Guidance

Promoting the education of children with a social worker and children in kinship care arrangements: virtual school head role extension

Updated 5 March 2024

Applies to England

Overview

This non-statutory guidance intends to support all local authorities, as virtual school heads continue to develop their strategic leadership role in promoting the educational outcomes of:  

• the cohort of children with a social worker and those who have previously had a social worker who are aged from 0 to 18
• the cohort of children in kinship care arrangements

This guidance has been produced with input from the National Association of Virtual School Heads  (NAVSH).

Our ambition is to transform the lives of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and in care, and ensure that those who have lost the most from the pandemic can recover and flourish, and that prosperity benefits all.

This guidance has been updated for the 2024 to 2025 academic year to include information on how virtual school heads  should consider the needs of kinship children in their work.

Championing kinship care: national kinship care strategy sets out how we will support, empower and champion kinship families. This includes a commitment to invest £3.8 million in 2024 to 2025 to adapt the role of virtual school heads to specifically include championing better outcomes in school attendance, educational attainment and progress of children in kinship care.

Children with a social worker

The review of children in need showed that at least 1.6 million children needed a social worker between 2012 and 2018 – equivalent to one in 10 of all children, or 3 children in every classroom.

The review showed that these children do significantly worse than others at all stages of education, and that poor educational outcomes persist even after social work involvement ends.

The review recognised the crucial role that virtual school heads have in helping education settings and local authorities work together, and made a commitment to explore the capacity needed to extend their leadership to the cohort of children and young people with a social worker.  

Virtual school head leadership is vital now more than ever, given the impact the pandemic has had on the learning of all children – none more so than the most vulnerable. For example, in the 2020 to 2021 academic year, children in need lost an average of 4.1 months of learning in secondary school reading compared with 2.4 months for all children. 

In September 2021, local authorities began receiving funding to extend the role of virtual school heads to include strategic responsibility for children with a social worker.

Using their expertise and knowledge from working with looked-after and previously looked-after children, virtual school heads have made progress in:

• understanding and addressing the barriers and challenges this group face in attending school
• strengthening partnerships between education settings and local authorities
• establishing a culture of high aspirations that helps these children to progress in education

All local authorities are eligible to receive continued grant funding to support virtual school heads in delivering this responsibility.

Department for Education (DfE) is asking all local authorities to take part in the research programme to help:

• improve understanding of the impact of the new duties
• identify emerging practices that could help virtual school heads deliver their role

Funding for this strategic leadership role for children with a social worker is confirmed until the end of March 2025.

This extended role does not require virtual school heads to provide direct intervention, help, or support for individual children with a social worker or their families.

This guidance does not change existing duties for looked-after and previously looked-after children, and should be read in conjunction with statutory guidance on promoting the education of looked-after and previously looked-after children.

This guidance is for:

• virtual school heads in local authorities
• directors of children’s services
• local authority officers (including social workers for children and young people, and family support workers)
• early years leaders
• school and alternative provision leaders, including designated safeguarding leads (DSLs), special educational needs coordinators (SENCos), headteachers, designated teachers, directors and chief executives of multi-academy trusts, and senior mental health leads)
• school staff and governing bodies in all maintained schools, academies and free schools
• college leaders in all further education (FE) settings, including FE colleges, sixth form colleges, independent training providers and special post-16 institutions
• educational psychologists
• managers and staff (including DSL and SENCo) in early years childcare settings

Funding for the role extensions 

All local authorities are eligible to receive grant funding provided under section 31 of the Education Act 2002 to deliver the extended virtual school head roles.

Funding provides virtual school heads with the additional resource required to take on the strategic leadership role for children with a social worker, and is sufficient to recruit additional team members to support them with these responsibilities.

We have created a funding formula, based on the number of education settings within a local authority, to establish the allocations for each local authority. Local authorities are eligible for baseline funding and those with the greatest number of education settings will receive ‘top up’ funding to reflect the additional capacity they will need to work with these settings.

The City of London and Isles of Scilly will receive less than the baseline funding due to a much smaller number of education settings in these areas.

