CHILDREN have been placed front and centre as a charity rewrites its aims to give young people an even greater voice.
Working ‘with’ young people rather than ‘for’ them became a golden thread as delegates to the National Association of Virtual School Heads Conference heard time and again of the need to listen to their concerns.
On the second of a two-day event, members of a Children in Care Council took over the conference to feed back their thoughts.
“Every young person is different and you need to make sure schools accept them in every way,” one panel member said. “Children have already had so much disruption and if they can’t settle down they will have to move again. Every incident of bad behaviour has a reason behind it. Communications between virtual heads and schools needs improving as well as training for schools so they can understand children in care – that is what is lacking.”
The new chair of NAVSH, virtual head for North Yorkshire, Julie Bunn, said it was her aim to make the organisation more representative. “We have to make sure we are listening to the children, the voices of the children are so important and this is now part of our charitable aim,” she said. “We can find out what they need and deliver that new duty. Education and social care are symbiotic which takes emotional intelligence and we have plenty of that in the room.
“Virtual heads are amazing with complexity, it doesn’t scare us. We are curious, we spend time and we ask all the questions of all the people and no one else does this as well as we do. But we need to think about the system and build a holistic picture of our children. We need to enable schools to be trauma-responsive for the children. The relationship is the intervention, it’s the relationship that works. Without the relationship the intervention will not last.
“So this is a call to action. I want everyone to help shape the future together. No day is ever the same and some seem impossible but we make the impossible possible.”
Children’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza agreed saying that when she came into the role six months ago it was with the intention of listening to children at a time when they had “sacrificed so much” because of the pandemic.
“We speak ‘for’ the children and make assumptions but when I was in school teaching I felt they had something to say, which I wanted to capture,” she told delegates. So she commissioned the ‘Big Ask’, the largest children’s survey in the country’s history which was completed by more than half a million young people.
“They want a good home life and education, a job that provides enough money, friends and to feel and be treated well,” she said.
“We have got to fight for them to attend outstanding schools and if they tell you they are full, phone me.”
Mrs Bunn and board member and virtual head for Darlington Calvin Kipling shared details of a NAVSH survey. “The results show that virtual heads are worried about care placement, instability and insufficiency, school admission delays and exclusions,” Mr Kipling said. “This has helped us know ourselves better so we can shape relationships with the DfE, policy and practice.”
Keynote speaker Jaz Ampaw Farr, who is considered Britain’s Oprah, said she was alive because of teachers after suffering a childhood of poverty, abuse and trauma that saw her living on the streets and in foster care.
“The first 25 years of my life I spent navigating trauma, trying to stay in school and ending up on the streets; the second 25 I’ve spent persuading people how much power they have to make a difference,” she told delegates.