Charity spotlight: SHS

Portfolio charity SHS (School-Home Support) is now delivering its nationally recognised programme in 40 new schools in Harlow, on the outskirts of London, after successfully securing over half a million pounds of local funding. SHS works to remove barriers to kids getting to the classroom and being ready to learn, by engaging with schools, families and the children themselves.

In Harlow, SHS will focus on helping 280 schoolchildren with motivation issues, and a further 90 children in secondary school who are at risk of being excluded or who are suffering the effects of family breakdown. Its work is critical to ensuring that children remain engaged at school, achieve their qualifications, and make positive progress into jobs or further education when they leave school.

Successes like this mean that SHS has achieved over a 30 per cent growth in service capacity in the past twelve months, with SHS services now helping over 24,000 children a year to make the most of their schooling. This has been enabled by PEF’s investment of growth capital and pro bono expertise from a PEF team of investment professionals and advisers.

Beyond direct service delivery, SHS is also now creating broader impact by providing consultancy to local authorities running their own services and training resources for schools, leveraging the expertise accumulated through its own practice over the years. Such training and consultancy projects are now running in Brent, Hertfordshire and Hounslow and in ten local authority areas in Greater Manchester.

Jan Tallis, CEO of SHS, says “PEF investment is enabling growth at an unprecedented rate for SHS, which means that we are helping many more children to benefit from their schooling. We really value the support we get from PEF staff and their supporters and certainly regard them as our critical friends. PEF provide both challenge and encouragement as we transform SHS into the national champion for excellence in school-home advocacy.”