Early years staff wellbeing: a resource for managers and teams

Anna Freud Centre latest early years resource identifies four key areas that could make a difference to the wellbeing of nursery and preschool staff:

The resource was informed from the findings of a survey of 1,458 staff working in nurseries and preschool settings across England and was produced in partnership with a number of local authorities.

Read here Early years staff wellbeing: a resource for managers and teams

Communications tools to promote 30 hours and Tax-Free childcare.

Yesterday, the government announced plans to reduce the cost of childcare for families.

Childcare Choices have put together a communications toolkit which includes a step-by-step guide to ensuring you are set-up to accept all the offers, along with promotional resources.

Managing allegations about former staff or volunteers: duty to refer

New campaign to support families with important advice on the development of children aged 0 – 5

As professionals, we all know the importance of early learning to help shape a child so that they can live healthy, happy and independent lives in the future.

Warwickshire County Council (WCC) is proud to be launching a new campaign, You and Your Child, for parents, carers and family members to help them recognise the importance of this development from birth to the age of five.

The new campaign website and suite of animation videos covers advice on topics including sleeping advice, healthy habits, mental health, child safety, starting school and support services to name just a few.

Learning doesn’t just begin when a child starts school, but right from birth. That’s why it’s important for families to create a healthy learning environment for a child to grow and develop, so they can achieve in later years.

Whatever a child learns during the first years of their life will have a lasting effect on them. Because these first several years have such a big impact, parents should lay a solid foundation full of love, support, and happiness which is crucial for a child’s future life and relationships. Whether it’s teaching your little one how to start washing themselves to keep clean or learning safety tips to prevent accidents in the home, there are lots of steps every family can take.

Early development also improves a child’s physical health. Teaching children to brush their teeth from their first tooth will help them to have great personal hygiene all throughout their life. If a child grows up in a healthy home, they are more likely to be healthy as adults. The new WCC campaign aims to help families teach their children these healthy habits from an early age. 

As part of the campaign, we also want to highlight the importance of safe sleeping for babies. With a recent increase in cot deaths in Warwickshire, there is lots of advice for parents to reduce this risk. The risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) increases when parents co-sleep with their baby in their bed and even more so if either parent has been drinking, smoking or taking drugs. The safest place for a baby to sleep in the first six months is in a cot in the parents’ bedroom.

Another important aspect of the campaign is mental health. No one said being a parent or carer was easy. Feeling anxious in the early days of having a baby, recovering from a difficult birth, lack of sleep, changes to relationships and other challenges can all lead to low mood or loss of confidence. One in five women and one in ten dads need help with their emotional wellbeing during pregnancy or in the first year after their baby is born. Seeking help early is important as it will speed up recovery. We want to remind parents and carers that they are not alone.

Midwives, health visitors and family nurses are also there to support families in the early years. They work closely with families and other professionals to help give a child the best start in life. Children and family centres across Warwickshire provide parents and carers with advice on a range of topics including parenting confidence, fussy eaters, sleep, behaviour management and activity ideas.

Warwickshire’s Family Information Service is available to help too. Providing advice and support online, over the phone or face-to-face on topics including family relationships, finance, housing, parenting support, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, childcare, health and wellbeing and more.

It’s natural to have worries and concerns about our baby and child’s health and development, in particularly in the early years of their life, and as parents we often wonder if we’re doing the right thing. We want the You and Your Child campaign to empower parents, carers and family members in Warwickshire to seek out information, advice and support for the first five years of a child’s life so that they are equipped and ready for life.

This campaign is part of our Child Friendly Warwickshire initiative, supporting families across the county to help shape the future for our young people by teaching children to learn and become independent.

Keep an eye out for the digital campaign across the WCC social media channels and please encourage the sharing of this information with parents and carers.

Visit the new You and Your Child webpages for support with your baby and child’s heath and development.

Action for Happiness

Upcoming parent carer SEND webinar on speech and language provision

Standing down the Education Corona Response Team (ECRT)

As you will all be aware since late 2020, an Education Corona Response Team (ECRT) has been available to support education leaders with COVID related issues or queries.  However, since the government announcement on 21 February 2022, ended all Covid-19 legal restrictions in England, ‘living with Covid’ is now the norm. 

