More about Education Advocacy
This page provides background information about education advocacy in Croydon.
Project Aim
Building on our existing work, giving telephone advice to parents/carers, we have developed a model through which we can offer more practical support at source. In other words, we want to use our expertise to provide parents/carers with an early-intervention advocacy service, with the aim of minimizing inappropriate exclusions. Project Activities
We are running a pilot project in the London Borough of Croydon and have appointed an Education Advocate to provide face-to-face support to parents/carers whose children are at risk of exclusion, or who have already been excluded (officially or unofficially). We are focusing on children in Years 7 and 9 because the highest rates of exclusion tend to happen in these transition years. We aim to reach those families who are at greatest risk of not engaging with schools and Local Authorities etc. In some areas, little or no direct support is available to families on education issues. It is often the case that parents/carers don’t trust local authority-provided services, perhaps because they themselves had bad experiences at school, or fear the consequences of seeking help. We have found that parents/carers value our independent role and trust our advice, so we believe we have a role to play in providing advocacy support. The project has three key elements:
- Provision of education advocacy support to parents/carers;
Identifying and working in partnership with local agencies (voluntary organisations, community groups, schools, Local Authorities) in order to ensure that families receive high quality support and to minimize exclusions; and Delivery of the ACE Education Step by Step training programme to build capacity within local groups, in order to reach/support as many families as possible.
