The education of looked after children within the UK Essay

The education of looked after children within the UK - Essay Example As a result of this, most schools and educators are not aware that they have looked after children, let alone have implemented programs to help these children. Therefore, the literature suggests that this is an area that needs considerable work on both the part of social workers and educators, as there needs to be more coordination between these entities, so that schools may become aware of the children and their needs and may be able to implement specialized programs to address these needs. The topic of this paper is the education of looked after children. To this end, the research centered around this issue, and did not focus upon other issues which affect looked after children, such as mental health, etc. What the literature revealed in this area is that the local authorities and the social workers need to make a coordinated effort with the schools to identify looked after children, and to personalize an educational plan to meet their individual needs. This is important for the educational achievement of the children, and the literature reveals that, when this properly occurs, children do much better with their cognitive functioning and IQ levels (Tideman et al. 2011 ). What the literature also reveals, however, is that this is, by and large, not occurring, as most schools not only are not aware of how many looked after children they have, but are unaware that they have any looked after children at all (Connelly et al., 2008). There is a real disconnect between what should be happening and what actually is happening, and the children are falling through the cracks. The looked after children should have specialized programs for them, as well as specialized educational plans, but this cannot occur unless schools are made aware of their presence and needs. Because of this, the literature also reveals that many looked after children end up being excluded altogether from school (McClung, 2008), and this is the logical extension of what is