Children at *home*, ready to learn!
News article from May 12, 2020
COVID-19 has impacted all of us in so many ways. School-Home Support practitioners are continuing to support the wellbeing of our most vulnerable families on a daily basis This includes responding to safety concerns when they arise, delivering food parcels to those families that are self-isolating and supporting families to engage with education from home.
With schools shutting, our focus evolved overnight from ‘Children in school, ready to learn’ to ‘Children at home, ready to learn’! Our practitioners are doing their best to support children by delivering learning resources and helping parents to set learning goals and engage with their children’s education.
Learning from home has seen increased importance placed on online learning. Our practitioners have found that this is excluding the most vulnerable families we support who do not have access to suitable technology and are at risk of falling further behind their peers.
SHS practitioners have so far identified over 100 families unable to access online learning, this number rising daily as needs are identified. These families desperately need access to IT hardware and data and having explored a number of supplier options, SHS has now partnered with Raspberry Pi Foundation to distribute IT hardware and equipment.
Supported by The Bloomfield Trust, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is generously donating computer hardware to SHS families, with the Pears Foundation and other SHS partners enabling SHS to supply families with data so that they can get online. School-Home Support’s IT manager is providing technical support to families to ensure they are able to assemble the equipment and start accessing their education online.
Thanks to our partners’ generosity our most vulnerable families now have the IT equipment and support they need so that their children can be at home, ready to learn!
