• Home

Who We Are

What We Do

Support Us

Jobs

News

Adoption

School and Community Service

Parishes

Contact

Search News archive

Search our database to find archived news.

Enter keyword(s) or date:

View all archived news »

CONTACT

Tel: 0113 388 5400
Fax: 0113 388 5401
Email: info@catholic-care.org.uk

 

Catholic Care Schools Social Work Team
Promoting Good Practice

Schools social work service
Catholic Care will contribute to the welfare of children and young people by working directly with them, their parents and carers and their school. Catholic Care's school social work team offers a responsive service to primary, secondary and sixth for colleges that is individually tailored to meet the needs of the school and individual pupils.

Purpose of the service

• Remove barriers to learning and participation
• Develop the full potential of individuals within the values and ethos of their school
• Nurture the emotional and spiritual development of individual children and young people within the school and home community
• Address critical personal and social issues
• Develop new skills

Every Child Matters
Catholic Care schools social work service contributes to the national Every Child Matters agenda that aims to ensure every child has the chance to fulfil their potential by reducing levels of educational failure, ill health, substance misuse, teenage pregnancy, abuse and neglect, crime and anti-social behaviour. Key areas to improve children and young people's lives are based on The Children Act 2004 set out in Every Child Matters:

• Being healthy - enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle
• Staying safe - being protected from harm and neglect
• Enjoying and achieving - getting the most our of life and developing the skills for adulthood
• Making a positive contribution - being involved in the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour
• Economic well-being - not being prevented by economic disadvantaged from achieving their full potential in life.

Better outcomes
Catholic Care schools social work programmes will support your school initiatives to:

• Ensure early intervention to identify problems and solutions as quickly as possible
• Improve behaviour and attendance targets
• Improve outcomes for children with special educational needs
• Maintain links children and young people at key transition times between home, school/college and work.
• Develop and maintain extended schools programmes
• Develop and share support through cluster schools collaboration

Specific programmes

• Transition work at key times in children's lives
• Parenting skills
• Bereavement ...links to Rainbows programme
• Counselling... one to one, drop in
• Small group work...issue based & peer support
• Advocacy
• Mediation work
• Children's rights
• Looked after children
• Training: school staff
• Signposting to other specialist services

Issues addressed with pupils

• Bullying
• Self-harm
• Sexuality
• Pregnancy
• Contraception
• Anger management
• Stress management
• Family stability/permanence
• Self-awareness/self-esteem
• Peer relationships

National Framework
The social work services of Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) will assist schools and colleges to meet statutory regulations and develop good practice. Our services will compliment and help deliver your whole school/college pastoral care strategy. The service links to the following government policies and recommended practices.

• The Department of Education & Skills recognises counselling and mentoring as important elements to be considered for children and young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties under the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001.
• The National Curriculum Guidelines encourage the spiritual, moral, cultural, mentally and physically development of pupils through opportunities for development and growth that schools social work promotes.

• Schools social work, mentoring and counselling is recognised by OFSTED and is shown to:

1. support whole school approaches to the wellbeing of children
2. support strategies to counteract bullying and truancy
3. complement pastoral care systems
4. support the care of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties
5. support effective child protection procedures.

• The Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs 2001 states that counselling helps children experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties.
• Schools social work services support the schools increasing responsibility to promote and safeguard the welfare of children as set out in the Children Act 1989 and the DfES guidance Safeguarding Children in Education 2004.
• The Children Act 2004 and the proceeding Green Paper Every Child Matters put children "at the heart of policy development and service delivery". Schools social workers promote joined-up working to ensure parents, school staff, statutory services and children can work together and the voice of children can be heard.

You can download our Schools Info Pack. Just click on the links below:

Introduction to the Schools Service
The Provision of the Schools Service
Steps to Commissioning the Service
Partnership and Agreement

Mission and Values

Catholic Care is a charitable organisation working on behalf of the diocese of Leeds. It offers a variety of services and support not only to the Catholic population, but also to the wider community as a whole.

Catholic Care acts to support those in need of its services, especiallly the weak and the vunerable and it acts as an advocate for those unable to represent themselves

The primary purpose of the agency is to foster and influence a vision of how people can live together in Christian charity, love and justice, by taking the "Caring Church into the Community