Educational Psychology Services' Critical Incident Support

Since 2017, Warwickshire’s Educational Psychology Service (EPS) has provided a Critical Incident (CI) service to schools, colleges and other settings, offering support for the emotional wellbeing of an educational community when something unexpected occurs, such as the death of a peer, staff member or parent/carer, a criminal act, violent attack, or large scale incident, such as a fire etc.

Thankfully such incidents are relatively rare but the EPS continues to respond to requests several times each year; sometimes a telephone call or email advice and links to resources is all that is needed but at other times we can come into school and talk to staff. While it is recognised that the best people to support children and young people immediately after experiencing grief or trauma are the adults that they know and trust, we offer support, including follow-up where necessary, to ensure that those adults feel confident in supporting the child or young person in your setting. 

As the current service level agreements are coming to the end of their two year cycle, schools, colleges and other settings now have the opportunity to purchase Critical Incident Insurance through a service level agreement (SLA) with the EPS.  In order to ensure a rapid and timely response we encourage settings to take out the Critical Incident insurance; we request a payment which is based on 50 pence per pupil per year, up to a maximum cost for any setting of £250 per year. To reduce administration time and costs, the cover runs for two years. 

The Educational Psychology Service does not want to profiteer from running CI support but it does require funding to ensure that Educational Psychologists can be made available to respond quickly.  It has been decided that at the end of the next two year period (2019 - 2021) any unspent Critical Incident subscription will be used to deliver training, open to those schools who subscribed (whether they needed support during that period or not).

Please contact Janet Mander, Office Manager for EPS, 01926 742921 or email janetmander@warwickshire.gov.uk in order to subscribe.

Half day free event for Heads and SENCos: Jonathan Jones HMI

***LAST CHANCE TO BOOK***

Jonathan Jones HMI will be coming to Warwickshire on Monday 8 April to talk about 'Whole School SEND: the strategic role of the SENCo', referring to lessons learned from both school and local area SEND inspections.  The half-day event, free to all Warwickshire schools, will also include the launch of the Local Authority's new Inclusion Quality Mark.

The event starts at 1.30pm and will be held at Dunchurch Park Hotel & Conference Centre, Rugby Road, Dunchurch, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV22 6QW. 

Jonathan Jones is one of Her Majesty's Inspectors and Ofsted's specialist adviser for education and special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Prior to working for Ofsted he gained extensive senior leadership experience across a number of educational phases and has had experience outside of education. Jonathan inspects the full range of provisions. He regularly leads the local area SEND inspections and the survey evaluations of multi-academy trusts.

Jonathan is a member of the quality assurance team and investigates complaints against Ofsted. He is also a remit trainer. Jonathan has worked and led on a number of national initiatives and has particular expertise in curriculum, SEND, multi academy trusts and governance.  

Click here to book your place. For any queries please email melindatwells@warwickshire.gov.uk

Warwickshire Music - supporting a broad and balanced curriculum

Warwickshire Music provides instrumental, vocal and curriculum music from across a full range of educational settings, from primary to secondary, as well as through four area music centres located across Warwickshire.

Warwickshire Music and other hub partners work in partnership with a shared vision:

"To ensure children in Warwickshire have the very best opportunities to learn to play an instrument, learn to sing, play together in ensembles and progress to the next level of excellence.” 

For more information about available opportunities please see the attached flyers:

Warwickshire Music KS1 and KS2 offer

Warwickshire Music KS3 offer

News from School Health Service

National CSE Awareness Day

During March the School Health and Wellbeing Service has been busy raising awareness around Childhood Sexual Exploitation. Nationally, there was an awareness raising day on 18 March. One of the aims of the day was to highlight the issues surrounding CSE; encouraging everyone to think, spot and speak out against abuse. We have been present in many secondary schools across the county and have engaged with lots of young people on this important subject.

Programmes of support for schools

Now that the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) for 2019 is complete we are looking to deliver as many Public Health interventions as we can within schools.

We are in the process of phoning every school to offer programmes of support. This support could be in the form of a classroom lesson, assembly or interactive playground activities during break times. We look forward to booking a date with you soon.

We are also keen to attend as many school events as we can. So, if you are holding a parent's evening, new parent's evening, health week or sports day, then please feel free to invite us along and we will try hard to attend.

Upcoming event

In May we will be promoting  National Smile month (13 May to 13 June), the largest and longest running campaign promoting good oral health. 

Our contact details / Text Messaging Service

Warwickshire School Health and Wellbeing Service are keen for our services to be accessible and for service users to be able to contact us in a variety of different ways.  We therefore operate a text messaging service where individuals can directly message the service with questions or concerns.

The text messaging service operates across two different numbers.  One number is for young people between the ages of 11 – 19 yrs and is called ChatHealth.  The other number is for parents/carers and the service is called Parentline.

Both ChatHealth and Parentline are well used with both young people and parents/carers taking the opportunity to receive health advice on a range of issues from a qualified nurse. 

The text messaging service is staffed Monday to Friday and is open from 9am to 5pm.

Please feel free to promote both ChatHealth and Parentline across your school communities. 

• ChatHealth – Young People can contact us directly using our confidential text messaging number – 07507331525

• ChatHealth Parentline – Parents can contact us directly using our confidential text messaging number – 07520619376

Schools wishing to contact the School Health Service can use the central number 03300 245204, selecting option 1,2 or 3 depending
on where your school is located.

Free Trees for Schools

There is growing evidence to suggest that simple exposure to the natural environment can improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people, and with the Woodland Trust giving away trees for free, you could help to enhance pupils' time at school with time spent in greener, leafier spaces.

Schools can apply for packs of 30, 105 or 420 saplings. The website also features a host of online resources to plan, plant and care for your tree pack with activities linked to the curriculum. Visit The Woodland Trust website for more information and to apply.

Training to support maths and inference

Training available from the Specialist Teaching Service

Maths Learning Difficulties – Exploring successful strategies to support

21 May 2019, 1pm to 4pm, Pound Lane, Leamington, CV32 7RT

Course description: This training explores the different factors that can affect a child’s maths development and outlines theory and research. There will be opportunities to look at the importance of concrete apparatus and visual approaches to support the learner’s understanding of mathematical concepts. This will be an opportunity to refresh your knowledge of the use of Numicon and other resources.

Aimed at: TAs, LSA, Teachers and SENCos who wish to explore maths difficulties further in the Primary Phase.

Cost: £75

Click here for more information.

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Inference Training

21 May 2019, 9.30am to 4pm at Pound Lane, Leamington, CV32 7RT

Course description: Inference training is a group intervention for pupils in KS2 and KS3 who decode adequately but fail to get full meaning and enjoyment from their reading. Evidence suggests one in ten pupils who decode satisfactorily, fail to get full meaning and enjoyment from reading.

Cost: £265

Click here for more information.