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Positive Attendance Outcomes:
20% absence reduction
50% exclusion reduction*
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Effective ePEP Results:
Proven to improve
education plan
completion rates
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Analytics:
Discovering actionable
insights through clear
data visualisations
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Welfare Call Group:
Safeguarding
over 41,000
vulnerable children
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G Cloud Supplier:
Procure our services
through the
Government certified
framework
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Our ePEP
is used by schools in more than 150+ Authorities
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Our ePEP
is accessed by 13823 school accounts
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Our ePEP
has an average of 1689 users access the system each weekday
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Our ePEP
has helped 56981 PEPs to completion last year
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Virtual Schools
The Welfare Call Group was established in 2002 to assist local authorities, virtual schools, education services, social services and children’s and families’ departments in meeting their statutory obligations with regards to monitoring vulnerable children, improving their educational outcomes and ‘narrowing the attainment gap’.
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Designated Teachers
Welfare Call actively supports Designated Teachers to enable them to be the focal point within the school environment. By using Welfare Call’s single platform, DT’s can share data across all key stakeholders ensuring there is multi-agency engagement. This ultimately ensures there are clearer plans, actions and targets in place for the betterment of the vulnerable children.
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Social Workers
The Welfare Call Group assists Social Workers to enable them to fulfil their key role of supporting the education of children in care. This is driven by the ability to provide them with up-to-date attendance information along with a platform to initiate robust and comprehensive personal education plans.
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Education Provisions
Welfare Call make over 9500 daily calls on behalf of the corporate parent to education provisions throughout the UK to collect the attendance data (and subsequent reasons for absence where necessary) for looked after and vulnerable children.
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Learn How We Work



a year making calls
Customer Testimonials
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How fantastic! This is really excellent stuff.
Fay Blyth, Virtual School Headteacher for Waltham Forest
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Senior managers feel that the analytics is impressive and are keen to have as many dashboards as possible to show Ofsted for our annual conversation.
Helen Bushell, (Previous) Head of Virtual School for Rutland
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I’m a bit giddy, I love the ePEP dashboards – How clever are you lot! Gosh I love this system.
Michaela Blair, PEP Co-ordinator for Oldham
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I like the dashboards. They are very clear. I also like the jump-to’s and the ability to drill down to individual young people. On the whole really happy. I am looking forward to other attainment-based dashboards – especially one that can capture the children making less than expected progress.
Calvin Kipling, Virtual School Headteacher for Darlington
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I’m absolutely loving Analytics and the updates coming through are very helpful.
Nickie West-Jarrett, Attendance and Inclusion Officer for Lewisham Virtual School
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We have worked with Welfare Call for over 3 years, it has transformed the way we work in terms of the way we have been able to utilise our resources and deploying staff differently as they are able to proactively use the data rather than chasing it. The data we …
Graeme Ferguson, Virtual School Head, Derby City Council
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Children in care have positive education experiences. In school, children in care have good attendance and behaviour. Permanent and fixed exclusions for pupils who are in care are low. The virtual school provides good support for schools to produce increasingly effective personal education plans, which include clear targets and the …
London Borough of Merton – Children’s Services Inspection
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Electronic personal education plans are detailed, focus on the key areas, and include pupil targets and the pupils’ perspectives. A range of extra-curricular activities are available to support and enrich the lives of children in care. The virtual school carefully tracks the progress of all pupils and is quick to …
Rutland County Council – Children’s Services Inspection
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The virtual school has a clear sense of purpose and direction and makes good use of performance data to target its activity to best effect. As a result, its influence and impact continue to grow. Ninety-six per cent of children in care have an up-to-date personal education plan (PEP). Better …
London Borough of Harrow – Children’s Services Inspection
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The rate of children’s attendance at school is rising. Relationships between the virtual school and designated teachers are strong. The personal education plan (PEP) process is well established and comprehensive. Children are making good educational progress.
Bedford Borough Council – Children’s Services Focused Visit
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The virtual school systematically monitors and evaluates the quality of personal education plans (PEPs), and, as a result, the quality of plans is improving. All PEPs have a clear focus on academic progress.
Cornwall Council – Children’s Services Inspection
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Personal education plans (PEPs) provide a sound basis to plan and review the progress children make. Children in care receive effective support from the virtual school staff, who understand their individual needs and act as effective advocates for them. This helps children stay on track to achieve their goals, and, …
Swindon Borough Council – Children’s Services Inspection
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The virtual school provides effective support for the progress and attainment of children in care. The virtual school team has a sound understanding of the progress that children are making. As a result of effective support, many make good progress from their starting points. Personal education plans are mostly of …
Worcestershire County Council – Children’s Services Inspection
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Children and young people make good educational progress in care. Those who do not attend school have prompt access to suitable, good-quality registered alternative provision. Children’s progress is closely reviewed through personal education plans which have well-written targets, and this is an improvement since the last inspection. Urgent action is …
London Borough of Tower Hamlets – Children’s Services Inspection
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Welfare Call provides a highly professional and cost competitive service that has enhanced our ability to collect progression and impact information for the majority of learners attending our courses. Welfare Call has made this mammoth task into a much easier process enabling us to effortlessly compile mandatory progression returns and …
Mobin Chothia, Service Development Officer, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
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The role of the Virtual School Head continues to remain a challenging one where the dynamics are as varied as each individual that we work with. Given increasingly limited resources of Local Authorities, it’s also vital that investments are made in services that achieve the highest impact. Having worked with …
Kashif Nawaz, Virtual School Head, Bracknell Forest
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The strong emphasis on ensuring that PEPs are of good quality and completed in a timely way is contributing well to children’s progress.