As a result, the decision has been taken to stand down the team with effect from Friday 15^th July.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank the team for the help and support they have provided to schools and settings over the last 18 months.

From Monday 18^th July the Education Corona mailbox - education-corona@warwickshire.gov.uk and Education helpline - 01926 412011 will no longer be available.  After this date should you require any require advice or support with COVID related issues you can contact the Public Health team via email at: - dphadmin@warwickshire.gov.uk   If you require support outside of normal office hours, please contact UKHSA on 0344 225 3560 (select option 0 then option 2).

We will continue to provide more general information and updates via the Education during COVID-19 webpages - https://schools.warwickshire.gov.uk/coronavirus

Alternatively, the Department for Education Incident Support helpline is available to answer any questions you have about COVID-19 or the current situation in Ukraine, as they relate to education and childcare settings and children’s social care, or other national emergency issues.

Working together to improve attendance

Guidance to help schools, academy trusts, governing bodies, and local authorities maintain high levels of school attendance including roles and responsibilities

From September 2022, this will replace all previous guidance on school attendance except for statutory guidance for parental responsibility measures.  The Secretary of State has committed to it becoming statutory when parliamentary time allows (this will be no sooner than September 2023).

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance

Summary of Schools’ Responsibilities

The DfE state that every school should:

• Have a Senior Attendance Champion on the leadership team
• Have a clear school attendance policy published on their website
• Have robust day to day processes for recording, monitoring and following up attendance
• Analyse their data regularly and prioritise families to work with to understand and address the reasons for absence, including any in-school barriers to attendance.
• Work with local partners to remove out of school barriers and act as the lead professional where they are the best placed service
• Work jointly with the local authority on an agreed approach/ plan for every severely absent pupil
• Develop strategies for cohorts of pupils with poorer attendance than their peers (including groups of vulnerability)
• Inform a pupil’s social worker if they have an unexplained absence or leave the school roll
• Work with their LA to formalise support where voluntary help hasn’t been effective, through use of parenting contracts or other forms of legal intervention
• Share data electronically with the department and continue to inform the LA of pupils not attending regularly or being added to or removed from the roll

Data Sharing

The automated attendance data trial through Wonde continues to grow and there will be an expectation that all schools share, no later than September 2023.  The DfE have asked that we encourage schools to sign up.

Currently 60% of Warwickshire schools have signed up to share their daily attendance data, which is very positive.

If your school does not use Wonde, please read the how schools share their daily attendance data guidance.

Improving attendance: good practice for schools and multi-academy trusts

To support the transition to the new ways of working, the DfE is holding a series of webinars.  These webinars are a good resource with schools sharing how they have improved their attendance.

Details on our upcoming webinars and how to register are below:

Modernising school attendance and admission registers and setting national thresholds for legal intervention

Government consultation - Launch date 17 June 2022, respond by 29 July 2022.

The DfE are seeking views on new regulations for keeping school registers and draft thresholds for legal interventions to improve consistency across England.

The consultation can be found through the following link:

School registers and national thresholds for legal intervention - Department for Education - Citizen Space

If you wish to discuss this further, please feel free to contact the Warwickshire Attendance Service:

was@warwickshire.gov.uk

Warwickshire’s Aspiring Headteachers Programme

Warwickshire’s Aspiring Headteachers Programme is an innovative programme intended to support senior and experienced middle leaders who aspire to headship in a Warwickshire school. This course is appropriate for school leaders who have a minimum of 2 years senior leadership experience and are considering applying for a Headship, in Warwickshire, in the next 2 years.

The programme will consist of approximately 7 sessions, delivered via a mix of online and face to face sessions. The programme will be hosted by Debby Hughes (Former Headteacher of High Meadow Community School, Learning Improvement Officer for Warwickshire LA and visiting fellow for Ambition Institute – NPQSL) and there will be a range of guest speakers inputting into the sessions, including local headteachers, key colleagues from LA services as well as some national speakers.

The programme will run over the course of 2 terms starting in autumn 2022 and will cover themes such as:

• Leading the organisation - moral imperative, vision, innovation in the curriculum
• Leading teaching and learning – curriculum, CPD, preparing for Ofsted, using data and closing the gap
• The school as a business - finance, HR, legislation and policy
• Applying for headship and working with governors

This programme is fully funded by Warwickshire County Council and further details will be made available in due course.