The grant determination letter and memorandum of understanding, issued to all local authorities, sets out what each local authority can expect to receive and the conditions by which this funding must be used. This funding is intended to provide virtual schools heads with the additional capacity they require to become the strategic leader that promotes educational outcomes for children with a social worker. Local authorities should not use this funding for any other purpose.

All local authorities need to sign and return the memorandum of understanding to DfE. On receipt of this, DfE will make 3 equal payments to all local authorities for the period covered by the grant determination letter, in:

• September
• December
• March

Local authorities will be asked to submit a brief financial progress report to DfE, prior to the final payment, detailing the actual spend and forecast spend on the virtual school head extended duties up to and including the date of the request. We will set out the details in the DfE memorandum of understanding, which local authorities will need to sign.

Some children with social workers are eligible for pupil premium by virtue of current or past free school meal claims, and education settings will continue to use this funding to improve their attainment. Only looked-after and previously looked-after children are eligible for pupil premium plus.

Defining the cohort of children with a social worker

Virtual school heads are, with agreement and support from their local authority, strategic leaders for the cohort of children 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 children in need plan or a child protection plan.

Children with a social worker face significant barriers to education as a result of experiences of adversity, most commonly abuse and neglect.

Under part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014, all local authorities have duties to children with SEND. Virtual school heads should not duplicate support available to children under existing local authority duties. The remit of the extended virtual school heads role includes children who are disabled and have, or have had, an allocated social worker.

The non-statutory responsibility for promoting the educational outcomes of children with a social worker is in addition to the existing statutory duties for looked-after and previously looked-after children.

The strategic leadership of virtual school heads    

The new responsibilities for virtual school heads gave them a strategic leadership role to champion the educational attendance, attainment and progress of children with a social worker. This means that they should be:

• 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 children’s engagement in education, recognising that attending an education setting is an important factor in helping to keep children safe from harm
• levelling up children’s outcomes to narrow the attainment gap so every child has the opportunity to reach their potential – including helping to ensure that children with a social worker benefit from support to recover educationally from the impact of the pandemic

What is not in scope for virtual school heads

The virtual school head role for children with a social worker is a strategic leadership responsibility.

Virtual school heads are not expected to:

• work directly with individual children and their families - including tracking and monitoring of individual educational progress, providing academic or other interventions
• respond to requests from parents or carers to offer advice, intervention and support in relation to individual children with a social worker
• take responsibility for children with SEND who do not require or need a social worker, as defined above

Barriers to education for children with a social worker

Based on data taken from the review of children in need, children with a social worker are present in 98% of state schools and face barriers to education due to experiences of adversity, most commonly as a result of domestic abuse, mental ill-health, and substance misuse, with 62% of children needing a social worker having experienced one or more of these.

On average, children with a social worker do worse than their peers at every stage of their education. In 2018, 50% of children who had a social worker in the last 6 years were able to achieve a good level of development in the early years, compared to 72% of children who never had a social worker.

Pupils who had a social worker in the year of their GCSEs were around half as likely to achieve a strong pass in English and maths than their peers, and at the end of key stage 4 were around 3 times less likely to go on to study A levels at age 16, and almost 5 times less likely to enter higher education at age 18.

After age 18 of those who needed a social worker in the year of their GCSEs, 6% were in higher education compared to 27% of those who did not have a social worker; and by age 21, half had still not achieved level 2 qualifications (including GCSEs), compared to 11% of those not in need of a social worker.

Some children with a social worker go on to become looked-after. Of the cohort of children who were looked-after children in 2017 to 2018, 62% had spent some time on a children in need plan in the previous 5 years and 39% had spent some time on a child protection plan.

Attendance has fallen for all pupils since the pandemic with children in need particularly affected. In 2021 to 2022, all social care groups (apart from looked-after children) were over twice as likely to be absent than the overall pupil population. Improving attendance is a priority for both social care and education.

Children with a social worker are around 3 times more likely to be persistently absent from school, and between 2 to 4 times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than their peers. This group are also over 10 times more likely to attend state-funded alternative provision settings than all other pupils. 