London Borough of Barnet – Children’s Services Inspection
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Education is actively promoted for children in care and the virtual school is increasingly effective in ensuring that children make good progress and reach their potential. The quality and timeliness of personal education plans have improved significantly. Children benefit from regular reviews of their progress.
London Borough of Enfield – Children’s Services Inspection
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Our PEPs are much better quality and are completed on time. Welfare Calls ePEP system has been a massive help towards this. There are a number of Ofsted quotes which are looking slightly dated (given they are from 2017) therefore I would propose using the ones outlined below: All children …
Kate Harm, Specialist Education Officer for Children in Care, Derby Virtual School
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We have been using the Welfare Call ePEP for a number of years having previously had a paper based PEP. Over this period we have seen: our timely completion rates for the ePEP improve from 85% to 95% an improved quality of what has been written within the ePEP greater …
Graeme Ferguson, Virtual School Head, Derby City Council
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Education is actively promoted for children in care and the virtual school is increasingly effective in ensuring that children make good progress and reach their potential. The quality and timeliness of personal education plans have improved significantly. Children benefit from regular reviews of their progress.
London Borough of Waltham Forest – Children’s Services Inspection – 28/01/2019 -
The strong emphasis on ensuring that PEPs are of good quality and completed in a timely way is contributing well to children’s progress.
London Borough of Enfield – Children’s Services Inspection – 04/03/2019 -
The virtual school provides effective support for the progress and attainment of children in care. The virtual school team has a sound understanding of the progress that children are making. As a result of effective support, many make good progress from their starting points. Personal education plans are mostly of good quality; they are reviewed termly and clearly identify the support that children need. Interventions are tailored to children’s needs and support their progress well.
London Borough of Barnet – Children’s Services Inspection – 13/05/2019 -
Children and young people make good educational progress in care. Those who do not attend school have prompt access to suitable, good-quality registered alternative provision. Children’s progress is closely reviewed through personal education plans which have well-written targets, and this is an improvement since the last inspection. Urgent action is taken if children are missing from education or if their attendance reduces.
Worcestershire County Council – Children’s Services Inspection – 17/06/2019 -
Personal education plans (PEPs) provide a sound basis to plan and review the progress children make. Children in care receive effective support from the virtual school staff, who understand their individual needs and act as effective advocates for them. This helps children stay on track to achieve their goals, and, consequently, many make good progress from their starting points.
London Borough of Tower Hamlets – Children’s Services Inspection – 10/06/2019 -
The virtual school systematically monitors and evaluates the quality of personal education plans (PEPs), and, as a result, the quality of plans is improving. All PEPs have a clear focus on academic progress.
Swindon Borough Council – Children’s Services Inspection – 01/07/2019 -
The rate of children’s attendance at school is rising. Relationships between the virtual school and designated teachers are strong. The personal education plan (PEP) process is well established and comprehensive. Children are making good educational progress.
Cornwall Council – Children’s Services Inspection – 14/10/2019 -
The virtual school has a clear sense of purpose and direction and makes good use of performance data to target its activity to best effect. As a result, its influence and impact continue to grow. Ninety-six per cent of children in care have an up-to-date personal education plan (PEP). Better use is being made of the pupil premium grant.
Bedford Borough Council – Children’s Services Focused Visit – 23/10/2019 -
Electronic personal education plans are detailed, focus on the key areas, and include pupil targets and the pupils’ perspectives. A range of extra-curricular activities are available to support and enrich the lives of children in care. The virtual school carefully tracks the progress of all pupils and is quick to intercede should a child’s attendance start to reduce.
London Borough of Harrow – Children’s Services Inspection – 10/02/2020 -
Children in care have positive education experiences. In school, children in care have good attendance and behaviour. Permanent and fixed exclusions for pupils who are in care are low. The virtual school provides good support for schools to produce increasingly effective personal education plans, which include clear targets and the voice of the pupil. The engagement of children in care and care leavers in their education and pathway plans is improving.
Rutland County Council – Children’s Services Inspection – 02/03/2020 -
All children in care, including those placed out of area, had an online personal education plan (PEP) meeting during the national lockdown, and this provided a good line of sight into the experiences of these children.
London Borough of Merton – Children’s Services Inspection – 06/10/2020
Latest News
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In January, the NCSC announced an update of the Cyber Essentials technical controls. This move was part of a regular review of the scheme to ensure it keeps evolving as the threat landscape and technologies change. That update was the biggest overhaul of the scheme’s technical controls since its launch in …
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Over the last 15 years Welfare Call has witnessed – and been a crucial part of – a fundamental evolvement in the way children’s personal education plans (PEPs) are accessed and completed. Whilst there is still a proportion of Virtual Schools that conduct and record their PEP meetings on …
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Welfare Call are happy to announce that we’ve once again been accepted on the latest iteration of the Government certified Digital Marketplace framework, G-Cloud 13. The G-Cloud framework is an initiative that the Government began in 2012 to provide UK public sector organisations with a centralised procurement framework for the …
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This week saw the publication of Where are England’s Children? Interim findings from the Children’s Commissioner’s Attendance Audit. In order to investigate how much Local Authorities (LAs) know about children that are missing education, the Children’s Commissioner’s office surveyed 145 LAs, which makes up 96 per cent of the total. …
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“Despite the challenges and substantial changes in working practices over the last 12 months, as we all get used to a new ‘normal’ we are delighted to say that our security processes have met the everything 2020 could throw at them and, once again, we have passed the Cyber Essentials …
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We’re pleased to hear there that there is a new funding stream/grant available for schools and Virtual Schools which people may not be aware of. As part of the Department for Education’s (DfE) education recovery plan, the Secretary of State for Education is providing financial assistance to eligible local authorities, …
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