School In-Reach

We work in every secondary school across Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, including Pupil Referral Units and Out Of School Tutoring Services.

We attend termly prioritisation meetings with education staff in secondary schools where we discuss the needs of individual learners, staff and the school as a whole.

• Education staff already know the young people in their setting and may have trusted relationships with them. Our team learn a lot from hearing what is going on in school, what is working well or has already been tried and where there may still be some challenges. This helps us to understand what else might help. Other professionals, such as school nurses or educational psychologists may also be part of these meetings so that a plan of support can be made to provide the right help at the right time.

• From these prioritisation meetings, we offer training, resources and consultation to education staff. These could focus on helping a particular young person or helping the setting to deliver a positive, mentally health environment for all learners and staff.

• We may also provide a whole system assessment to the young person and their family to inform whether direct work (ie. joining a group or 1-2-1 sessions) would also be helpful.

• We offer consultations, groups about emotional literacy and access to our locality wide training to primary schools.

We are continuing to develop our offer in response to the needs of schools, learners and staff across Cardiff and the Vale.

We are based at Ely & Caerau Children’s Centre, but our staff spend most of their time visiting the schools in their community, working directly with learners and staff.

All secondary schools in Cardiff and Vale can request support from their locality In-Reach team. For more information on the localities please see our first newsletter.

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A significant portion of our work is working with education staff to deliver training, consultation and reflective practice as part of providing a whole school approach to emotional and mental wellbeing.

This work benefits learners and staff working in the education setting, even if young people do not directly work with one of our practitioners.

It may be that School In-Reach is best placed to support the learner, but the In-Reach practitioner may feel support is best provided by another service or organisation.

It could also be that the In-Reach practitioner works to build the capacity and confidence of those already involved with the learner, rather than introducing another person.

We encourage schools and other education settings to contact their named practitioners directly.

Education staff can also contact School In-Reach on schoolinreach.cav@wales.nhs.uk