Safeguarding and Attendance: Partnerships with Families
In our first article on this topic we looked at a definition and understanding of Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA) and we explored how anxiety can impact both engagement with school and attendance. Successful work to reduce EBSA is rooted in developing effective partnership with parents and carers. This is the first of the expectations set out in Chapter 2 of Working Together to improve school attendance, but many parents and carers report this is not their experience.
This article explores some of the factors underpinning these concerns and offers an alternative template letter for families when attendance first becomes an issue, including a self-assessment tool parents and carers can share with your setting to work towards a shared understanding of the problem.
Working with Parents
Building strong relationships with parents is fundamental to safeguarding work. When children begin struggling with attendance these relationships become even more crucial. Parents of children with social workers, those who've experienced trauma, or families facing ongoing stress often feel judged or blamed when attendance issues arise.
Traditional attendance approaches can inadvertently damage the trust you've worked hard to build with families. Parents can become defensive, feeling that their child's absence is viewed as a failing on their part, rather than a symptom of the complex challenges they're already navigating. How you respond makes an enormous difference to how they feel and the change you can enable.
A Collaborative Alternative
Many of us are parents – we know our children, we worry for them and we have many ideas about what works best for them. Taking the time to hear families’ views is essential. Drawing on many conversations between parents and staff EdPsychEd have developed a framework to support these conversations.
Feedback from parents evidences a directive approach is not effective. Parents are left feeling ‘told off’, unhappy memories of school resurface, and they sometimes feel powerless in their attempts to get their child to school.
EdPsychEd’s alternative template letter stresses the importance of attendance, while engaging with parents and carers to offer the school an understanding of the family’s perspective. The template includes a Checklist for Attendance Tracking and Support (CATS), a collaborative tool developed in partnership with parents and schools which serves as a correspondence template for schools to efficiently explore the reasons behind pupil absenteeism.
Supporting Your Most Vulnerable Families
For DSLs and attendance officers this collaborative approach is particularly valuable. The families you work with often have complex circumstances that traditional attendance procedures don't account for. CATS provides a structured way to gather the data you need while maintaining the trust and partnership crucial to your safeguarding role and can help us ensure attending school more is less challenging for each individual child.
ACCESS THE ATTENDANCE LETTER TEMPLATE & CATS TOOL
In our next article we will share profiling tools to support your team to understand the risk and resilience profile of students who may be experiencing EBSA to develop effective strategies to intervene.
Safeguarding Network is offering members and blog readers discount codes of up to £100 off EdPsychEd’s School Training resources with our special discount codes.
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About EdPsychEd
EdPsychEd offer a comprehensive CPD course with associated resources to support your setting’s work with Emotional Based School Avoidance. Their Horizons training takes a tiered approach to building your staff understanding of EBSA in an eLearning format with child-friendly assessment resources to support your work with students.
Effective work around attendance involves and empowers students and their families. At the request of local authorities EdPsychEd developed a learning and resource series for families to follow to improve their understanding and approach to reducing Emotional Based School Avoidance in their children.
If you would like to discuss EdPsychEd's offering please contact Dr Jenny Dutton directly, here.
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