Supporting your child's education
Parents and foster carers can provide much needed stability and encouragement by working in partnership with schools and other children's services to improve education attainment for children placed with them.
We are often asked by parents and carers how best to support the child in care's educational placement and how to maintain consistency in their learning, improving their chances at achieving their educational potential.
Parents and carers in partnership with the Virtual School, social workers and the educational placement can provide the stability needed to support the child's education.
Parents and carers are required to attend all events and meetings within the child's school calendar to support their child's learning such as PEP meetings, sports days and parent's evenings.
How to support children & young people with their learning
- Keeping schools informed of changes and emerging problems
- Helping the young person to talk about any worries and speaking on their behalf when appropriate.
- Helping the young person to voice their hopes for their future and ensuring these are communicated to school
- Encouraging the young person to develop their talents and recognise their achievements no matter how small
- Attending parents' evenings and encouraging birth family's involvement where appropriate
- Supporting school policies (discipline, dress etc.)
- Taking an interest in the activities of the school
- Completing communication books such as homework diaries, reading records etc.
- Supporting homework by reading with a child, offering advice and making sure set tasks are completed
- Supporting school events
- Ensuring awareness of the school's calendar
- Making sure you know the timetables and arrangements for exams and course work completion
Carers should provide an appropriate learning environment with:
- A peaceful, comfortable place for study/homework
- Time for study/homework
- Books, pens, paper and other resources to support learning
- Provide learning opportunities outside the home e.g. museums, library visits
Hammersmith and Fulham Virtual School have developed a free programme of webinars and face to face training across the 2024/25 academic year to support parents and carers to fully understand the needs of their children. All sessions are delivered by external experts and fully funded by the Virtual School. Places can be booked using the Microsoft Forms link in the document. Webinars are delivered over Zoom or Teams.
Education resources for foster carers - Education resources for foster carers | The Fostering Network
Intervention and strategies to support children and young people
Support for kinship carers
Kinship is the leading kinship care charity in England and Wales. They are there for kinship carers – the friends or family who step up to raise a child when their parents aren't able to.
Kinship supports all kinship carers including informal kinship carers, special guardians, kinship foster carers, kinship carers with a child arrangement order or other types of order.
They can offer kinship carers the following:
- free workshops and events to support kinship carers in their caring role (both in person and online)
- local peer support groups and specialist support to help set up groups
- free advice and information about things like benefits, education, housing and more
- access to the Kinship Community – for updates alongside practical tools, tips and information
For more information:
Website: https://kinship.org.uk/
Advice line (freephone), 9.30am and 2pm from Mon to Fri: 0300 123 7015