Hartlepool Borough Council has piloted a Transition Support programme for children transitioning from primary to secondary schools who are on a Child in Need or Child Protection Plan. Recognising the often disruptive nature of transition to secondary school, especially for children with a social worker, and the challenges of education attainment among this cohort, the pilot programme focuses on children in Years 5 and 6 and involves a number of elements. These include creating Transition Leads for each school, as well as facilitating whole-school and targeted training for both school staff and social worker. The Transitioning Planning Profile Tool (TPPT) was also developed as an administrative tool for schools as part of this project. Up to three PersonCentred Planning (PCP) meetings are also offered to each child, with parents/carers, pupils, social workers and primary and secondary school staff attending. In addition, the children receive interventions, including being enrolled on a resilience programme and having one-to-one therapeutic support. Each child also has a Transition Passport detailing their situation. The programme looks to provide schools with a fuller insight into a child’s needs to inform a personalised support plan to help them manage the transition to secondary school and in turn positively contribute to their educational attainment. It should be noted that in Hartlepool there is a broader transition support programme for year 6 pupils, but not all elements of the pilot are included. The National Centre for Social Research evaluated the pilot and the impact on 55 year 6 pupils from 21 schools. The evaluation indicated that the development of the TPPT had enhanced information sharing between schools to some extent, with PCP meetings helpful in bringing people together. There is some sense from qualitative findings that these children settled well in secondary school, with slight improvements in attainment and attendance. However, there were also some issues noted including attendance, sustainability and ability to share information via PCP meetings.
There were also some delivery challenges, partly attributable to Covid. There are suggestions that the model needs to be refined before it is more widely rolled out to improve its impact and ensure it works better for schools and children, acknowledging the iterative process of innovation.