Inclusion Support Service
Baltara School, with the support of North-Western Victoria Region and DET, has established the Inclusion Support Service to build the capacity of schools to support children and young people in Out of Home Care (OoHC).
Every student has their own set of unique needs and experiences.
What children and young people in out-of-home-care have in common are life experiences that sometimes need some form of intervention from a wide range of services. Interventions come from local welfare authorities, DHHS Child Protection or the law courts and may sometimes (but not always) lead to that child or young person becoming in ‘out of home care’.
Out of Home Care (OoHC) refers to children that are looked after away from home:
Educational outcomes data
Data relating specifically to the educational experiences of students in out of home care tells us that they experience far poorer educational outcomes than their peers, with research demonstrating that this cohort are considerably less likely than their peers to:
- children and young people in residential and foster care missing an average of 1.5 days of school a week (Anglicare & Wesley Mission, 2010)
- 2013 data showing that 127 school-ages children and young people in OoHC were completely disengaged from education
- complete Year 12 or its equivalent with only 44% of surveyed 17 year olds in OoHC attending school across Australia (Create, 2006)
In general children and young people in OoHC are also more likely than their peers to:
What children and young people in out-of-home-care have in common are life experiences that sometimes need some form of intervention from a wide range of services. Interventions come from local welfare authorities, DHHS Child Protection or the law courts and may sometimes (but not always) lead to that child or young person becoming in ‘out of home care’.
Out of Home Care (OoHC) refers to children that are looked after away from home:
- foster care
- residential care (including secure welfare services)
- kinship placement
Educational outcomes data
Data relating specifically to the educational experiences of students in out of home care tells us that they experience far poorer educational outcomes than their peers, with research demonstrating that this cohort are considerably less likely than their peers to:
- achieve the national benchmarks for reading and numeracy (this is even more pronounced for Aboriginal children and young people in OoHC who are over represented and demonstrate much lower reading and numeracy scores than the general OoHC population (AIHW 2007)
- attend school, with:
- children and young people in residential and foster care missing an average of 1.5 days of school a week (Anglicare & Wesley Mission, 2010)
- 2013 data showing that 127 school-ages children and young people in OoHC were completely disengaged from education
- complete Year 12 or its equivalent with only 44% of surveyed 17 year olds in OoHC attending school across Australia (Create, 2006)
In general children and young people in OoHC are also more likely than their peers to:
- be suspended or expelled from school, with 25% of kids in residential care being suspended at least three times (Create, 2013)
- have a diagnosed mental health problem (18%), a disability (20%) and/or an intellectual disability (14%) (DHHS data 2002 via Bromfield 2006)
- demonstrate functional limitations due to a long-term health, medical or behavioural conditions (36.7%) (Anglicare & Wesley Mission 2010)
- threaten suicide (14%) (DHHS data 2002 via Bromfield 2006)
- experience bullying, with one quarter of young people reporting that they experience regular bullying (Create 2013)
- be enrolled in a specialist school (Trout et al, 2008)
- be disconnected from their peers, with 34% of children and young people in OoHC rarely or never see friends outside school (Anglicare & Wesley Mission 2010, this data excludes those in Kinship care)
The Inclusion Support Service will work with primary schools in the North Western Victoria Region to:
- implement flexible and tailored education programs for each student on OoHC, based on their learning needs and wellbeing profile
- build the capacity of staff to better meet the unique needs of these young people, and use a trauma informed approach to support their educational engagement, resilience and emotional wellbeing
- utilise existing school data on these students to examine patterns of attendance, performance and engagement with education and use these to develop evidence informed individual learning plans
- promote a Team around the Learner approach, ensuring that all professionals working with the student are working collaboratively, plan for the student’s individual needs and that the Inclusion Support Service champions the needs of the student
For further information and guidance
Inclusion Support Service Coordinator
Lauren Hogan
Email: Lauren Hogan Tel: 0476 839 932 or 9465 2405