The Aspiring Headteachers Programme is being organised by the Gateway Alliance on behalf of Warwickshire LA. 

ACTION: 

If you are interested in securing a place on our 2022-23 cohort of this fully funded programme, starting in the autumn, please complete this expression of interest form as soon as possible. 

If you have any queries, please contact Helen Martin on martin.h@welearn365.com.

Safeguarding Update

Please see here the July Safeguarding Bulletin which includes a Microsoft Form link for schools to update vital information about DSL contacts for the summer break.  

The team is also sharing details about their integrated training offer for safeguarding and Send and Inclusion, the dates for DSL Network meetings. There is also attached slides for school internal safeguarding training for September and the revised Safeguarding Model Policy for schools and educational settings.

Reminder to apply for the Home to school transport for September 2022

Please take this opportunity to remind parents of children who are moving schools in September or who are entering Post 16 education to apply for home to school transport as soon as possible.

All students who are entering post 16 education have to reapply, even if they are staying in the same school.

In addition, all current post 16 travellers need to reapply for the 2022/23 academic year.

Application forms are available on our website - https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/schooltransport

The deadline to apply is Friday 22^nd July 2022 – any applications made after this time may not be processed in time for the start of the new academic year

SACRE RE CPD for RE Subject Leaders and RE Teachers 2022-2023

This year’s RE CPD for RE Subject Leaders and RE Teachers will be organised around the theme of ‘Getting Ready for Change’ as we
take a two-year run-up to our new Coventry and Warwickshire Agreed Syllabus (CWAS). 

Please read more here. 

Thrive at work

We want to congratulate Bridgetown primary School for achieving their foundation level Thrive at work award. 

There are currently 18 schools working towards thrive across Coventry and Warwickshire 7 of which are in Warwickshire.

Schools working towards thrive can use this as evidence towards their Education staff wellbeing charter

To find out what support is available and how you can get started please contact Jenny Duggan, Thrive at work Lead for Coventry & Warwickshire at jenny.duggan@coventry.gov.uk.  Or check out the website www.wmca.org.uk/thriveatwork

Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service's public consultation

Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service (WFRS) has launched a public consultation to ask the people living, studying and working in Warwickshire how their future priorities are delivered.   

Every one of us wants to know that WFRS will be there for us in an emergency. But they also have responsibilities to prevent accidents and emergencies from happening in the first place and to protect us by ensuring the buildings in which we live and work are safe. So, their primary focus will always be to keep Warwickshire safe, through prevention, protection and response.  

This consultation is a chance to tell us what matters most to you and what approach WFRS should take. They're especially keen to hear from those working in schools and would appreciate your support in sharing the details with your parents and carers too. 

To learn more about the strategy and consultation, watch our series of short videos here.  

The responses WFRS get from this consultation will inform any updates to their Prevention, Protection and Response draft Strategy, which forms part of the Community Risk Management Plan. This is the plan that assesses the risks they face and sets out how they will reduce them, while also making sure they have the right resources at the right time, in the right place.  

The consultation can be completed here and will close on 25 September. 

Warwickshire TEEN Book Award 2022

Warwickshire Schools Library Service are delighted to launch the Warwickshire TEEN Book Award 2022. This was previously called the Year 9 Book Award, but we have re-named the award as schools requested that they would like older students to be able to take part too. Our team, with the help of secondary school librarians, have carefully selected a longlist of 8 fantastic books published in the last year.

In September, students will take part in 'Speed Shortlisting' events at their school and select the 4 books that they would like to see on the shortlist. Their votes are collated, and the final shortlist is revealed at the beginning of October. They then have 2 months to read the shortlist and vote for their favourite book in December 2022.

This is a great opportunity for your students to be introduced to a wide range of quality books and support reading for pleasure at your school.

Please email schoolslibraryservice@warwickshire.gov.uk for more information.

'Help, I'm running a library training course'

Do you have new staff running your primary or secondary school library in September 2022?

Warwickshire Schools Library Service are running a course in September designed to give school staff the skills, knowledge and confidence to run their school library.

For more information or to book a place, email: schoolslibraryservice@warwickshire.gov.uk