Corpus Christi Primary School
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Mission Statement
The Sky is the Limit operates within Corpus Christi Primary School and Corpus Christi Family Centre CLG within the Vision and Mission of the school and family centre: Corpus Christi Primary School firmly believes in the philosophy that education equals opportunity. Skilled staff constantly develop and support the children to maximize their potential. The vision for our school is one where the children of the community achieve, feel safe and are happy. We look forward to a future where all of our children’s needs are supported in their places of education. This will take into account their needs first and foremost, while also looking to support more broadly the families and the community around us in which the local children live. We support the children of our school through consistent unconditional positive regard, genuineness and empathy, to create significant relationships with children and their families. We provide a range of interventions that complement classwork and contribute to the social, educational and emotional development of the pupils and their families. We have adopted a Whole School Wrap Around Model (Community Partnership Network Model )approach which is in essence, the delivery of services at our newly built integrated service centre on site in the school – The Corpus Christi Family Centre CLG Community services such as psychological interventions, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, employment and housing supports address the needs of the children and families in Moyross, in a way that meets them where they are rather than the ad hoc manner in which they previously accessed vital public services – a system that we now see had poorer outcomes for the children and families. We also broaden out our service provision to the families and members of the local community as they face challenges in housing and training / employment – areas that have a direct and immediate effect on children. Having developed this integrated service model and Family Centre, we now offer our lessons learned in the expectation of practical change among those schools with whom we share our learning, and a cultural and system change within the education sector in Ireland. We now put forward a joint approach for an element of this three year plan that will see Corpus Christi work closely with two partner schools in rolling out elements of our approach.
About This Cause
The Corpus Christi Family Centre CLG at Corpus Christi PS pulls together the various strands of The Sky is the Limit programme into a co-ordinated holistic services centre where a whole range of key services are provided at the one location. The achievement of this was core to our engagement with the Youth Fund at Rethink Ireland. It was a key goal in our previous strategic plan 2019 – 2022 and we are proud of all the work and achievements within the past three years. All this has been achieved thanks to close community based collaboration among other actors in the statutory, community, voluntary and private sectors. We have succeeded in providing easier access to services and support the children and their families to make positive changes that enable them to have productive, happy fulfilled lives. Our approach has been and continues to operate in a complex environment of supports to students. It is delivered for the students in Corpus Christi within the Exosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Framework for Human Development. The ambition of our previous Strategic Plan has been achieved and we continue to look towards deepening the impact we have with our children and continuing to answer their needs. We have also been expanding our service to answer the complex family needs that affect the children’s success and we have ambition to scale deeper to support families in ways that support their family environment and the children’s lives – specifically in supporting families as they look to improve their housing and training / employment situations. This will include families of our students but also anyone in the community who looks to avail of services. Our outreach will ensure we connect those with needs with the services available. To date our ability to scale has depended heavily on the volunteer effort of key clinicians and the more recent addition of student placements from Allied Health at the University of Limerick which has allowed us to provide services for much larger numbers of students than our budget might suggest. Beyond our plans to scale deeper with the audience we traditionally serve; we are also conscious that our model is examined and admired by others whose students face almost identical challenges – in the early years education, in other primary schools and in post-primary schools. Externally we look to take a two-pronged approach to sharing our expertise and our model: Local Partner Collaborations: We are actively engaged with two schools in the local area who have expressed an interest in closer collaboration and shared learning. Initial areas for collaboration and additional exploration include: Thomond Community College: Continuity of care into secondary school for those children who go there from Corpus Christi PS. Teenagers can access therapeutic supports in the Corpus Christi Family Centre CLG Including the families and communities in Thomond into the Social Prescribing (Community Companions / Family Support Workers) connections who are trusted and credible among the community. Referring those with needs to the adult counselling available through The Sky is the Limit. Sharing knowledge about grant applications for ongoing support for similar investments Sharing knowledge of the models of working that have been proven. St Mary’s National School: Provide support and appointments to children from St Mary’s in Creative Therapy, SLT, OT, Physio, Dietetics where there is a need not currently being