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’.
Supporting over 100 Local Authorities and Organisations throughout the UK, Welfare Call provides a platform to enable:
- Daily attendance and attainment monitoring of vulnerable cohorts
- Production and management of robust Personal Education Plans (PEP):
- Analysis and visualisation of the data collected to find actionable insights
Welfare Calls systems are fully integrated and as such are designed to work optimally together. By using our in-built reporting and analysis tools, Local Authorities are able to monitor a child’s progression through education and track their attendance, attainment, progress and PEPS in one place using one system as though it were a single entity – this ensures the Local Authority (and in particular Virtual Schools) meet requirement 4 stated in the guidance ‘Promoting the education of looked-after children and previously looked-after children’:
“VSHs should ensure the educational attainment and progress of children looked after by the local authority are monitored and evaluated as if those children attended a single school”
Information and data which Local Authorities can obtain through Welfare Call’s services is used to support early interventions, strategic developments and safeguarding initiatives leading to positive outcomes and a reduction in children disengaging in education.
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.
Our user-friendly and intuitive platform ensures Designated Teachers can accurately disclose each individual child’s educational needs so that the necessary support and interventions can be put in place.
Designated Teachers are also empowered by the fact they can assign delegates from within our system and enable them to contribute to key areas within the PEP’s.
Social Workers
The Welfare Call Group assists Social Workers to ensure they fulfil their key role of supporting the education of children and young people in care. This is driven by the ability to provide them with up-to-date attendance information and notifications of absences to highlight any potential safeguarding concerns and enable them to take the necessary course of action.
Alongside this our online PEP platform allows the Social Workers to initiate robust and comprehensive personal education plans and communicate and track the child’s progress. This enables them to proactively engage with the schools to ensure the necessary support is in place for the children and young people they are responsible for.
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 children in care and other vulnerable cohorts.
Our experience shows us that this daily communication enables us to build a rapport with the schools and glean additional information around the children’s attendance. This in turn gives Local Authorities much more accurate attendance and attainment data and enhances the safeguarding element attached to the vulnerable cohorts.
We know that there can be errors in school attendance registers, e.g. assumed or missing attendance, ambiguity over whether a mark is genuine or not, forward marking etc. Our live calling system eliminates this inaccuracy by prompting personnel to give detailed attendance reasons and obtain all missing or unknown marks. It also gives our Call Operators the flexibility to contact alternate provisions, obtain further detail regarding pupil absence and pass information regarding pupil’s attendance to the key personnel immediately should a safeguarding issue be identified.