Cambridgeshire County Council was chosen by the central government as one of 20 local authorities in 600 schools across the country to pilot Parent Support Advisers.

Parent Support Advisers (PSAs), based within Locality Teams, work and practice in both designated and clusters of schools across Cambridgeshire.  PSAs focus on early intervention and preventative support for parents in schools by:

• giving one-to-one support or work with groups of parents who may be in need of extra help with issues such as dealing with their child’s poor behaviour or attendance at school
• working with parents and children
• building on the best of what schools are already doing to enhance home-school relationships
• working with and alongside other school staff, Home School Liaison Workers from the Children's Fund, YMCA and Romsey Mill and with specialist workers
• signposting children to specialist services and provide Triple P sessions (Positive Parenting Programme) for parents. Parents and children can access PSAs for themselves.

The Outcome of the Pilot

The Parent Support Advisers pilot project was completed on 31st July. The pilot in Cambridgeshire has been an enormous success with schools, parents and children reporting positive changes to the TDA evaluation team. We can now see a new emerging group of professionals committed to improving the life chances of children and young people.
 
PSAs are committed to improving attendance and behaviour and support children's development and learning. Using the Model 2 Cluster approach the PSA work across a cluster of primary and secondary schools to deliver a parent focused and child centred approach.
 
Set within the Common Assessment Framework PSAs offer parenting support courses and classes and one-on-one parenting support for parents. To ensure that difficulties are identified and tackled at an early stage the PSA Core Offer is co-ordinated by the Locality Manager in partnership with schools across the school cluster.
 
The role of the PSA is to assist in improving outcomes for children and young people by working in partnership with families, parents, carers and pupils in a school context. Most PSAs focus their work on preventative and early intervention activities.


For more information, please contact Sharon Byrne, PSA Project Co-ordinator (Cambridgeshire) on 01223 718680 or sharon.byrne@cambridgeshire.gov.uk