I want to start this introduction with my heartfelt thanks for all the support you have provided for the children and young people in your care this term. We are very much aware of the increased needs of many of our children and young people and the additional demand placed on school staff.

In this edition we have focused on developments which are adding value to our school offer.

We are very pleased to have been chosen as a pilot area for the Autism in Schools Project and will able to learn from new ways of working, which we can share more widely with you all. Key to this project is listening to the views of parents/carers and importantly to the children and young people themselves, which is the focus of the second article on capturing pupil voice with a really helpful video to support you to develop best practice.

The guidance on Tackling Racism and Promoting Equality also picks up on the importance of the child/young person’s voice and the need for person-centred planning, as well as other useful information.

I urge you to read the article on Children Missing Education and Child Exploitation and to reflect on your vital role in promoting positive relationships and the resilience all children need to be able to negotiate their way through life, but in particular those that are most vulnerable.

I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and hope you enjoy the festivities, as well as finding some time for yourselves to rest and relax!

West Sussex is one of two areas in the South East chosen to be part of a national scheme to improve the support and awareness of autism in schools.

Schools taking part receive funding to allocate an Autism Champion who is trained to drive new and innovative measures that will support autistic children.

A new Autism Schools Project Team has been set up and has co-created a transformative programme which is already being rolled out to schools who are signed up.

The team is an exciting collaboration of West Sussex County Council’s Autism and Social Communication Team, West Sussex SEND Commissioning Team, the West Sussex Parent Carer Forum, disability charity ASPENS and the West Sussex Youth Voice Group.

The project’s key aims include:

• Whole school cultural change, spearheaded by individual school leaders to promote positive autism support and practice
• Working directly with children with autism and their families, offering the individual support they need
• Working with the West Sussex Parent Carer Forum to build strong relationships and networks of support for families

Nigel Jupp, West Sussex County Council Cabinet Member for Learning and Skills, said:

“This successful bid for funding has created an exciting new partnership between our Autism Team, the Parent Carer Forum and local charities who will work intensively with 21 West Sussex schools over the next year.

“The voices of autistic children and their families will be a key part of this programme of change and the exciting work will build on the already comprehensive training and support offered to West Sussex schools.”

Eleven schools from Crawley and the Chichester district are the first to take part and began the training with the Autism Schools Project Team in November. Once completed, the team will work with each school, its pupils and parents to produce a bespoke package of training and engagement activities to suit the individual school community.

ASPENS will work directly with small groups of children in schools and appoint Autism Ambassadors made up of children with autism and neurological conditions, creating lessons and videos together to explain autism to fellow pupils.

West Sussex County Council successful bid for funding from NHS England will continue the Autism Schools Project into 2022, when a second cohort of ten West Sussex schools will begin the training.

Each school involved will work towards achieving an Autism Aware Award. The awards are run by West Sussex County Council each year and are open to all West Sussex schools, who can achieve a bronze, silver and gold standard and are re-accredited every three years to ensure continual progress.

The Autism and Social Communication Team are delighted to be offering drop in surgeries hosted by the team's Specialist Learning Support Assistants (SLSAs). In these surgeries, school staff can seek general advice about implementing strategies around autism and social communication differences.

The team can support you to develop your knowledge, understanding and practice. Some subjects already explored in last half term's surgery include the following:

• Transition advice
• Visual supports
• Sensory needs
• Self -regulation
• Anxiety
• Communication
• Social Stories/Comic Strip

Schools will be offered a pre-booked 20 minute slot to discuss and share concerns.  SLSAs will offer generic support and advice which can be tailored for anonymised children.

When and where

A twenty minute Microsoft Teams consultation, on 

TUESDAYS, 9:30 – 11:30

Please email: asctslsasurgery@westsussex.gov.uk to request a booking form.

A new guidance document, “Promoting Equality and Tackling Racism – Guidance for West Sussex Schools”, is now available for all schools to download online.

The guidance is designed to support schools to reflect on their current practice and to implement best practice through a long-term, sustained, whole-school approach.

The guidance is structured around eight key issues that cover different aspects of planning, policy and practice. Schools are encouraged to consider how they will develop their approach on each of these eight issues in order to tackle racism in all of its forms and embed an ethos of inclusion and equality in a meaningful and permanent way.

The guidance also sets out the legal and local contexts for this work, as well as signposting to a range of wider reading, resources and practical tools.

Alongside the full guidance document, a shorter summary is also available, setting out the suggested whole school approach and outlining the structure of the main document.

Both documents are available to download here, alongside a collection of links to online resources and further reading.

Limited spaces are still available for two online EAL training sessions from the EMTAS team. 

These sessions are suitable for any school staff.   There is no charge for these courses for maintained settings. The cost for attendees from academies is £50.

