Lost lessons?: the Experience of a time‐limited home‐school support project

Abstract

This article reports on an evaluation of an innovative, but timelimited, home-school support project, designed to improve the behaviour of young children in danger of school exclusion. It concludes that, although valued by the families and schools involved, the effective operation of the initiative was hampered by problems of communication, by its single agency location and by the short-term nature of its funding.

Bridging the Cultural Divide: The role of the home‐school support worker

“…As demonstrated by research (see, for example, Fullan, 1991;Hargreaves, 1994) and illustrated in the evaluation reported here, it takes considerable time to challenge and overturn deeply rooted assumptions and to make lasting fundamental changes to established practices in schools. Dyson and Robson (1999) and Lupton and Sheppard (1999) identify the inadequacies of government policy to promote such change through locally led inclusion projects funded by a multiplicity of short-term sources. They consider that these are likely to result in initiatives that make little impact and end as soon as funding stops, thus wasting the efforts and enthusiasm of professionals, parents and children and leading to lessons for replication being lost.…”

The Primary Teacher's Role in Child Protection

“…This description characterised most of the family-oriented initiatives in which the sample schools were participating, which stopped and started in line with available funds. In their evaluation of a home-school support project to improve the behaviour of primary children in danger of exclusion, Lupton & Sheppard (1999) consider that the brief operation of the project 'did as much harm as good' as its withdrawal left the community less empowered than before it began. They conclude that 'secure and adequate sources of funding must be identi ed from the outset' otherwise 'the energies and enthusiasm of all involved-professionals, parents and their children-will yet again have been carelessly wasted and any potential lessons to be learned needlessly lost ' (p. 29).…”

Home‐school support: A contradiction in terms?

“…The American model randomly allocates by school, rather than child, and all parents receive both home visits and group parenting skills tuition. Another central question for the research (not discussed here; see Lupton & Sheppard, 1999) therefore was the impact of within-school randomisation on the process and outcomes of the intervention.…”

“…The evidence suggests, however, that they served to discourage, rather than encourage, attendance, with parents finding the presence of so many professionals intimidating. The solution eventually agreed upon was to allocate the children of refusing parents to the non-intervention, control group, with obvious implications for the experimental approach (Lupton & Sheppard, 1999).…”