Vision

Clackmannanshire Schools’ Support Service (CSSS) offers a wide variety of support for children and young people with Additional Support Needs (ASN) who face a barrier(s) to learning arising from social, emotional or behavioural needs.  The service aims to support children and young people to access a broad general education and wider life experiences; to gain skills for learning, life and work and ultimately move into positive and sustained destinations.

This report will comment on the progress made from School Improvement Plan 2024–2025 and serve as the foundation from which to continue service development through SIP 2025-2026. The focus being on improvement across all 5 teams within CSSS. See teams below.

CSSS offers a variety of full time and part time places at both primary and secondary level and includes online teaching and support via the FLIP+ programme as well as outreach support in all mainstream primaries and secondary schools within the authority. 

At the time of writing, 17 primary aged pupils and 44 secondary pupils are accessing offsite placements with a further 22 pupils accessing FLIP+. The Outreach Team currently support pupils across all 18 Primaries & 3 Secondary schools. Such high pupil numbers are representative of the significant levels of need in Clackmannanshire’s schools. As a school for learners with complex ASN profiles, we identify that factors such as FSM allocation, attendance and SIMD do not clearly define the unique needs of our pupils. Most (89%) of our primary pupil population and the majority of our secondary learners (53%) live in Quintile 1 and are amongst the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in our community. A more accurate measure would be the measure of adverse childhood trauma  All children and young people attending CSSS have experienced at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs). The majority of pupils have experienced 7+ ACEs. This tells us that our children and young people experience high levels of stress and anxiety making accessing the curriculum and relationships very difficult and, at times, impossible.

A further measure to be considered when planning our curriculum, is the number of children and young people who are considered to be care experienced. Almost half of our pupils are Care Experienced. Currently one quarter of our pupils are experiencing care. A few pupils are living in residential care settings out with Clackmannanshire. 

Further analysis of need is those children and young people is the number of children and young people who are waiting or have current CAMHS intervention. In the primary 21% of pupils have an official diagnosis of ADHD and 26% for ASD. A further 68% of our primary aged pupils are awaiting assessments from CAMHS.  At Secondary level 39% have an ASD diagnosis, 23% have an ADHD diagnosis, 70% have a mental health diagnosis and a further 29 are on the CAMHS waiting list. 

Policy Statements; “Ensuring a Pupil Voice” and “Effective Communication” clarify the variety of methods used to incorporate views from all stakeholders.  Staff consistently strive to obtain evaluative feedback from pupils, parents, carers and stakeholders.  This informs our strategic and operational improvement agenda.  All information collated is intensely interrogated and acted upon accordingly.

Staff are committed, enthusiastic and child centred and continually look for opportunities to extend the learning experiences for children and young people and celebrate their successes.  This year, we have continued to use Facebook to communicate with parents/carers, families and stakeholders.