Booking details as follows:

• Supporting More Advanced Learners Of English – 2^nd Mar 2022, 2.30-4pm https://schools.westsussex.gov.uk/Event/154096
•  Key Strategies To Support Children Learning Through EAL Across Key Stages – 10^th May 2022, 2.30-4pm  https://schools.westsussex.gov.uk/Event/154099

We’ve been collecting feedback, so you don’t just have to take our word for what a great service this is.

So far, 100% of respondent school leaders would recommend a SEND & Inclusion Review to others.

"It was a supportive and productive day which helped us to realise our strengths and focus on where we need to improve." - Headteacher.

"We have already [recommended it to others] because of how useful it was to articulate our vision and the impact that it has on staff." - School Leader.

"From a Governor perspective, [I expect to see] much more awareness of the SEND notional budget, and as a result, we can sharpen our focus when doing our finance monitoring of SEND provision." - School Governor.

Find out more on our dedicated SEND & Inclusion Review page. Or if you’re already convinced – use our handy guide of how to navigate West Sussex Services for Schools to secure your booking.

Over the course of this term, the West Sussex Inclusion Teams have been engaging with parent/carers through four face-to-face sessions focused on the educational support for pupils with SEN in West Sussex.

The sessions have considered all stages of support, including SEN Support, EHC needs assessment and monitoring and review of EHCPs.

Parent/carers were able to provide their views of what has worked well for their child/young person, what could have worked better and what they thought might improve things for their child/young person and their family.  The sessions were conducted by an impartial SEN consultant and were relaxed and informal in their approach. 

We are very grateful to all parent/carers who gave up their valuable time to contribute and have been pleased with their evaluations of the sessions.  Parent/carers at our Crawley session felt: 

Comfortable – able to be open and honest without judgement

Listened to

They appreciated:

Meeting other parents in the same storm but on different boats

Chatting to professionals in an informal setting

If you didn’t know about these sessions, or were unable to attend, we still want to receive your views and have set up an online survey open to all parent/carers in West Sussex.  Please do complete the survey and share your experiences and suggestions.  You can access it here:

https://yourvoice.westsussex.gov.uk/parent-carer-survey

The survey will close on the 31^st December 2021 and the outcome of all the sessions, the surveys and agreed actions will be made available in a variety of places including through future editions of this newsletter.

Many thanks again to all parent/carers who have contributed.

As part of the West Sussex County Council's “Your Mind Matters” campaign, West Sussex Mind has been commissioned to run training for school staff and workshops for parents which includes:

• Youth Mental Health First Aid training
• Workshops for parents and carers to understand and support their child’s mental health and wellbeing

To find out more about these free training events please view the Communications section of WSSfS searching using the key word “Wellbeing.”

Children who are reported missing

Going missing from school, home and care is one of the biggest indicators of high-risk exposure to our children.

All missing episodes for the 703 children who were reported missing in West Sussex during the last 12 months have been taken seriously and each episode seen with as much concern as the first.

132 of those children were cared for by the local authority and 31 of these cared for children who went missing during this period were considered to be at risk of exploitation. For these, we explored some of the underlying needs and factors leading to children becoming vulnerable to child exploitation and harm and supported a range of practitioners to enhance safety and disruption plans to improve the support and protection we can provide to children and their families.

Our data shows that of the 167 different children that had a return home interview after they went missing during the first six months, 102 (61%) of these did not go missing again in the following six months. During the last 12 months, 25% of children identified at risk of exploitation live in Adur & Worthing; 24% in Crawley; 15% in the Arun Districts; 13% in Horsham district; 9% in Mid Sussex, and 8% in Chichester. The other 6% were children we care for who are placed out of the county.

Child Exploitation

The Missing and Exploitation Operational Group uses intelligence from a wide range of sources, including police, health, schools and district and borough partners to develop a contextual approach with a shared understanding of the trends and patterns of behaviours.  We know that children who are being exploited, or who are at risk of being exploited, will have varying levels of needs and they may have multiple vulnerabilities - yet exploitation does not occur because of a child’s vulnerability, it occurs because there is someone willing to take advantage of this vulnerability and because there are inadequate protective structures around the child and family to mediate against this. Therefore, an appropriate multi- agency response and effective coordination is essential to ensure the child safety.

During the last 12 months (Nov 2020 to Oct 2021), West Sussex Children and Families Services have been safeguarding and supporting 247 children (aged between 11 and 17) who were either being exploited or at risk of being exploited - 105 female and 142 male. Of these children, 47 were children that we care for, 22 female and 25 male. CSE (Sexual Exploitation) was less prevalent in West Sussex than CCE (child criminal exploitation) making up 34% of all exploited children and 36% of children we care for.

