What is the Continuum of Support?
At the individual level, school avoidance occurs along a spectrum, ranging from mild to severe and from transient to long-term. Children and young people will require different levels of support depending on their position on the spectrum outlined earlier. When planning for school avoidance using a Whole-School Approach, the Continuum of Support model is used. The Continuum of Support is how the Nova programme is designed.
Both the Continuum of Support and the Hardiker model (1991) are used by schools and services when developing their systems to support children and young people and their families. Both the Hardiker and Continuum of Support models emphasise the importance of a tiered approach when solving complex issues. Many of the interventions you will see listed in this toolkit are concerned with enabling teachers to intervene directly. However, there are steps outlined in Section 2.6 that the school can collectively take to develop a Whole School Approach to school avoidance.
Schools may decide to plan to target interventions for school avoidance based on these different levels of support.
Additional Resources
Check and Connect
Check and Connect is an evidence-based structured adult mentoring programme that aims to promote student engagement at school and with learning.
What Works Hub
The What Works Ireland Evidence Hub provides information about prevention and early intervention programmes that have been evaluated and shown to improve outcomes for children and young people. When deciding on the evidence base for a programme, this is a useful starting point.