Education welfare service

The education welfare service (EWS) acts on behalf of the local authority in enforcing a parent's duty to provide appropriate education; it also discharges the authority's responsibility to monitor and licence child employment, and entertainment licences for school age children.

Context

By law, all children of compulsory school age (between 5 and 16) must get a proper full-time education. Parents are responsible for making this happen, either by registering the child at school or by making other arrangements to provide an effective education.

If a child is registered at school, parents have the primary responsibility for ensuring that their child attends regularly. Local authorities have a duty to ensure that parents fulfil this responsibility. This duty is usually carried out by the EWS.

On average, 450,000 children are absent from school every day; this includes around 50,000 unauthorised absences. The government sees reducing absence from school as a priority because of the strong link between attendance and attainment, and also because of the links between truancy and street crime and anti-social behaviour.

Promoting regular school attendance is a key component in the government's strategy to raise educational standards. The public service agreement target for school absence is to reduce the 2003 level of school absence by 8% by 2008.

Who is in it? 

The EWS is made up of a team of education welfare officers (EWOs), who are sometimes known as education social workers or attendance advisers.

What do they do?

The EWS is probably the longest established welfare service in Britain. Though enforcing school attendance is the main responsibility of the EWS, in many instances they will also undertake other important related duties. These include:

• Regulating child employment
• Advising on child protection issues
• Helping to arrange alternative educational provision for individual pupils
• Advising on children being educated otherwise than at school
• Preparing reports on pupils with special educational needs as part of the statementing process

In enforcing attendance, EWOs have a variety of powers to help them ensure that children are properly educated. For example, a local authority can serve a notice or school attendance order on a parent requiring the parent to register their child at school if the child is not getting a suitable education.

However, EWOs  work closely with schools and families to resolve attendance issues. They support children and families when pupils are experiencing difficulties in school or welfare issues are disrupting a child's education.

EWOs will investigate the reasons behind school absence, and can advise families about specialist support services and make referrals to appropriate services. As well as addressing individual problems, they also provide advice and support to schools on promoting whole school attendance. Many services also offer advice to schools on child welfare and child protection.

Schools will normally have a named EWO who is responsible for attendance issues relating to its pupils. EWOs are expected to develop close relationships with the schools they support. They are also expected to check school registers regularly to ensure that they are being completed in accordance with the school's policy and to identify any patterns of absence that may not have been notified.

How do you access the service?

The initial responsibility for identifying and resolving attendance problems rests with schools. However, where they are unable to improve a pupil's attendance or the problems meet agreed criteria, they will refer the pupil to the EWS. Schools are likely to refer a case to the EWS if:

• A pattern of irregular attendance is continuing or getting worse
• If parents are refusing to discuss with the school ways of improving a child's attendance or will not accept their responsibility for ensuring the child attends school
• If parents are asking for excessive amounts of authorised absence

Precise referral arrangements are agreed locally.

Truancy sweeps

National coordinated truancy sweeps were introduced by the government in 2002 and have become a regular feature of life for most local authorities. Truancy sweeps are carried out by partnerships of police officers and EWOs. Under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the police have powers to pick up (but not arrest) children playing truant and take them to a designated area, or back to school.

Generally this power is used through occasional sweeps, where police and EWOs join forces for a day and target particular areas, such as shopping centres. EWOs, Connexions personal advisers, learning mentors and school pastoral staff are encouraged to work together to create an individual re-integration plan for each pupil picked up on a sweep.

Occupational standards

From January 2005, EWOs are covered by national occupational standards in learning development and support services and will be able to undertake national vocational qualifications (NVQs) at levels 3 and 4 (it is expected most will work at level 4). Each authority is responsible for determining the entry level of an EWO; many will accept qualifications that equate to the NVQ level in a related field, such as social care or youth work.