SHS History - School Home Support

Our History

The work of School-Home Support started in 1984 in Langdon Park Secondary School, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, by an Education Welfare Officer – Bridget Cramp. Bridget saw that the pupils needed a level of support that went beyond the classroom to be able to fully engage in their learning and achieve their potential.

Bridget, along with Terry Farrell, Head of Year 7, and Peter Andrews, Head Teacher at Langdon Park, began building relationships with the families of pupils and often this meant visiting them outside of school hours in order to understand how their home lives impacted on behaviour at school.

All three worked tirelessly to find practical and emotional solutions that would support these families to overcome issues and make the most of their time at school. They soon realised that other schools needed the service they were providing too and the East London Schools Fund was created, supporting this work across East London.

Our ambitious vision is that every child will be in school, every day, by 2050.

At School-Home Support, our remit is to improve attendance. We provide bespoke whole family support with and through schools to help understand and tackle barriers to good school attendance. We do this by building trust, resilience and skills across the whole family. We also work with schools and policy makers to share best practice to improve low attendance.

Our vision, mission and values Our strategy

40 years supporting families and children to get back to school across England

Over the past 40 years, our name has changed and mergers with other services have created what we know today as School-Home Support. Our aim has always stayed the same: to get children in school, ready to learn. Whatever it takes.

Key dates:

- - - 1984: Founded by Bridget Cramp and Terry Farrell as the Langdon Park School Fund.
    - 1989: The charity becomes the East London Schools Fund.
    - 1994: East London Schools Fund operates in Tower Hamlets
    - 1999: School-Home Support Service (UK) is set up with the aim to reach more children and young people.
    - 2001: East London Schools Fund and School-Home Support Service (UK) deliver services across schools in 9 London Boroughs.
    - 2003: East London Schools Fund officially becomes School-Home Support UK.
    - 2006: School-Home Support UK and School Home Liaison, a charity with similar services, merge to become School-Home Support and deliver services in 97 schools.
    - 2008: The School-Home Support Training and Consultancy Service launches.
    - 2011: School-Home Support achieves City & Guilds Approved Centre status and commences delivery of C&G Level 3 Work with Parents.
    - 2012: We deliver pilots on ‘Troubled Families’ initiatives in Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Bexley.
    - 2015: School-Home Support launches its Membership scheme
    - 2017: Commence delivery in Kent and Thurrock
    - 2018: Commence delivery in Bradford, the start of our national expansion
    - 2019: Commence delivery of the Opportunity Area funded Team Around the School project in Blackpool
    - 2020: Demand for services quadrupled during and after the pandemic with our staff recognised as “key workers”
    - 2020: Commence delivery in Manchester and Eastbourne
    - 2022: Commence delivery of Department of Education funded Intensive Support project in Liverpool
    - 2023: Launch of Senior Attendance Lead Training to schools
    - 2023: Launch of our first national campaign “Dig a Little Deeper”
    - 2023: Recognised as best practice in the Education Select Committee Inquiry report: Persistent absence and support for disadvantaged groups.
    - 2023: Published our first research project on parental attitudes to school attendance, produced working in coalition with education charities Impetus and Khulisa, the research was been carried out by Public First and will be the first of its kind nationally.