Aqoon School-Home Support Services was established to provide support service for black and minority ethnic (BME) parents, carers, children and young people and for schools, early years and educational support agencies.
We became a registered charity (Charity Number 1131464) in September 2009 after five community-based support and successfully completing a one-year pilot School Home Support project funded by the Esméé Fairbairn Foundation.
Services provided by Aqoon
- Complementary education programmes in and outside school based
- Home-school liaison services for parents and schools
- Parent support services to all parents including those with SEN children, services including attending annual review meetings, translation for the statement, helping to visit special or other schools and provide bilingual support during the school visit.
- School and community-based pastoral, mentoring, academic coaching and support for children and young people in primary and secondary school who are at risk of exclusion
- Mentoring and Coaching for volunteers (Education and Social Care)
Track record
Since its establishment, Aqoon has successfully supported over 2,720 parents, children, young people and their families. It has successfully delivered;
- complementary classes for disadvantaged pupils in the city and the model it used has been considered as best practice as it brings parents, schools and pupils together and this involvement has led to achieving positive outcome.
- Complements to 4: this is a bespoke programme aimed at pupils who are academically underachieving in Key Stage 2 who have the potential in achieving age-appropriate attainment level, Level 4 by the end of Year 6.
Aqoon is commissioned to deliver such programme in a number of primary schools in the city and Birmingham. - Justice for All DVD: DVD on raising awareness for Somali parents about children with special needs. The Senior Project Manager (Abdish Tarah) facilitated a workshop at a conference on Diversity: Challenge and Opportunity in European schools in May. He also presented an article on community-based education interventions: opportunities for European schools at EU conference in the Netherlands.
Aqoon took part in a European conference on Special Educational needs in Copenhagen in June 2012 and share its model of community support. - Delivering Community Intervention Support Project (CISP) which was funded by Reaching Communities Fund. The aim of the project was to provide preventative and early intervention support to black pupils at risk of exclusion in primary and secondary schools in Leicester by providing:
- pastoral and mentoring support during the school time
- out-of-school study support for pupils with learning difficulties due to their behaviour.
- workshops and training material for teachers and school staff about Somali aspirations and perceptions
- bilingual home-school liaison for parents including workshops