The review of children in need found that virtual school heads, who can bridge the gap between and support education settings and local authorities, could present opportunities to promote the educational needs of children with a social worker.

Virtual school heads are already raising aspirations and promoting the educational achievement of looked-after children and the cohort of previously looked-after children, through local authority duties which are set out in the Children Act 1989 and the Children and Families Act 2014. Unlike looked-after children, or previously looked-after children, the cohort of children with a social worker who are subject to children in need plans or child protection plans have not had the benefit of a strategic leader that is able to champion the educational needs of their cohort and help them make educational progress.

These experiences can affect children’s attendance, learning, behaviour, and wellbeing and, if children cannot access support, they may struggle to reach their full potential. Even after a child no longer has a social worker, poor educational outcomes can persist.

While there is no single cause for the poor educational outcomes for children with a social worker, experiences of adversity can create barriers to good outcomes. Children with a social worker are more likely to have experienced complex family circumstances; some may have been at risk of, or have suffered, physical, emotional, sexual abuse or neglect.

At home, they may have lived in families where there is domestic abuse, mental ill-health, or substance misuse. Outside of the home, they may be at risk of extra-familial harms, such as experiencing criminal or sexual exploitation or serious violence. Data tells us that children with a social worker are much more likely to experience frequent transitions, including moving home or school and experience changes in the professionals that are supporting them and their families.

Despite the challenges that children with a social worker face, with the right support, the aspirations of these children can be raised, and they can go on to achieve more than their peers. It is crucial that those supporting children with a social worker have the vision, awareness, and the right tools to enable these children and young people to achieve their best and ensure there is equal access to education opportunities.

How virtual school heads should promote the educational outcomes of children with a social worker

As strategic leaders for children with a social worker, virtual school heads should work to create a culture of high aspirations across both education and social care that helps to ensure children with a social worker make educational progress and reach their potential no matter their starting point.

Virtual school heads should bring greater awareness to the disadvantage that this cohort of children can experience, promote engagement in education and help to narrow the attainment gap. They will advocate for and model a strengths-based approach to supporting children and promoting their educational outcomes. 

Local authorities should ensure they continue to make effective use of the funding provided to their virtual school head as they embed this strategic leadership role.

Local authorities should consider the additional capacity virtual schools need to work with a variety of education settings and social care partners, to champion children with a social worker and should recruit staff with the right knowledge and skills.

Virtual school heads should work closely with their director of children’s services to understand the needs of the cohort in their local authority and how best to improve their educational outcomes.

There will be no single model for delivering improved outcomes and virtual school heads may want to consider how to make use of peer support, including through NAVSH as they share learning and develop good practice.

Activities for all virtual school heads

Virtual school heads should take note of the review of children in need, including the findings on how to improve children’s outcomes. Although virtual school heads will adopt a flexible leadership approach to meet the needs of their local area, there are some activities which are critical for all, including:

• enhancing partnerships between education settings and the local authority so agencies can work together in a child focused manner
• identifying the needs of the cohort and addressing barriers to poor educational outcomes to ensure pupils make educational progress
• offering advice and support to key professionals such as social workers, DSLs, designated teachers, and school leaders to help children make progress, including through increasing their confidence in using evidence-based interventions

Enhance partnerships between education settings and social care

Effective support for children with a social worker needs education settings and local authorities to work together.

Leaders of all agencies can play a crucial role in establishing a culture where every child is able to make progress. Education settings and local authorities will have different responsibilities but establishing shared priorities can help to drive change for children.

Principal social workers play an important role in working with local partnerships to put the right support in place for this cohort of children to attend school. Virtual school heads and principal social workers need to work together to promote the importance of attending school and champion attendance.

To support effective partnerships, virtual school heads should establish strong relationships with education settings and social care. This will raise awareness and expertise of schools to meet the needs of children with social workers in their local authority, and of social workers to advocate effectively for children with social workers in all educational settings. Where a child is educated in another local authority, the virtual school head should work with that authority to ensure awareness and expertise match that of their own local authority.

