An exciting part of this Family Link Officer (FLO) role is to support the Service families within our school. As an ex-service person myself, a military wife and mother of 4 children, I hope that my experience and knowledge can be of benefit to you and that we can work together to provide the best possible care for our Service families.

One of the initial aspects of the job that I would like to put in place is to gather more detailed information about the Service families at our school. It is important that we know of any planned deployments, house moves, school changes, changes in home circumstances etc so that we can plan and put in place the appropriate support for your children.

It would be fantastic if you could complete the form HERE

Although we speak about deployments, this of course would include any parent who is absent from the family unit, e.g weekly commuting etc. Communication between school and home is essential to ensure that your child is effectively supported during their time at Solent Infant School.
Some of the ideas that I have for this role are;

• To give deploying/absent parents a Solent Teddy which they can take with them and send us pictures and stories of their travels that we can share either at assembly or in class. Please click on the Solent Teddy tab at the top of the Family Support page for more information.

• School have purchased a range of lovely books that you will be able to borrow to help support your child at home. The themes cover; deployment, worries, loneliness, friendship, changes, behaviour, loss and emotions. Please click on the Lending Library tab at the top of the Family Support page for more information.

• To be able email deployed/absent parents some of their child’s work and any photos of them that have been taken at school during that time.

• If your child is moving to/from another school out with normal transition time, then I would like to support you and your child in planning that move. Some ideas are to create a scrapbook of their time at Solent, also to liaise with their new school and find out more about their new class and teacher etc.

• Once a term I would like to facilitate a “gathering” of our Service families, where we all get to meet each other and play some games, arts and crafts etc.

Any ideas that you have would be greatly welcome. I envisage this taking place between 3.30pm and 5.30pm and would be open to families with children at Solent Infant School, including siblings. These are my initial thoughts and I would love to hear from you with any ideas of what you would like from this role. I am hugely excited about this role in school and very much look forward to meeting you all.
Angela Clark (Family Link Officer)