Pastoral Support

Our Team

All our school staff support all of the children in our school in a pastoral manner, however, our school has two staff who are non-class based; Mrs Marshall and Miss Cameron-Leslie, who are able to support families and children. The phase leaders; Mrs Crozier, Miss Tranter, Mr Crozier and Mr Warren as well as the Assistant Headteacher, Mr Hickman who is our SENCO, Mrs Cross our Deputy Head and Miss Cooksley our Headteacher are all keen to foster quality and meaningful relationships with parents and are able to also offer pastoral support.

As a team, we have built, and continue to have, positive relationships with many supporting partner agencies. As a team, we can offer support or signpost you to work with those who can help, these might include, Housing, School Nursing teams, support with debts, Mental Health, Domestic Abuse, local PCSO’s, Fire Prevention Teams and more.

Mrs Marshall can point you to where you are able to receive food parcels and support those that are in more regular need of food parcels. Referrals can also be made to other supporting services that can help such as Baby Basic, Restore and others.

If you would like to contact Mrs Marshall, she is available at the school gate, at the beginning and the end of the day. She is also available as part of the PITS Drop In sessions, along with Miss Leslie, each week. These dates are shared at the beginning of each half term, so please refer to these.

As a team, we are always looking forward to being able to offer the earliest possible support for your family before levels of crisis are reached. School can lead on an Early Help plan that allows us to access support and advice from many agencies and act as the point of contact and support in ensuring appropriate services are invited to meetings and action plans are agreed to ensure that support is continuously moving forward.

Winter Pressures and Cost of Living Crisis

Please find some information here about Winter Wellbeing: Winter Wellbeing | West Northamptonshire Council (westnorthants.gov.uk)

In addition, here is a list of Warm Spaces in the local area: Looking for warm spaces | West Northamptonshire Council (westnorthants.gov.uk)

Early help and support for parents and carers

Early help means working with you and your family to ensure that you receive the right help and support as soon as you need it. Early help is for everybody, for families with children and young people of any age. And it's your choice whether to access it or not.

Early help and support

There are lots of reasons why you might want some support including:

Advice about your child's health, development or behaviour
How your child is progressing at school
Caring for a child with a disability or additional needs
Concerns you have about money or housing that is affecting your family
Help around domestic abuse, drugs, alcohol or crime
Bereavement support
Being a young carer

Accessing early help

If you feel you and your family could benefit from some support you can ask someone in your life that you trust, this might be a teacher at your child's school, your GP, your health visitor, your nursery practitioner or your housing support worker. If you find this difficult, you can always contact the early help team directly and we'll work with you to find someone for you to talk to.

Sometimes if someone is worried that you're having some problems, they might ask you if you would like to talk about early help.

The early help process and assessment

The Early Help Assessment (EHA) is a process designed to help you support your child.

It will help:

your child receive the right support before a small need grows into a larger one
create a shared assessment, so that you and your child will not have to repeat the same information to different workers
ensure that everyone involved with your child – such as teachers and health visitors work together to support your child

An Early help assessment is a conversation where we can talk about things that are going well and things that you're proud of as well as things that you're finding a challenge and where support can be put into place to help you. Throughout the process, you have control over who is involved. You will also be given a copy of the form, and be told who will see it, where it is stored and how it will be used.

You can request an EHA or a professional can recommend your child or family. All professionals who work with children and young people in Northamptonshire may recommend support for your child or family.

We will talk with your child or children to make sure they understand how they are feeling and anything they think they might want some help with.

For older children who feel able to discuss their situation on their own with the worker, it may be a young person's wish to keep information confidential from parents. This may be respected by the worker where this is in the young person's best interests.

What happens next will be different for every family. You might make a plan with the person you spoke with to sort out the problems. You might want to meet with other people who might be able to help. This is called a team around the family (TAF) meeting. Or you might want to get a service (like family support, therapy, or a children's centre) to give you the help you feel you need.

If you decide you'd like some support, the person you talked with will ask if they can share details of your conversation. You need to be happy with this and give your permission. This is to make sure the people supporting you can do a good job for you and understand the journey you and your family are on.

Sharing information

There may be times when the person you talked to must share information. This includes if they think:

a child is at risk of harm
an adult is at risk of harm
the information could help prevent or detect a serious crime

Social care won't get involved unless one of these things happens, or the circumstances in your family change and become more serious.

The next steps

We can begin to complete an action plan based on the information you and your child provide. This may take place straight away or we may need to make some enquiries and contact you again.

If the action plan identifies that support is needed from other services, a team around the family (TAF) will be formed.

A TAF is a group of people who regularly meet with you to support your family. A member of the team around the family may be chosen as the lead professional.

How the Local Authority use your information

The information which you and your child provide will only be shared with your consent. However, there may be times when the people working with you need to share information.

For example:

when they need to find out urgently if a child is at risk of harm
to help a child who is at risk of harm
when an adult is at risk of harm
to help prevent or detect a serious crime

Contacts

If you think an EHA may benefit you and your family, you can contact your midwife, your child's health visitor, children's centre, or ourselves, or for further advice and support get in touch with the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust Children and Family Support Service.

During the EHA process your lead professional is the single point of contact if you need advice about your plan or what is happening next. You will be able to agree on who this will be at your TAF meeting. Your lead professional will share their contact details with you so that you can contact them directly.

Early Help Link

If you have anything that you feel we might be able to support you with as a family, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the pastoral team.

Mental Health Strategy