Service Families

Supporting children from Service families

Red Barn Community Primary School is home to a number of children from Service families. Some of these are living within the local area and some reside in the village of Southwick. For those children travelling to and from Southwick, there is a free minibus service provided by Hampshire County Council each day.

Red Barn Primary School receive Service Premium money for each child from a Service family. The expenditure for this money can be found within the Pupil Premium page of the school website. This page also contains information regarding the achievement of our children from Service families.

We recognise that children from Service families are potentially vulnerable due to the nature of their family’s role. Being a small school, we pride ourselves on knowing our children and families well and therefore having the capacity to support the children through what may be a challenging time if parents are deployed. When family members are deployed away from home, a member of staff has allocated time to support these children each week.

We do ask parents to keep us informed, where possible, of upcoming deployments so we can ensure that we are able to provide the support where appropriate.

The provision is usually influenced by the children’s wishes. Some of the activities include:

Service Families

  • Making clay
  • Drawing and painting pictures
  • Writing letters and stories
  • Playing games/making videos
  • Writing news reports
  • Lego

We have also been lucky enough to have some knitted Service Personnel! These can be provided to children and parents during deployment.

Useful Links:

Little Troopers (resources used to support a child through parental deployment)

Apply for Home to School Transport

The Ripple Pond (peer support for adults)

Hampshire Camhs – Military Families

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Aggies Community Waves June 2023