The joined up working between staff in Missing Children Team, the Complex Safeguarding Team and the Missing Persons Police team continues to focus on safeguarding and intervening with children that go missing and children at risk of extra-familial harm. To have a shared understanding of current risk and behaviours, the daily multi-agency missing meeting (DOMM) and weekly missing and exploitation operation group (MEOG) review all missing episodes and all child exploitation risk assessments, to understand what is happening to children and what needs to be in place to manage and reduce risk and to prevent escalation.  We recognise the link between children who go missing and criminal and sexual exploitation. During 2021, we put enhanced safety planning in place for 37 children who suffered as victims of exploitation, and this resulted in a clear reduction in risk for 29 of these children, with the remaining children continuing to have protective and disruption plans in place. There has been enhanced safely planning and contextual safeguarding support in place for another 168 children who had indicators to show they were at risk of harm due to their vulnerability to being targeted for exploitation.

The large majority of known extra familial harm featuring in West Sussex is Criminal Exploitation (CCE) relating to drug supply where 15–17-year-old males are being exploited by slightly older males who encourage them to become involved in supply of drugs and violence. Many victims are cannabis users and the purchase of this is highly likely to be a way that victims encounter exploiters; vulnerable children who use alcohol/drugs are also more likely to accept these from a perpetrator who use this to groom them. Of interest, recent trends in extra familial harm of children are showing an increase in children being drawn into laundering money, leading to close working with Sussex Police to investigate and protect victims. Individuals have also used budget hotels (such as Premier Inn and Travelodge) to meet victims of CSE and CCE and/or to deal drugs from, and victims may be staying at these locations when missing. We increased training and alerts to Hoteliers though our local Hotel watch campaign and from this we have received reports of suspicious activity to police, leading to police interventions resulting in arrests and issuing of child abduction notices.

Throughout 2021 we have seen a change in the pattern of the numbers of reports featuring child exploitation. There has been an obvious correlation between the numbers of children going missing and the lockdown restrictions, with a significant reduction in the number of children being reported missing in West Sussex since the start of the pandemic. However, Covid-19 has meant the risk of cyber-enabled exploitation has increased. Children and young people are often groomed online on platforms such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Wickr, Omegle, and gaming platforms. As a result additional support has been provided to families to help them increase security and use guidance such as Internet Matters to help them with online safety and the removal of unwanted images from online platforms.

As this report shows, criminals will exploit any vulnerabilities that a child or their family possess, and combatting this is complex, and will depend on the child. There will be a range of different responses needed. But the basic premise from which all these interventions work an understanding of the child’s situation and at least one person working with them consistently. The children who are most vulnerable are those invisible to professionals and feel isolated. Crucial to this is recognising the importance of direct and trusting relationships which enable children to change their behaviour and seek help.

Vulnerable children are not alone in making poor decisions. Children often make poor decisions in terms of who to hang out with and what actions to take. Often, they are just taking the easiest decision available to them – and criminals can be very nice when it suits them -but once they enter a criminal’s orbit, they enter a spiral where the decisions that will withdraw them from that criminal become harder and harder to make.  As one professional pointed out to us, most office workers know they should stay away from the biscuit tin, but that does not mean they do it. Most office workers can take the odd biscuit without developing a problem, just as most children can be naughty occasionally, and take a risk, without ending up exploited.

But there are a minority for whom those decisions have very poor consequences. The morbidly obese for whom food because a real threat. The vulnerable children for whom a series of bad decisions becomes a lifestyle. These people need help in changing their behaviour. Yet in neither situation does castigating the individual work. Instead, we have to promote positive behaviour, and provide clear alternatives. Effective weight-loss programmes work because it offers that alternative, along with the belief and encouragement that it can be done. The same needs to be offered for exploited children. Crucial to success is the social aspect, where groups of adults offer encouragement to one another. Yet vulnerable children often don’t have this. Their relationship with family is often fractured, and once isolated within school or excluded, they don’t have a trusting professional relationship – while their peers are encouraging dangerous activity. If we want to empower children to be resilient to the lure of exploitative relationships and make different choices, we need to ensure they have a relationship that enables positive decisions. The choices children will need to make are hard and vulnerable children won’t make these choices alone. There are numerous alternative activities that can help develop positive relationships: they might use youth work, sports clubs, music or education settings in which to develop these safe and trusting friends.

Catherine Mouatt, Service Development Manager for Adolescents

West Sussex Parent Carer Forum is run by parent carers for parent carers of children and young people with SEND (0 - 25 yrs) and their families.

Recognised by the DfE, the Forum provides advice, information, free workshops, events, training and signposting to local support groups across West Sussex.

A positive, friendly Forum with an active, supportive Facebook page.