£3.8m to help get kids back on track (From Warrington Guardian)

£3.8m to help get kids back on track

A HUGE funding boost to tackle school truancy and give support to pupils with behavioural problems has been handed to St Helens Council.

During the next three years, £3.8million will go towards developing a series of new approaches to tackle long standing problems in schools.

The money from the government's Excellence in Cities Strategy will create three new support teams, made up of staff from education, social services, health and community workers. In addition to support for teenagers, nurture groups will be set up for children aged four to six.

More than 40 new jobs are expected to have been created by the time the programme is fully established. Therapists and counsellors will be among those sitting on the support teams that will help pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties. The key roles will involve helping individual pupils through a range of support methods. According to St Helens Council, the teams will be in place to help in situations like when a pupil is absent persistently because they are caring for a young sibling or a sick relative.

Figures last summer show that attendance levels in St Helens secondary schools are at 91.4 per cent and 94.3 per cent in primary schools. St Helens Council says such levels have improved three years running, however, it hopes the new teams will give further help reduce truancy.

The project will also pull together child and adolescent mental health services, the Connexions youth support service, school and community nursing, education welfare and the education inclusion support service. Councillor Alma Atherton, executive member for lifelong learning, said: "This is a ground breaking initiative which will provide help so that young people facing difficult circumstances can be supported to enable them to achieve their full potential."

Meanwhile, Zyg Kulbacki, the programme coordinator, said: "This is a very significant and very exciting element in St Helens' strategy for inclusion."

He added that a recruitment event is to be held on Monday 19 January, 2004 at the Holiday Inn Haydock between 2pm and 7pm, where details of the posts will be available: "We want to build teams of the most talented people from all disciplines to help us shape a provision that will deliver improved behaviour and attendance in all our schools."