You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once - Polish Proverb

About

What is PSA?

PSA stands for Parent Support Advisors. A pilot project of PSA’s in schools was funded through the Chancellor’s pre budget report in December 2005

Research has shown that ‘what parents do rather than who they are has a significant influence on child outcomes, particularly when they are young’.

20 local authorities have been specially selected to pilot the programme including Walsall.

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What does a PSA do?

A PSA will support children and families where there are early signs that they could benefit from additional help
PSAs are part of the school workforce and are trained for their role in line with the national standards for those working with parents.
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What will we learn?

Through this pilot project we will:

identify effective ways of delivering early intervention and preventative support for parents and pupils from within schools.
inform thinking about how schools might deliver this aspect of the extended schools offer, developing models of good practice and effective intervention.
create support for parents that is additional to work already taking place in schools.

The Role of the PSA

PSAs could be doing any or all of the following:

parenting support: working with parents at the first signs of social, emotional, health or behavioural issues in their children, to ensure that every child arrives at school ready to learn
exclusions: working with parents to ensure that their child is properly supervised during exclusion, continuing with school work, and arranging support such as parenting classes or one-to-one assistance from education and social services to tackle behaviour problems;
school attendance: making calls to parents on the first day of an absence to ensure there is a proper reason for it, underlining the importance of their child’s attendance at school, and carrying our home visits to nip early truanting behaviour in the bud. Parent Support Advisers could work closely with EWOs but would focus on attendance issues which would not trigger EWO engagement.
engaging with schools: arranging home visits and ‘meet the teacher’ sessions for families new to the school, promoting attendance at parents’ evenings to encourage effective dialogue between parents and teachers about their child’s progress;
accessing schools: encouraging the full range of parents to volunteer for school activities such as reading with pupils and involvement with the PTA. Working through the extended schools agenda to provide learning opportunities for parents at the school such as ESOL classes, to increase the number of parents involved in the life of their child’s school.