About

Support circle is a social enterprise founded in 2015 to provide social work support within schools. Support Circle developed out of recognition that children and young people spend the largest part of their day within schools and that it is therefore a natural environment for social workers to develop their skills and expertise in supporting young people.

The aims of Support Circle are twofold: to offer student social workers the opportunity to develop their skills and experience within a school context and for social work students to contribute to schools developing a culture of resilience, respect, strength and safeguarding within their organisation.

Social Work students can contribute to pastoral care in the following ways:

• Helping to reduce challenging behaviours.
• Reducing the numbers of children isolated or excluded
• Encouraging children to achieve their full potential by addressing barriers to learning or participation.
• Proactively supporting children to be emotionally resilient.
• Preventing children and families being referred to higher threshold services by offering preventative, early help social work support.

Some examples of work that Social Work Students could be assigned:

• Supporting Looked after Children in school and attending Social Care reviews.
• Supporting children who are subject to Protection Plans and attending Social Care reviews.
• Supporting children who are identified by teachers as needing additional support.
• Supporting children who refer themselves for support.
• Offering support to children who have experienced bereavement or loss.
• Offering support to children who are asylum seekers.
• Offering support to children with self-esteem issues.
• Providing the link between home and School by meeting with parents and carers where appropriate.

Who will manage the student Social Worker?

• The student Social Worker will be supervised weekly by an experienced Social Work Practitioner.
• The University will coordinate regular reviews of the student, the learning opportunities available and the support and supervision the student is being offered.
• The School will need to assign a Work based supervisor to ensure the student to allocate and supervise the student’s day-to-day work.