There was a decision made by the Head teachers in the Frome area to work with Somerset Council staff to take change of the behaviour fund for the Frome Area. During this process, the Champion was able to support conversations/meetings between Inclusion Services and FLP and also supporting Deanne from Somerset Works with local knowledge in her transition to Frome FLP Lead. It was also decided that in the new way of allocating the funding for student’s support, the Champion would be included in the Frome AIM meeting and PEVP Panel alongside the Heads, to support shared local knowledge and gap analysis but also to be able to offer insight into other local offers that could support the schools, their students and families.
Because of the Champions inclusion in these meetings, there has been the ability to can multiple education conversations that are happening in a number of different areas, for example the Educational Steering group meetings and Frome Town Councils’ CYP Working group meetings. This supports the new look FLP to be up to speed on all information around education in Frome when building the new education plans. Also having a Champion invited into the PEVP meetings meant that there could also be community offers put on the table to support those particularly vulnerable students and scaffold them and their families alongside their access to the funded offers. It has also supported positive relationship building between Champions and the schools/Heads locally, with many of them contacting the Champion through the TAS platform for local connections and/or advice on who to link to in statutory services.
Vulnerabilities for students are often broader than schools’ ability to work with, working within a wider community network enables us to offer a more holistic service to families. This often strengthens the resilience of our learners and their wider family. Working with Champions we are able to identify needs, access community resources and to jointly find creative solutions. Champions offer an ability to access community parent and student voice, which helps triangulate what we hear from schools and students.
Head of Inclusion Services
