Management Information Sheet
Virtual School Offer for Children with a Social Worker
The role of the Virtual School Head was extended to include children with a social worker from September 2021.
What are the Virtual School's duties?
The Virtual School for Looked After and Previously Looked After Children, EAL and GRT have the following duties to perform:
- Make visible the disadvantages that children with a social worker can experience, enhancing partnerships between education settings and local authorities to help all agencies hold high aspirations for these children
- Promote practice that supports children's engagement in education, recognising that attending an education setting can be an important factor in helping to keep children safe from harm
- Level up children's outcomes and narrow the attainment gap so every child can reach their potential - this will include helping to make sure that children with a social worker benefit from support to recover from the impact of COVID-19
- Offer advice and support to key professionals to help children make progress, including through increasing their confidence in using evidence-based interventions
The following update gives you information of support you are able to access immediately and information about the ongoing development of our offer.
Consultation event
We are pleased to be holding a consultation event on Wednesday 3 November, 4pm to 5pm open to all professionals supporting children and young people with a social worker to share the support you will be able to access through the Virtual School and gain the insight of our colleagues working directly with these children and young people to help shape our extended training offer.
The event will cover:
- Establishing the remit of the duties for children with a social worker
- Defining the cohort and summarising recent research about their experiences within education
- Outlining how the Virtual School is responding to the new duties
- What is in included in our offer as part of our initial response
- How you can help use your experience to influence and shape our extended training offer and support
To book a place on the event, please email harriet.tunnicliff@norfolk.gov.uk.
Joining information will be sent on Monday 1 November 2021.
Please note that this event will be recorded for sharing afterward, if you be unable to attend.
Extension of our enrichment offer for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a collection of high quality, age-appropriate books for children from birth until the month they turn five.
Through the Virtual School, this offer is now extended to include those children with a social worker aged 0-5. The Imagination Library will only use the child's information for providing the books and will securely destroy/delete the information when it is no longer required for the purpose, ie on the month of the child's fifth birthday when they will receive their last book. Parental permission is required to share the child's information to be added to the scheme.
Contact harriet.tunnicliff@norfolk.gov.uk for information on how to register.
Fully subsidised menu of online CPD through Trauma Informed Schools
As part of our offer of support, there is now a fully subsidised menu of online CPD resources for both education and social care professionals supporting children with a social worker from Trauma Informed Schools UK. The training licence for your chosen course will allow you access to the material over a 6-month period.
Titles available to choose from include:
- Developmental Trauma: What every child professional needs to know
- Supporting parents to use PACE in relating to their child
- Supporting schools to become trauma informed and mentally healthy
- With follow up webinar - Whole School implementation of trauma informed practice to promote mentally healthy cultures for all
For professionals supporting children 0-5:
- Working with Infant Trauma in Early Years Settings (a series of 3 webinars)
To request further information about the online courses, please contact harriet.tunnicliff@norfolk.gov.uk.
Developing our extended training offer
Our bespoke offer will be developed working with partners within the local authority and colleagues within education, social care and beyond. We will be working to identify schools and localities to work with us on these opportunities and help us measure impact on the children and young people with a social worker they are supporting.
We look forward to you joining us at our consultation event where we will share further plans with you. By working together we can help to remove the significant barriers to education of adversity and trauma that these children and young people experience and help those in Norfolk to flourish.
Stay up to date for further developments and opportunities
Web: Virtual school for looked after and previously looked after children
Email: virtual.schools@norfolk.gov.uk
Twitter: @SchoolCic
Your feedback is welcome at any point. Please do not hesitate to email Harriet Tunnicliff at the Virtual School at virtual.schools@norfolk.gov.uk if you wish to discuss a specific aspect of the new duties and the Norfolk response.