Championing Education for Looked-After Children: Welfare Call at the NAVSH Annual Conference 2025

Championing Education for Looked-After Children: Welfare Call at the NAVSH Annual Conference 2025

Posted by on 11th February 2025

We’re pleased to announce that Welfare Call will be attending and exhibiting at the NAVSH annual conference once again this year.

The role of Virtual School Heads (VSHs) has evolved significantly over the last decade, becoming one of the most vital leadership positions in education and children’s services. VSHs work relentlessly to ensure that looked-after children, previously looked-after children, and those with a social worker receive the support they need to thrive in education.

That’s why the National Association of Virtual School Heads (NAVSH) Annual Conference is such an important date on the calendar. It’s an opportunity for professionals across education, children’s services, and local authorities to come together, share insights, and discuss the challenges and successes of supporting some of the most vulnerable children in our schools.

The Essential Work of Virtual School Heads

Virtual School Heads are at the forefront of tackling educational inequality for looked-after children. They provide:

Advocacy – Ensuring every looked-after child gets the right support to succeed.
Accountability – Monitoring attendance, attainment, and wellbeing.
Collaboration – Working with schools, social care, and health services to create a wraparound approach to education.

Their work makes a real impact, ensuring that children who have experienced instability and disruption are not left behind in education.

Welfare Call’s Role in Supporting Virtual Schools

At Welfare Call, we’ve been working alongside Virtual Schools for over 20 years, providing attendance monitoring, ePEP solutions, and data insights that help VSHs track progress and intervene early.

Our goal is simple: to support Virtual Schools in improving outcomes for looked-after children by providing the tools they need to make informed decisions.

We’re looking forward to reconnecting with Virtual School Heads at the conference, hearing about their successes and challenges, and exploring how we can continue to support them in their vital work.

Come and meet us at NAVSH 2025!

If you’re attending the NAVSH Annual Conference 2025, come and find us! We’ll be exhibiting and ready to talk all things attendance, engagement, and data-driven decision-making. Whether you’re looking to enhance your attendance tracking, streamline your ePEP process, or discuss the latest trends in Virtual Schools, we’d love to chat.

 NAVSH Annual Conference 2025
🗓 Date: Tues 4th and Weds 5th March 2025
📍 Location: Aintree Racecourse, Ormskirk Road, Liverpool, L9 5AS.

Find us on stands 37 – 38. If you’d like to set up a time to meet during the event, get in touch – we’d love to hear from you!

  • “

    How fantastic! This is really excellent stuff.

     

    “

    Fay Blyth, Virtual School Headteacher for Waltham Forest

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    I’m absolutely loving Analytics and the updates coming through are very helpful.

     

    “

    Nickie West-Jarrett, Attendance and Inclusion Officer for Lewisham Virtual School

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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

  • “

    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