Image description.

Direct Services to Schools

Virtual School for Children in our Care

“It takes a village to raise a child”

The Virtual School team is committed to working in partnership with our children, schools, families, and professionals to ensure an appropriate education or training placement is in place for our children and young people in care.

We ensure that additional resources such as Pupil Premium  are used to overcome barriers to learning or to support children's and young person's learning.  We are made up of a team of designated strategic and key stage officers committed to supporting the children's workforce and to champion the education, mental health and wellbeing of children in care and contribute to their educational enrichment and future accomplishments.

We want to ensure that all children and young people who are in our care have access to a full-time education that is tailored to meet their needs.  We also aim to continue to develop provision and advice to all stakeholders to support previously looked after children and post 16 young people.  More recently, we are also aiming to provide support and guidance for vulnerable children and young people who are known to social care and may be in kinship care.

The Virtual School team are steadfast in providing the best possible intervention and support for all children in care.  We build upon their successes and keep expectations high so that they continue to achieve, do amazing things, thrive and become confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy, and fulfilling lives.

Eva Tabaton,  Virtual School Headteacher

https://www.virtualschoolgreenwich.org.uk/

Services

Our key statutory support includes:
  • Each officer oversees a cohort of Children and Young Persons (CYPs) and will attend one Personal Education Planning meeting each academic year
  • Ensuring our CYPs attend school and have access to education
  • Liaising with other boroughs and agencies to ensure all children in our care achieve the best outcomes
  • Working with each school's designated teacher to ensure Pupil Premium and Personalised Education Allowance is used on the most effective strategies for individual children in our care
  • Advising and supporting all our stakeholders to ensure best outcomes for our CYPs
  • Developing enhanced transition support for our children
  • Supporting young people in care to have post 16 and post 19 aspirations
  • Providing advice and guidance for previously looked-after children (PLAC) and those in Kinship Care
  • Providing advice and guidance for post 16 and care leavers
  • Providing advice and guidance for children currently or previously known to social care 
  • Utilising Educational Psychologist time and Royal Greenwich SEN Team to support with next steps
 
Our key Extended duties include:
  • Working with school leaders to improve staff wellbeing and emotional resilience in collaboration with Knowledge Change Action (KCA)
  • Promoting London wide Inclusion improvement in line with the pan London Inclusion Charter.
  • Embedding best practice in school using the Attachment Research Community (ARC) network and their Inclusion Audit tool.
  • Encouraging schools to receive accreditation, like the UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools Award, to highlight, celebrate and share already good practice.
  • Challenging schools to embed trauma responsive practice in all parts of their school operations.
 
Additional support available
Guidance
We provide a wide range of support, information, advice and training for schools, social workers, carers and other professionals proactively and in response to demand, delivered by experienced staff focused firmly on the end result of improving the outcomes for our children and young persons in care.  We also provide support, advice and guidance  for children whom may have been previously looked after, care leavers and children known to social care.
 
CPD supporting our colleagues
Our focus is to further develop best practice approaches that cover a range of issues directed at providing further support for all our children in care by way of meeting their needs.  CPD courses can also be delivered remotely or in your school.  CPD is also available as an INSET day. We offer training to support professionals understanding of trauma awareness and trauma responsive interactions, some of this is delivered using virtual reality headsets.  
 
Inclusion and attendance
One of our main priorities is to improve the inclusion and attendance of all our children in care as well as other key groups of children and young people who may be known to social care, recognising the links between attendance and inclusion and take responsibility of securing and sustaining a suitable educational setting.  We implement a variety of initiatives to ensure that including multi-agency meetings, sharing attendance data, contacting foster and social care colleagues when attendance is an ongoing, serious concern and discussions with attendance leads and designated teachers in schools.
 
Designated Safeguarding Lead
Since our responsibilities in the Virtual School have extended to provide and advice and guidance for children known to social care as well as taking strategic responsibility to improve overall outcomes, we are working more closely with DSL’s in schools to challenge and support the education offer for children with a social worker.  We continue to promote our responsibilities to colleagues in schools as well as across Children Services to ensure that there is more focus on education, attendance and achievement for all children known to social care.
 
Beyond the classroom
Children and young persons in our care have access to wider educational activities such as music through our Music Hub project, our Homework Club where all children and young people receive support with their homework and can also participate in other fun activities including sports and creative tasks.  It provides a social setting for our children to come together and celebrate their special communalism. It provides a social setting for our children to come together and celebrate their individualism and enjoy a communal safe space.  In addition the Virtual School offers school journeys, trips to develop culture capital and a yearly celebration event, to highlight and champion the amazing achievements of our children in care.

Costs

All our support is free of charge to Royal Greenwich Schools.

Contacts

Royal Greenwich Virtual School

020 8921 5029
looked-after-children-education@royalgreenwich.gov.uk