filled. Examine expanding the Allied Health options to St Mary’s NS Sharing knowledge about grant applications for ongoing support for similar investments Sharing knowledge of the models of working that have been proven. Wider Replication by Others: We also appreciate that many organisations view our model with interest and we have made attempts in the past to demonstrate this model. We will continue to improve our working methods, create a positive impact among our children and families, document and respond to our findings and make this available to interested parties as part of this three year plan. The age group we targeted initially in The Sky is the Limit was from 4 to 12 as this is the age group of the children attending Corpus Christi school. However, work with families is also part of the programme, therefore younger and older than school-going age will also be included as we see our students arrive from local pre-schools and progress in life on into secondary school. Parents and guardians also come in to our service as they provide the environment in which the child lives and we have observed a great desire among parents and guardians to secure and improve that environment. Word of mouth and the trust built up by the team at The Sky’s the Limit means that others from the wider community seek support via the school and we now serve their needs as well. This project aims to provide a range of interventions that contribute to the social, educational and emotional development of the pupils, their families and the wider community. Goal 1 - Provide an expanded range of services and interventions within our broader community and increase the scale, intensity, duration and numbers accessing support and services: Maintain consistent delivery of each therapeutic strand, in line with the school year, secure in the knowledge that funding is consistent and sustainable. Broaden our service to deliver greater support to families in addressing housing and employment needs – often the root problem of many of the issues faced. Broaden our reach beyond school children and their families into the wider community of families at pre-school stage, post-primary and those without children in the school system. Continue to gain funding for The Sky is The Limit with a shift towards generating funding for staffing and programmes from statutory agencies Goal 2 - Document and demonstrate the value of this model as a best practice model: Learn from what works and adapt as we learn Provide evidence to those from whom we seek a more sustainable funding model Provide evidence to those interested in replicating Demonstrate the long term nature of the benefits derived by the programme through our newly devised Social Economic Impact Measurement Tool. Continue to invest our time and resources in building this tool and populating it with data over the coming years. Goal 3 – Collaborate with two local schools who have expressed an interest in our approach: Collaborate with them so they can learn from our approach where appropriate Determine with Thomond Community College and St Mary’s National School what their needs are and where our services may provide a solution Create a schedule of accountability where we work together along with Limerick Regeneration on projects of interest and share lessons with each other. Goal 4 – Offer the expertise and methods of The Sky is The Limit to a boarder audience on the local and national stage Invite those who have shown an active interest to The Hub Share our knowledge and be entirely open to anyone who seeks to learn. Run our own communications campaign on Social Media to share the vision of The Sky Is The Limit Programme Engage with the Regeneration Office as appropriate where they can offer resources towards the ambition of replication. In anticipation of this stage of our development we liken our work to that of an allotment. Over the years we have designed and planted a highly successful allotment – one that is admired by many. We are keen to share our expertise and approach but our priority must remain our own allotment and prioritising our own children and their families in Moyross. The sequence of our priorities is telling – Goals 1 and 2 are clearly to focus on the successful delivery of services to our children and our local community and 80% of our work will continue in this vein. We propose that 20% of our resource are put towards Goal 3 and Goal 4. At management level, the workload will increase in line with the Goals and Objectives of this plan. In summary, we have allowed for additional capacity to be built into The Sky is the Limit to allow for this additional workload. The Sky is the Limit has participated and learned from three significant externally supported impact and validation exercises. As part of its involvement with Rethink Ireland’s Youth Funds it was included in the NUIG Evaluation of the Fund which is due to be published by the end of 2022. Separately, qualitative research has been conducted by Beth Hickey in depth interviews and focus groups that demonstrates the achievements of outcomes and the contribution to impact. This research incorporates the lessons learned and the methods used and will be hugely valuable to those who may choose to replicate the model. A large investment has also been made using funding from the Public Service Innovation Fund for a long term study of the impact of The Sky is the Limit. This builds on the Theory of Change and maps outcomes to national outcomes iterated by Tusla and is also aligned to the Growing up in Ireland Study. This scalable impact framework and socio-economic impact measurement tool has been designed and is now in use with participants. The tool was built to provide ongoing data analysis and is longitudinal, scalable and replicable. The tool uses an annual subscription to DataHub, a demographic analysis platform, to automate the data collection process to ensure that changes to baseline conditions are measured on an ongoing basis.