We are pleased to see our evidence included in the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee’s report on the crisis of children in temporary accommodation. In particular, we welcome the Committee explicitly detailing the link between a child’s exposure to temporary accommodation and the impact this has on school attendance.
Inadequate housing is a significant and growing barrier to good school attendance for the children and families that School-Home Support practitioners work with. Our 2023/2024 Impact Report noted that 1 in 5 of the children we worked with identified ‘where you live’ as one of the biggest challenges they face in attending school.
We recently hosted an online webinar, ‘See the Impact event: Unlocking opportunity for families in inadequate homes’ exploring the link between poor housing and school attendance and hearing from frontline experts on the day-to-day reality facing families who are living with the consequences of the housing crisis.
Moving forward, we are looking forward to seeing how the Committee’s recommendation for establishment of ‘a formalised notification system, so that a child’s school and GP are alerted when they move into temporary accommodation’ progresses.
Ensuring that services are joined up is vital to tackling the school attendance crisis, which is borne out of holistic factors beyond the classroom.