Virtual school heads should develop an expectation that all leaders and professionals supporting children with a social worker should hold high aspirations for this cohort of children, regardless of the child’s background or stage of learning.

They should also clarify their role to education settings and social care services, communicating their offer of advice and support to teams. Virtual school heads should promote the concept that education settings are a safe and protective space for all children with social workers. They should work with social care professionals to communicate the need for, and benefits of, including education in all plans aimed at protecting the child.

Virtual school heads should consider how to bring together education and local authority leaders to develop goals and set direction for improving children’s outcomes most effectively. These goals should take account of other local strategic priorities, for example, meeting opportunity area objectives or working with violence reduction units to tackle serious violence.

They should be involved in developing local authority messaging to schools on the barriers the cohort faces, the virtual school offer of support for the cohort, up to date information on best practice, and the importance of all professionals working with children and families in a coordinated and transparent manner (where possible) to minimise disruption to the child’s education.

Example: local authority partnership working with education settings

In this local authority, the virtual school head and assistant director of education selected 7 lead practitioners for the education of children with social workers, including:

• DSLs
• designated teachers
• deputy heads
• assistant heads

The virtual school head wanted to set a clear ‘gold standard’, so that lead practitioners would demonstrate best practice for children with social workers.

The leads are part of a forum that the virtual school uses to train the trainers in the aims, priorities, and style of training that they then deliver across all the schools.

All schools in the local authority have a named person, usually the designated safeguarding lead, who is the lead for children with social workers. This person receives up-to-date information regarding children with social workers, training and support through the DSL forum, and half termly round-up emails. If they are new to the post, they are invited to bespoke training led by the virtual school head.

Schools that are particularly effective and provide good quality support for children with social workers are used to support those that may need to develop their practice.

The virtual school conference, attended by school staff and social workers, included training sessions and workshops explaining the extended role. The virtual school psychologist ran training sessions at the conference about mental health, support, and advice on what affects children with social workers.

Data and information sharing

Sharing information is important for promoting the welfare and educational outcomes of children with a social worker. All parties working with these children should recognise the importance of information sharing and adopt effective procedures to enable this.

Information sharing should be timely and effective. It should be easily applied to everyday decision-making. Virtual school heads need to work with schools to support the:

• accurate identification of children in need
• recording of information, including attendance data

As strategic leaders, virtual school heads should have access to necessary data which enables them to maintain effective oversight of the progress of children with a social worker under their care, regardless of where they are educated. This may include, but not limited to, data on:

• attendance
• attainment
• exclusions or persistent absence
• safeguarding

Virtual school heads should use this information to develop and implement targeted cohort-level interventions to:

• improve attendance and attainment
• reduce exclusions and persistent absence
• promote safeguarding of children with a social worker

All interested parties – be that a virtual school head, school, trust, multi-academy trust, or another local authority where a child attends for their education – should consider statutory guidance when requesting or providing access to data on children with a social worker.

There is more guidance on sharing information in working together to safeguard children and keeping children safe in education.

Example: sharing data and information

In this local authority, an integrated dashboard was being developed to provide ‘live’ recording of all children with a social worker, including:

• locality
• entry into children in need or child protection plans
• data on attendance, suspensions and exclusions

Use of the dashboard had been limited following the pandemic, but it had provided an oversight at a cohort level, which was previously unavailable and not managed by the virtual school.

Previous use of data was linked to each professional area (for example, SEND, social care) and provided siloed knowledge. The strategy of recording admissions to ‘local schools’, with only a few children with social workers outside their local authority, made access to data less problematic.

A data manager worked across children’s services and closely with the virtual school to provide analytical and performance support.

During the pandemic, data on children with social workers stood out as having the lowest attainment and attendance, and highest rates of exclusion. This was a cohort that had previously received much less attention than looked-after children.

The dashboard raised awareness at a senior, strategic level, of an increasingly large, vulnerable cohort. It allowed the virtual school to take ownership of a cohort, rather than just individuals.

