The County Attendance Team is a countywide service fulfilling the Local Authorities statutory responsibility to prosecute parents who fail to ensure their children receive a suitable education. 

County Attendance Officers work with schools and families to provide advice and support on promoting good attendance, punctuality, reducing unauthorised absences, and safeguarding vulnerable children and young people of statutory school age. 

Our aim

• To ensure that young people access the education they are entitled to dependent on their needs.
• To support schools, families, and colleagues to improve school attendance.

Services

• Attendance at meetings with school staff to enable effective monitoring, timely intervention, and appropriate signposting or referral to other agencies
• Provision of advice and guidance in relation to parentally condoned absence e.g. holidays, birthday treats, excessive illness, etc.
• Acting as an independent intermediary to safeguard and manage the home/school relationship
• Identifying and sharing information around families who have children attending different schools, who display complex needs and who may otherwise not necessarily be linked to one another to ensure early identification, appropriate safeguarding, and collaboration of services
• Providing advice and guidance around child protection and making necessary referrals in conjunction with the Designated Person
• Attendance at Child Protection Case Conferences, Reviews and Core Groups where appropriate
• Being an active part of any multi-agency pastoral support team within a school or locality. Following a referral, taking responsibility for case management, including home visits, attendance at meetings, signposting and onward referral and completion of the legal process where required
• Providing access to qualified staff with up-to-date knowledge in areas of Child Protection, Attendance & Behaviour, Child Employment, and Legal Responsibilities
• Recording all contacts and interventions on a service chronology which can be made available to schools
• Being available to attend open evenings, training sessions, inset days, academic review days, twilight sessions, school assemblies, and targeted pupil presentations
• Offering advice, guidance, and support in preparation for Ofsted inspections and being available for consultation during the inspection
• This list is not exhaustive and The County Attendance Team will continue to offer innovative, bespoke packages to schools and pupils as required

Benefits

• The Team can be called upon to support schools and families to address attendance issues
• The service has direct access to other teams, services, and departments
• All workers are highly trained and supervised in accordance with the Working Together to Safeguard Children
  guidelines 2018
• On-going professional development is undertaken and constantly updated
• Quality assurance is carried out within the service
• The Team is represented at local, regional and national networks to ensure up to date and best practice is in place

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