The Stafford Borough Safer Communities Partnership is working closely with schools in Stafford Borough to implement a programme of prevention and early help support.   The vision of this programme is to facilitate and co-ordinate agency support in the school environment and in the wider community in a number of areas such as crime and anti-social behaviour, healthy relationships, hate crime, bullying, mental health, wider vulnerabilities and indicators of social deprivation. As a collective partnership, we believe that this programme will:

• lead to improved outcomes for children, young people, and schools
• support children and young people in becoming resilient, healthy, safety-conscious adults,  able to positively contribute to society
• have long-term benefit for the wider community.

The Stafford Borough Supporting Schools Programme (SSP) is designed to complement and enhance the PSHE curriculum and also contribute to the Ofsted framework and with issues including ‘British Values’. PSHE equips pupils with the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need to develop strategies that are required to live healthy, safe and happy lives.  Working in partnership to provide preventative and early help support to children and families can make quite a significant difference to their longer-term outcomes.  The terms ‘prevention’ and ‘early help’ are often used interchangeably across disciplines and in practice there will often be overlap. When we talk about prevention, we mean the provision of additional support that aims to prevent problems by building resilience and reducing risk factors facing children and their families.  The provision of early help will support children and families life to respond, as soon as possible, when difficulties emerge in order to prevent problems from becoming entrenched or escalating.

For more information please contact Tracy Redpath - Corporate Business and Partnerships Manager at tredpath@staffordbc.gov.uk