Identify the cohort’s needs and address barriers to education

Children with a social worker may face multiple barriers to education because of their complex circumstances. These will have been further compounded by the pandemic and related restrictions.

Even though the initial impact of the pandemic has subsided, and restrictions have ended, a significant detrimental influence on all children’s learning, particularly that of the most vulnerable, remains.

To effectively identify the needs of children with a social worker and ensure they can access interventions that make a difference to their education, virtual school heads should use data and analysis to understand and monitor the cohort’s needs. This should include making links to local strategic priorities, for example:

• attendance
• suspension, and permanent exclusion rates
• overlaps with other kinds of disadvantage such as free school meal (FSM) eligibility and SEND rates

Virtual school heads should share knowledge and expertise to strengthen how education settings and social care understand the impact of adversity on learning and educational outcomes of children.

They should promote professional practice for education settings and local authorities which:

• champions high levels of support alongside high standards for children with a social worker
• recognises how stability and consistency in relationships can help children to overcome barriers to learning
• encourages effective information sharing between professionals so that anyone supporting children and families understands their context

Attendance

Regularly attending school or college is vital for all children’s educational progress, for their wellbeing and for their wider development.

The term college includes sixth form colleges, general FE colleges, independent training providers, designated institutions, and special post-16 institutions.

We know that pupils with higher overall absence tend to do less well in their GCSEs and are also more likely to not be in education, employment, or training (NEET) once they turn 16.

Since the pandemic, children with a social worker continue to have the highest levels of absence compared to all other groups of children, including persistent and severe absence.

See Outcomes for children in need, including children looked after by local authorities in England, Reporting year 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk) for more details.

Non-attendance can cause significant pressures for families already under strain. For children with a social worker, attending school is often also a protective factor, offering a safe space when home is not. Identifying low attendance and understanding the possible underlying reasons for that is important.

Virtual school heads have an important role to play in understanding and improving the attendance of children with a social worker. They may want to provide support, guidance and challenge to school leaders, DSLs and designated teachers to:

• strengthen provision already in place
• provide advice on how to promote and secure good attendance
• work in conjunction with their education welfare service or provide additional training to raise awareness of the barriers these children can face

Virtual school heads may also want to consider working closely with local authorities to develop a whole system approach with social care colleagues to support the attendance of children in need.

Virtual school heads may want to refer to the guidance on improving school attendance, which provides support to schools and local authorities.

Example: improving attendance

In this virtual school, attendance issues had been addressed through:

• their use of data
• increased multi-agency working
• ongoing training
• parental engagement projects – for example, art-based activity day, shared-reading and story-telling workshops

Effective communication and sharing of data between agencies have been vital to addressing issues of attendance and raising awareness of this cohort’s needs.

Further work included creating an attendance monitoring tool in collaboration with independent reviewing officers, social workers and DSLs, for all children with social workers. The tool is a school level survey to build an informed picture of school experience for individual pupils, including:

• patterns of attendance
• levels of engagement

A rating system allowed tailored, school level interventions to support the most vulnerable groups of children with social workers. The attendance tool has been shared with the children’s social care service with a view to inform children in need and child protection planning meetings.

The findings from the attendance tool informed the decision to commission a link education welfare officer for the virtual school team to develop strategies for different groups of low-attending pupils.

Parental engagement projects were organised to promote attendance, especially for the hardest to reach pupils in secondary schools.

Mental health and wellbeing

Children with a social worker are more likely to experience social, emotional, and mental health issues than their peers. Social, emotional, and mental health is one of the 4 broad areas identified in the SEND code of practice: 0 to 25 years.

For example, they may struggle with:

• executive functioning skills
• forming trusting relationships
• social skills
• managing strong feelings, for example shame, sadness, anxiety, and anger
• sensory processing difficulties
• coping with transitions and change

According to children in need of help and protection: final data and analysis, almost two-thirds of children assessed as in need had at least one of the following recorded in their assessments:

• domestic violence
• mental health (adult or child)
• substance misuse

For many children, mental health and wellbeing will have been affected by the pandemic due to:

• increased isolation
• anxiety caused by uncertainty
• concerns related to employment and health issues for family and friends.

