At Leicestershire Virtual School, we are committed to improving the educational outcomes of children in care and children with a social worker. As a local authority service, we work in partnership with Early Years settings, schools, carers, and social workers to help every child and young person achieve their full potential.
Central to our approach is an understanding of the impact trauma can have on young lives. We embed trauma-informed, relational principles into all aspects of our work – offering advice, guidance, advocacy, and training to schools, carers, social care professionals, and young people themselves.
What a Trauma Informed Relational Approach is
Trauma-informed practice aims to reduce the negative effects of traumatic experiences and promote positive mental and physical health outcomes. In educational settings, it involves recognising the impact of trauma on children and young people, understanding how it may affect their behaviour and development, and ensuring they have access to safe, supportive relationships within inclusive environments.
Our Pledge
The Leicestershire Virtual School is a local authority service whose role is to improve the education of children in care by supporting our Early Years settings, family of schools, carers and social workers to help children and young people to do their best.
An awareness of the impact that trauma can have on our young people is at the core of our service and we strive to be trauma-informed in our work and our messages to all those who work with the children and young people in our care. As a service we offer advice, guidance and advocacy and training about the impact of trauma to our schools, carers, Social Care professionals and young people. We also offer advice around secondary trauma including signposting resources and support.
We are a Trauma-Informed Service
- Trained staff and training offer for all stakeholders.
- Respectful and non-judgemental interactions with colleagues, young people, carers
- Awareness and openness to others’ values, opinions and vulnerabilities.
- Understanding the need for self-care and colleague support and supervision.
- Mindful, supportive and empathic approach to challenges
- Acceptance, advice and advocacy.
We support schools to adopt this approach
Understanding trauma is vital for supporting our children and young people. To overcome adversity, they need environments that are not only safe and dependable but also enable a genuine sense of belonging. This can be achieved through a relational approach – one that is rooted in knowledge of how adversity affects development and is committed to inclusion for all. It means recognising that a “one size fits all” approach is often ineffective and instead embracing practices that respond to individual needs with empathy and flexibility.
We support schools to understand and adopt this approach by providing a wide range of training, guidance and support.
Attachment Research Community
We have provided all schools in Leicestershire with an ARC (The Attachment Research Community) Membership. This gives a multitude of resources, a network of schools committed to developing best practice and the ARC Audit development tools and award pathway.
Read more about the Attachment Research Community