SHS in the Media: The cost of increasing safeguarding responsibilities for schools
News article from January 17, 2017
As austerity measures cut deeper, the range of support schools are expected to offer grows wider, putting everyone under pressure. Our Interim CEO, Jaine Stannard, was published in Teach Secondary (and its digital counterpart, Teachwire) this week, speaking about the increasing pressure and how it might affect vulnerable pupils. She begins:
“It’s news to no-one’s ears that school staff are feeling the strain. A report from the Education Policy Institute found that the majority of teachers work an average of 48.2 hours per week – a full day over the standard working week. One in five work 60 hours per week or more. And the pressure doesn’t look set to ease.
Due to reduced budgets, local authorities are passing much of the responsibility for ‘early help’ cases to schools; and the Ofsted report, ‘Early Help – Whose Responsibility?’ states that schools should deliver such services.
However, as social care thresholds have risen, cases that previously met the threshold (and were therefore the responsibility of the local authority) are now classified as early help. As such, schools are now facing having to deal with complex cases, where families have multiple presenting issues – with no extra funding or resources.
I work for School-Home Support (SHS), a charity helping children and young people overcome challenging home lives in order to make the most of their education.
We’re in constant dialogue with schools and hear the same things again and again. Senior leadership team members tell us that they are given new safeguarding responsibilities with little training (often just one day at most) and no supervision.”
You can read the full article here: http://www.teachwire.net/news/support-schools-must-offer-vulnerable-families-is-becoming-complex