The NHS report on Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, 2020 found that the proportion of children and young people with probable mental health disorders increased from 1 in 9 in 2017 to 1 in 6 in July 2020.

As such, virtual school heads should work with their local authority lead for mental health who is responsible for linking with education settings, to ensure any mental health training provided includes:

• the value of a graduated approach, as in the SEND code of practice: 0 to 25 years, to assessing, understanding, and meeting the social, emotional, and mental health needs of children and young people with a social worker
• how to identify signs of potential mental health issues for children with a social worker and how to access further assessment and support where necessary
• understanding the impact of issues that children with a social worker can experience and that settings are able to offer targeted support to meet the needs of these children
• how to recognise the value of engaging the child’s voice in the process of identification and support

Example: incorporating the voice of the child into virtual school ways of working

At a NAVSH conference, a care leaver spoke about their educational experiences, what was helpful and the support they had received from an advocate. This influenced one virtual school to consider how the advocacy support offered to looked-after children through a charity should be extended to children with social workers.

The local authority extended its commissioning of this charity who currently work with looked-after children and children with SEND, to provide an online tutor to support children with social workers to develop confidence and a voice, so that they can give their views to others who represent them, or directly contribute themselves.

The virtual school has highlighted this support to the social workers and DSLs to encourage referrals to this service, so that the voices of children with social workers can be heard and advocated for in children in need and child protection plan meetings.

Where children with social workers do not attend the meetings, the advocacy service is helping to get their views and experiences represented, which enhances longer-term capacity and sustainability of children with social workers to speak up.

Virtual school heads may also want to work with individual school senior mental health leads, where the role exists, to ensure children with a social worker are factored into the school’s strategy on mental health and wellbeing.

The senior mental health lead is responsible for:

• linking with the wider mental health system
• implementing a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing
• working with the school senior leadership team and wider community, including the virtual school head, to raise awareness of mental health

Senior mental health leads are present in most schools and colleges. Senior mental health lead training grant funding is available to support all eligible state-funded schools and colleges to access by 2025.

Lost learning – continuing recovery programmes following the pandemic

For some families, issues such as domestic violence, mental health or substance misuse may have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and increased the barriers to learning that children with a social worker experience.

Where these risk factors are the reasons for the involvement of social care services, and additional pressures created by the pandemic are present, this is likely to have impacted the stability of the home environment and parents’ capacity to support home learning. This will have particularly impacted those children with a social worker who did not attend school during periods of restricted attendance.

DfE directly funded schools in 2022 to 2023, to embed tutoring into children’s education where they need extra support to progress. Given the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on children with social workers, virtual school heads should work with education settings to ensure these children are able to access:

• the National Tutoring Programme (NTP)
• the coronavirus recovery premium

Example: including educational targets in children in need or child protection plans

A virtual school head set up a working group of:

• social worker team managers
• social worker advanced practitioners
• early support and safeguarding social workers

The group pulled together what they felt social workers might need to know about the education of children with social workers.

The virtual school lead for children with social workers talked to social workers and their managers – who had no previous relationship with the virtual school – about the new duties, education, and the role of the virtual school.

These discussions emphasised the importance of:

• stating clear educational targets in the children in need and child protection plans
• familiarising themselves with names and contact details of the designated teachers in the schools of children with social workers
• ensuring that these designated teachers attend children in need and child protection planning meetings

The director of children’s services reaffirmed the importance of a clear education focus in the children in need and child protection plans. When managers in social care undertake quality assurance where they look at children in need or child protection plans or any other assessments, the virtual school head will be involved to see whether the focus and clarity of information about education has improved.

Schools play a pivotal role in supporting the plans, alongside social workers, as teachers see the children every day for many years and can share information. Some schools had better relationships with the children than the social workers can establish and were more able to hear the children’s views.

The high number of children with social workers who have SEND prompted the social workers to request training on:

• SEND provision
• what social worker support ought to be in an education, health and care plan

As the SEND team provided this training, it led to increased contact between social workers and the SEND team about children with a social worker.

