This information applies to children who leave care through adoption, Special Guardianship Orders (SGO) or Child Arrangement or Residence Orders.
The Virtual School can provide advice to young people, families or schools on how to support previously cared for children. This can include issues such as school admissions, transfer between schools, and appropriate use of Pupil Premium. All schools are required to identify a staff member to oversee the support for previously cared for children and these staff are able to access all training offered by the Virtual School to designated teachers for cared for children.
We have dedicated email for all your queries: PostLAC@salford.gov.uk.
We have produced a booklet to help you with answers to some frequently asked questions, this can be downloaded below.
For adopted children, there is also a national website, Adoption UK, which has useful information for schools and parents.
The Virtual School unfortunately cannot provide support or intervention for this cohort of children and young people and we do not oversee the Pupil Premium Plus budget which goes into schools for this group of young people.
Schools that have children who are previously cared for, and subject to adoption, special guardianship order or child arrangement order are eligible to claim the pupil premium. To do this, head teachers should invite parents to self-declare that they have a previously looked after child and request sight of the legal paperwork, such as a court order or certificate. This needs to be indicated on the schools management information system before the January census in order for the school census to be accurate. The funding is sent directly to the school. Early Years settings can also claim pupil premium for previously adopted children.
To provide essential therapeutic support for adopted or SGO children and families in a plan agreed with the post-adoption support team. This support would be accessed via Adoption Counts.
There are two important sets of statutory guidance which apply to schools and local authorities, links to which are below:
If you are unable to view documents of these types, our downloads page provides links to viewing software.