Helston Community College is pleased to announce that the Ministry of Defence Armed Forces Families Fund and the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust will provide Helston Community College with a grant of £6,191 towards our Military Families Project. This project will include more coffee afternoons, 1: 1 support for service children and a dedicated space for mentoring.

Supporting the children of service families at Helston Community College

Service children have unique needs. Whether living in the UK or overseas, they face challenges that often go beyond the experience of the majority of families and children living in the UK. Increased school mobility and the cycle of deployment can bring social, emotional and academic challenges for those children with parents in the armed forces (Ofsted 2011).

Service children are those who have one or both parents currently serving in the armed forces. The Government also recognises that children may still need some support even after their parents have left the forces. In fact colleges can claim additional funding to support Service children for four years after their parents have left the armed forces.

At Helston Community College, Service children:

make up at least 19% of the college population
have outperformed their non-service peers in examination performance
have higher rates of attendance
and have better behavioural statistics compared to their non-service counterparts.

Of course, statistics do not represent every student's individual experience and belonging to a Service family does bring challenges which other children may not encounter. The college, therefore, offers support in a number of ways all of which are underpinned by our co-operative values. In addition to this, the college supports the role the armed forces play in our community and seeks to work with them in the wider education of all our students.

Children’s Naval Charity
The Charity was established in 1825 and has a good understanding of the pressures that our Naval Families may face.

Naval Children’s Charity can offer support to all who have served even if you only served for one day. They support anyone who has served in RN/ RM/ Veterans/ RFA and WRNS.

Naval Children’s charity can offer financial support to help with a huge range of needs, they can also signpost to other organisations, if it felt appropriate.

Over the last year they have given grants totalling more than £10 million and have helped over 4000 families.

One of their aims is to promote ‘Life Chances’ to Naval children. This can include support grants towards:

•       The cost of a school trip
•       Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.
•       School uniform
•       Energy Costs
•       Specialist disability equipment
•       Support for assessment of needs (including Dyslexia, ASD. To access this support, children do need to have been identified and referred for additional assessment)

The charity also supports a number of Children and Young adults to take part in Tall ships Voyages each year.

The above list is not extensive to the support they can offer. If you feel you have a need they best place to start is their website. https://www.navalchildrenscharity.org.uk/ there is an online enquire form, its simple and will often be responded to quickly.

You can also sign up for their newsletter on the site or follow them on social Media for update.

Helpful Links:

https://www.readingforce.org.uk/

https://www.littletroopers.net/new-therapy-programme-for-military-children/

Books For All is back but being delivered by the NCC on this occasion:-

Resources – Naval Childrens Charity

NFF - Supporting organisations

This includes information about SCiP Alliance, who last year launched the Thriving Lives Toolkit Online Platform - Resources | SCiP Alliance.
Service Children in State Schools (SCISS) - SCISS have produced five factsheets which are aimed to help school leaders who might be new to supporting Service children to ensure that they are aware of the many elements that schools supporting Service children may face.

NFF - Parental Absence and Family Support - Useful Resources

This includes our Parental Absence Guide for adults supporting children and young people during absence and separation and a Recommended Reading List. It also links to Strengthening Families, an offer of support for all Royal Navy and Royal Marines families.

Further links:

The New Armed Forces Covenant Duty: What organisations in scope will need to know - Armed Forces Covenant
Service pupil premium (SPP) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Defence Children Services (DCS) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) - DCS is a Defence delivery organisation. DCS’ function is to support Service children and their Service families with educational needs. DCS provides a single focus for all issues related to Service children and young people, providing high-quality education at 22 schools and settings in locations around the world. DCS also directly supports Service families, providing advice on a wide range of educational matters both overseas and in the UK, delivered by specialist education and advisory teams.
Schools, Welfare & Clubs - Reading Force
Military Kids Club | Community | Royal British Legion

Royal Navy/Royal Marines

NFF Resource Poster - NFF-resources-poster.pdf
Parental Absence Resource – link to downloadable version: https://nff.org.uk/parental-absence/
Effect of Non Operational Separation (weekending) - https://nff.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/NFF-Executive-Summary.pdf
Families Transition Too – a resource with a round-up of information to assist those leaving the Service -Version 2 is available online https://nff.org.uk/families-transition-too/
Strengthening Families- By Your Side - Families and Relationships | The Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity (rnrmc.org.uk) other support available for RN/RM Families. Poster/leaflet can be downloaded from here https://nff.org.uk/wellbeing-support/
Recommended Reading List - Book-list.pdf (nff.org.uk) For Service Personnel and their families
Naval Childrens Charity provide free books for RN/RM Children Resources – Naval Childrens Charity and research Research – Naval Childrens Charity which may be useful for the school.
Headspace - https://nff.org.uk/headspace/ - free access to headspace for NS personnel and family members (up to 3000).

Tri-Service

SCiP Alliance (Service Children Progression Alliance) SCiP Alliance The Service Children’s Progression (SCiP) Alliance is a partnership of organisations focused on improving outcomes for children from Armed Forces families. It is hosted by the University of Winchester and supported by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Lots of resources to support service children under tools.
Video on the SCiP Alliance web page made by the children of Plymouth explaining what it’s like to be a service child and what they need https://www.scipalliance.org/resources/we-are-all-different-and-find-different-things-helpful-service-children-tell-mkc-heroes-and-plymouth-city-council-what-helps
SCISS – (Service Children in State Schools) is a voluntary affiliated network of state-maintained schools in England that have any number of Service children on roll. Home | Service Children in State Schools (sciss.org.uk)
Thriving Lives Toolkit - for schools supporting service children. Service Parents are encouraged to share this with their child(ren)’s school https://nff.org.uk/thriving-lives/
Reading Force - Home - Reading Force – providing scrap books etc to service children
Little Troopers - Home - Little Troopers – has resources for schools/information sheets etc - Resources for Schools - Little Troopers
Wrap around Childcare - https://nff.org.uk/childcare/ and https://www.gov.uk/guidance/childcare-for-service-children#wraparound-childcare
SSAFA FANDF (Forces and Additional Needs Forum) - https://www.ssafa.org.uk/get-help/disability-support/additional-needs-and-disability-support
Army Families Federation - https://aff.org.uk/
Royal Air Force Families Federation - https://www.raf-ff.org.uk/