will be supported by the local authority.

40 schools in this authority will be taking part in the project and we would like to invite your school to be one of them.

What is a Parent Support Adviser?

The Role description by the DfES states:

"This new, preventative role will support children and families where there are early signs that they could benefit from additional help. Recognising the importance of working in partnership with parents to improve children's lives the first response will be to involve parents in identifying appropriate support for the child and family. This could include a parenting programme, mentoring for the parent or child or one to one tuition for the child. The pilots will need to consider the most effective means of enabling Parent School Advisers to have sufficient leverage over, and ensure delivery of, the additional services children and their families might need" - Support for Parents: The best start for children. HM Treasury December 2005.

Who will they be?

Parent Support Advisers will be part of the school workforce though are unlikely to be qualified teachers and would have training for their role in line with the national standards for those working with parents.

What will they do?

The Parent Support Adviser will focus their work on preventative and early intervention activities and will work directly with parents in a non-judgemental way empowering them and their families to get the most out of the educational opportunities available.

The DfES has decided to set Parent Support Advisers in an extended schools context so all work within the project will link with the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA).

Norfolk Children's Services key priorities for the Parent Support Advisers project as submitted to the TDA are:

to improve the link with other agencies and act as a signpost at both parent and child level to ensure available support

to support school attendance

to support parents through exclusions

bring about children's engagement through working with parents in supporting their child's learning and development

to support transition between phases and or schools and other educational settings

to work with schools in establishing relationships and clear communication channels with parents

to support schools and parents in identifying opportunities for various small groups to access learning e.g. single male parents, EAL parents, carers for LAC

The project will run from January 2007, when Parent Support Advisers must be in post, and will cease at the end of July 2008. (Post 2008 arrangements will be subject to the government's annual spending review).

The draft job description and person specification for the posts has been written and is attached.

The staff for these posts can come from existing staff but they would expect to be essentially new appointments for the time of the project. Schools can indicate whether they would appoint an existing member of staff and use backfill arrangements that will enable a prompt start to fill the roll in January.

There is a tight time-scale for responses so we have drawn up criteria from which schools will be selected. These are:

Management criteria;

geographical locations to enable collaboration

school commitment to working with parents

strength of school management in providing line management and support to Parent Support Advisers

strength of school administrative systems to support budget holding Parent Support Advisers

commitment to providing admin support for Parent Support Advisers

Community criteria;

schools with transient populations

schools with attendance and exclusions profiles that indicate support requirement

schools with appropriate profiles that do not normally trigger additional support and funds

Other criteria;

commitment to data collection and sharing outcomes

commitment to monitoring and evaluation

commitment to training programmes/through release of Parent Support Advisers

We have attached a pro-forma for completion if you are interested in being part of the project. We are looking for responses from small groups of schools e.g. a High School and 3 or 4 primary schools from within a cluster.

Please send completed responses by 16 October 2006 to Val Creasy Attendance & Exclusions Manager, Carrow House, 301 King Street, Norwich, NR1 2TN - Fax No: 01603 224008.

At this stage we would simply like to find out whether you would like to be involved so that we can finalise the list of schools taking part. We will then get back to you with more details.

If you need any further information please contact Val Creasy on 01603 223528.

Parent Support Adviser (PSA)- Role description - DRAFT

Parent Support Advisers Pilot Project Form