School Attendance Liaison Practitioner (SALP)

Do you want to make a difference to children and young people by helping them to access their education? If you have a passion for supporting schools, families, children and young people, you could be our next School Attendance Liaison Practitioner (SALP) to join the Team Around the School and Setting (TASS), part of the innovative Education Division of Children’s Services.

The successful applicant will have the opportunity to support schools with their work on improving attendance, and being a liaison between school and home.

As part of a team of experienced staff, you will work alongside professionals to draw up and deliver bespoke packages of support. Your primary focus will be to work directly with our schools and settings, children and families to support improved attendance and outcomes for children and young people with additional needs. The practitioner will provide a point of contact for parents to increase parental confidence, reduce anxiety, and support successful inclusion in mainstream settings.

The role of the School Attendance Liaison Practitioner will provide a link between home and school that ensures good, consistent, and effective communication between the two. They will develop strong partnerships with outside agencies and form positive working relationships with families to enable effective support for pupils, and their families to ensure regular attendance at school by working to alleviate barriers to learning and improving communication and links between school and home.

We are looking for a skilled practitioner with a genuine interest in this area, who is experienced in working within an educational setting, to bring about change by supporting attendance and engagement with learning. You will have excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to engage with children, young people, families and school staff.

Further to this, we are looking for candidates with

1. Self-motivation and a passion for inclusion and outcomes for children and young people and ability to communicate effectively with others and provide advice in accurate spoken and written English
2. Interpersonal and communication skills and ability to engage with children, families and setting staff and ability to deal with difficult situations.
3. Ability to carry out person-centred, outcomes based planning and confidently and accurately demonstrate specific strategies when working with individuals, groups or cohorts.
4. Ability to build and maintain good productive working relationships with colleagues within the team, in settings and across services.
5. Organisational skills with the ability to effectively manage own workload and balance using own initiative against need to seek management guidance.
6. Experience of successfully supporting and demonstrating an understanding of the main approaches to working with children with protected characteristics and vulnerabilities