Yarra Me School 2019

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  • Our School
    • School History
    • Evidence Bank
    • Working at YarraMe
    • Contact Us >
      • Compass (secure log in)
  • Outreach
    • Inclusion Support Service
    • Inclusive Resources
    • Secondary Consultation
  • Intake
    • Hurstbridge Farm
    • Years 1 - 3 Program
    • Years 4 - 6 Program
  • Professional Learning
    • Attachment and Trauma Theory Training
    • Supporting Wellbeing & Mental Health
    • ASD Understanding Executive Functioning
  • Community
    • Communities Connect
    • Child Safety Standards
    • School Council (secure log in)
  • Parent Resources
    • Help Desk
    • Courses for Parents

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: 


  • 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: 
            - almost 50% of young people in residential care attending school less than 5 days per week (Victorian Auditor General, 2012)
            - 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
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For further information and guidance


Inclusion Support Service Coordinator

Lauren Hogan 


​Email: Lauren Hogan Tel: 0476 839 932 or  9465 2405

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Email yarra.me.sch@education.vic.gov.au | Phone (03) 9478 8895 | Fax (03) 9478 6686 | Address Highview Road Preston Vic 3072 | Postal PO Box 8228 Northland Centre VIC 3072  | ABN 32 453 166 084