Elective home education

Elective home education is when a parent chooses not to send their child to school full-time, but assumes responsibility for making sure their child receives a full-time education in a location other than school . Some electively home educated children may never attend school, in other cases a child may be removed from their school’s roll for elective home education.

Most parents’ decision to home educate is made with their child’s best education and wellbeing at heart. However, this is not the case for all, and home education can mean some children are less visible to the services that are there to keep them safe and supported.

When a family lets the local authority know of their intention to home educate, we recommend that local authorities, schools, and other professionals such as social workers work together to coordinate a meeting with parents or carers where possible. This is to ensure the parents or carers have considered what is in the best interests of each individual child. This is particularly pertinent if a child has SEND or has a social worker. For more information, virtual school heads should refer to guidance on elective home education.

Working with pupils and students with special educational needs and disabilities

A significant proportion of children with a social worker may also be identified as having special educational needs or may be disabled (SEND). These needs can increase a child’s vulnerability and increase the pressure on the family due to additional care demands.

Under the SEND code of practice: 0 to 25 years, education settings have a duty to meet the educational needs of children with SEND. Where children have a social worker, settings can be supported by sharing information which will:

• contribute to their assessment of a child’s needs
• help them to identify the most appropriate interventions
• support a request for a statutory education, health and care plan assessment where necessary

It is vital that aspirations for children with SEND are high. Professionals should not make assumptions about a child’s ability to progress and achieve solely because they are identified as having SEND.

For children who have SEND and are in need of the care and protection of a social worker, it can be challenging to identify those needs for which special educational provision is necessary, and those resulting from adverse experiences in the home and outside the home. Attendance at an education setting which provides stability, good quality pastoral support and effective SEND support is both protective for the child and the best way to promote achievement and enable them to fulfil their potential.

Virtual school heads should work strategically with the local authority head of SEND and, where appropriate, with school leaders and SENCos, to ensure that education settings adopt a graduated approach to assessing, understanding, and meeting the special educational needs of children and young people with a social worker.

Advise and support professionals

A diverse range of agencies and professionals may be involved in the lives of children with social workers. For a child who is currently in receipt of children’s social care support and is subject to a children in need or child protection plan, social workers will play a critical role in supporting children and their families.

The virtual school’s relationships with education settings and other universal services will be essential in supporting children to reach their potential, sharing their knowledge and experience to improve cultures and practices to promote the learning of these children.

Virtual school heads are not being asked to work with individual children with a social worker. Replicating existing professional relationships and support would be counterproductive and burdensome to children and their families, as well as resource intensive for the local authority.

Instead, as strategic leaders, virtual school heads will be best placed to offer advice and information to professionals who are providing direct support to these children.

In offering advice and information to support the outcomes and progress of children with a social worker, virtual school heads should identify and establish links with professionals to help them to understand the role they have in improving outcomes for these children. This includes professionals such as:

• DSLs
• social workers
• headteachers
• governors
• SENCos
• senior mental health leads
• other local authority officers, including designated social care officers (DSCOs) for SEND

Virtual school heads should provide advice on evidence-based interventions that can address barriers to learning, such as those highlighted in what works in education for children who have had social workers.

Virtual school heads should also engage with research organisations to help develop good practice and build a strong evidence base for what works to improve outcomes of children with social workers.

They should support education settings and social care to be creative and thoughtful in building relationships with children and families, including taking account of children’s wishes and feelings when understanding how to meet their needs.

Pupil premium

Pupil premium guidance encourages education settings to design their pupil premium strategy to meet the needs of eligible pupils and others who may benefit from extra support, such as children with a social worker.

While senior leaders and pupil premium lead teachers are free to choose how best to arrange support, pupil premium strategies should focus on well-evidenced practice such as that published in the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) guide to the pupil premium.

Virtual school heads may want to take account of analysis of the EEF’s toolkit in what works in education for children who have had social workers, which identified the projects that show the greatest signs of potential for children with a social worker.

