Attendance Team Education Welfare Officers (EWO’s)
Each school in Suffolk is allocated a named EWO who can provide the school with professional advice and guidance to encourage an effective whole school culture of high attendance.
The allocated EWO will host a termly support meeting with their schools to help develop strong relationships between the school and the Local Authority, and ensure collaborative working. To ensure early identification and individual support for pupils, these meetings will provide the opportunity to discuss and agree action plans for severely absent pupils (those with under 50% attendance) and give the school the opportunity to discuss approaches for persistently absentees (under 90% attendance) where the barriers to attendance requires a multi-agency response. Attendance data analysis will be shared, identifying keys areas of focus as well as areas of strength, which can be share more widely as ‘best practice’.
Support for Safeguarding (Child Protection)
EWO’s receive training in Child Protection and must be familiar with Suffolk’s Safeguarding Children Board’s procedures. They will endeavour to ensure that schools understand and work to the Procedures and give appropriate advice on safeguarding matters. EWO’s attend, if appropriate, Child Protection Conferences in respect of children with whose families they are working and make active contributions at and provide written reports for those conferences.
Attendance Legal Interventions
All staff in the School Attendance Service work within a statutory framework that ensures where voluntary support has not been successful, the law protects pupils’ right to an education.
EWO’s will advise and support schools in all aspects of the legal process.