Children with a Social Worker
Duties to support Children with a Social Worker
In September 2021, the role of the Virtual School was extended to include non-statutory duties to promote the education of children with a social worker. Norfolk Virtual School has a strategic role to champion the attendance, attainment and progress of children with a social worker by:
- Raising awareness of needs and making visible the disadvantages that children with a social worker can experience, enhancing partnerships between education settings and local authorities, including with children's social care, to help all agencies hold high aspirations for these children
- Promoting practice that supports attendance and children's engagement in education
- Levelling up children's outcomes to narrow the attainment gap so every child can reach their potential
The Virtual School has a duty to promote the education of children within this cohort from 0 up to 18 in educational settings.
The forthcoming Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill sets out the government's intentions for the Virtual School to continue to promote the educational achievement of children with a social worker and those in kinship care by making these duties statutory to ensure that every local authority has a dedicated officer to champion the educational achievement of these children, helping to improve their school attendance, engagement and overall achievement. Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024: policy summary - GOV.UK
Who are the children within this cohort?
Pupils in this cohort are those who have been assessed as being in need under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 and currently have a social worker and those who have previously had a social worker.
'Children with a social worker' refers to this group of children. It includes all children who have been assessed as needing or previously needing a social worker within the past 6 years due to safeguarding or welfare reasons. It includes all children aged 0 to 18 across all education settings subject to a Child in Need (CIN) plan or a Child Protection (CP) plan. This includes children who are disabled and have, or have had, an allocated social worker.
Children with a social worker face significant barriers to education because of experiences of adversity, most commonly abuse and neglect. The extension was in response to the Review of children in need - GOV.UK in 2019 showing that these children do significantly worse than others at all stages of education.
The remit for the Virtual School in support of these children is strategic and does not require direct support for individual children or their families
Our offer to schools, settings and professionals
We are committed to work strategically with our colleagues across Children's Services and directing our partnership work by capturing available data and key characteristic of the cohort in Norfolk. We use this information to feed into strategic meetings to further raise the profile of the cohort and highlight areas of concern where we can offer support.
Schools/settings and professionals supporting this cohort can also access support through:
Information and signposting
Norfolk Virtual School can be contacted by schools, settings and professionals for information and signposting to support children in this cohort. You can contact us by emailing [email protected].
Attendance
We work with our colleagues in the Attendance Team to provide school and pupil level advice to support the attendance of children with a social worker. To access this support, please contact [email protected].
Training
We offer professional development including our new course Supporting the Education of Children with a Social Worker. Please see our Virtual School PD offer for dates.
School/Setting Visits
We offer school/setting visits to support senior leadership, designated teachers, designated safeguarding leads and SENDCOs to understand the full breadth of the Virtual School offer of support and training. We offer advice in supporting the educational outcomes of the Virtual School cohorts.
Trauma and Attachment Aware Practice
We offer a variety of opportunities to support the development of understanding trauma and attachment awareness in schools and settings. This includes:
- Termly Trauma and Attachment Aware Practice in Education Network
- Self-directed Learning Padlet
- Norfolk Virtual Schools 'Becoming a Trauma and Attachment Aware Practitioner' 3 Hour Training offered through twilights, staff meetings and inset days.
- Fully subsidised access to webinars to support understanding of emotional regulation and attachment play.
- *New* for 2025/26 our 2-day Virtual Reality Headset Training being delivered from Spring 2026
- Opportunities for schools to engage in projects with the Virtual School to access training to deliver interventions to support the cohort focussing on SEMH and SLCN.
To find out more about any of these opportunities please contact [email protected]