Case study: Camden Virtual School

Launched as part of DfE’s children’s social care innovation programme, Camden Virtual School has been piloting a model of support to promote the education of children subject to children in need and child protection plans since 2017.

The virtual school has been able to make connections in local provision, helping partner agencies understand what support is available to children and families.  The virtual school head has offered advice to schools and children’s social workers, to help them understand what children might need to engage in education. This advice has taken account of children’s experiences such as domestic abuse, neglect, and substance misuse.

The training and coaching that Camden Virtual School has been able to provide social workers has helped them ensure that children and families are offered clear and accurate information about education. Social workers are confident to reach out to the virtual school head and their team for support and there is a strong culture of promoting children’s education through social care.

How virtual school heads should promote the education outcomes of kinship children

We know that children who grow up in kinship care have better outcomes than children who grow up in other types of non-parental care. However, their outcomes fall behind those children with no social worker involvement.

This information is taken from outcomes for children looked after by local authorities: 31 March 2016.

The remit of virtual school heads already includes kinship children:

• who are looked-after
• who meet the definition of previously looked-after
• with a social worker.

The kinship strategy adapted the role of virtual school heads to specifically include championing the attendance, attainment and progress of children in kinship care.

Virtual school heads should bring greater focus and visibility to the distinct needs of children in kinship care within their existing non-statutory responsibilities.

Adaptation of the strategic role

The strategic role adaptation does not require direct intervention with kinship children and their carers, but this system-wide approach has the potential to benefit children in all types of kinship placements, including those in informal arrangements.

There are activities that the adapted virtual school head strategic role should include.

Raising awareness of the needs and disadvantage of children in different types of kinship care arrangements

This could include ensuring that the unique experiences and different kinds of kinship arrangements are visible in existing training for schools, including for the roles of designated teacher and DSL, and other learning support services such as those for children with SEND.

It could also include influencing the education system to have a kinship friendly culture, as well as working with education settings to identify the distinct needs of children in kinship arrangements.

Promoting practice that supports attendance and engagement of kinship children in education

This could include facilitating partnerships between, and within, education settings, local authority children’s social care including any designated kinship teams, and voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations that work with kinship families.

Promoting practice that improves the educational attainment of children in kinship care

This could include working with education settings to strengthen how they address barriers to educational progress for kinship children.

Expanding provision of advice and information

In addition to adapting the strategic role, as part of their non-statutory function, virtual school heads should expand the provision of advice and information, on request, to all kinship carers with special guardianship orders and child arrangement orders, regardless of whether their child was previously looked after by the local authority.

This will mean that more kinship carers will have access to information and advice from virtual school heads on areas such as behaviour management, exclusions, and admissions. It will be an important step in helping more kinship carers to navigate the education system, in turn helping them to advocate for the educational achievement of their children.

In line with the existing provision of information and advice for previously looked-after children, this may include:

• providing advice and information to frequently asked questions online

• providing advice to individual kinship carers of children who are subject to special guardianship orders or child arrangement orders, and schools where they have a query and permission has been given

• advising schools on how they can support all children subject to special guardianship orders and child arrangement orders to improve behaviour to help avoid exclusion becoming necessary

Virtual school heads are not expected to provide information and advice to kinship carers with informal arrangements. The eligibility of pupil premium plus remains limited to looked-after children and previously looked-after children.

Research and emerging practice

Virtual schools will be invited to participate in research commissioned by DfE to capture emerging practice and contribute to the development of a strong evidence base for how they can effectively promote the educational outcomes of children with social workers and impact of the new duties to date.

DfE will ask all local authorities to share data and information about how their virtual school head has been supporting children with a social worker and what funding has been used for that support. This is set out in the grant determination letter and the memorandum of understanding issued to all local authorities. This information will be shared with the independent evaluation partner.

In addition, some local authorities, including virtual school heads, their teams, and partner agencies, will be invited to take part in focussed interviews to build detailed case studies. This will inform our understanding of what helps virtual school heads to be most effective in supporting children with a social worker, and help ensure virtual school heads can learn from each other.