Our Early Help Provision

Early help is provided for children and families as soon as problems start to emerge, or where it is likely that issues will impact negatively on children’s outcomes.

What do we do to support our pupils and their families?

1. Attendance

We believe that attendance is crucial in supporting our pupils to be successful and leave school with positive outcomes. We encourage outstanding attendance in a number of ways, for example:

• rewarding pupils for their positive attendance, through rewards assemblies and termly trips to the Trafford Centre, the cinema and Blackpool Pleasure Beach
• providing support when pupils are off school to help them catch up the work they have missed, therefore reducing stress levels and supporting the pupils to feel in control of their learning
• conducting home visits to provide support for families and make sure the pupils are safe

2. Buddy Club

Buddy club is a nurture group that a number of our vulnerable pupils can attend before school, and during break and lunch time. They spend time together in a quieter, supervised environment and share responsibility for walking our school dog.

3. After School Activities

We have an extensive after school activity programme that is available to see on our school website.

Over 94% of our pupils have attended at least 1 after school club so far this year. We have a late bus that leaves the school once the extra-curricular programme finishes each day, providing all pupils with the opportunity to stay in school and still get home safely.

4. Staying Safe

We provide all our pupils and parents with the knowledge they need to remain safe, both online and off line. The ways in which we do this are:

• a comprehensive CPSHE programme, an outline of which can be accessed here
• 1:1 mentoring, provided by our team of pastoral support officers who work with the pupils to help them understand risk and correct decision making
• referrals to external agencies when appropriate to allow the pupil to access the specialised support they require
• a monthly online safety bulletin for parents
• termly assemblies
• weekly safeguarding discussions in form time
• mentoring support for pupils in years 7 and 8 from an older pupil in the school

5. Supporting Families

It is very important that all our families receive the support they need as soon as possible. Therefore, we do everything we can to make sure this happens. We do this by:

• meeting with parents to discuss what support is required
• completing the relevant referrals, if that support requires input from external agencies
• carrying out home visits
• offering parental meetings when concerns are raised
• providing information on our school website, signposting parents to support they may wish to access
• training all our staff to look out for changes in a child’s behaviour and to inform the safeguarding team as soon as possible