Pastoral Officer

Tracy Hawkins is our Early Help Officer at Cutthorpe Primary School. Her role is to support children and their families within the home or at school to help remove any barriers to learning and general well-being. She works with families for various reasons to encourage positive and sustainable outcomes for children and their families.

During sessions in school children can discuss issues affecting them in a safe and confidential space.  Working together with the children and their families, Tracy identifies any key issues they are experiencing and helps resolve them using suitable strategies for that family.  In addition, she supports families with appointments and meetings and signpost to other agencies if needed. She is a parent herself and she wants to reassure you that she is here to listen and support where needed. 

Play Therapy Support Programme

The Play Therapy support programme which we use here at Cutthorpe is a unique early intervention programme designed to raise the self-esteem and emotional wellbeing of shy, timid, disaffected and challenging children and young people.  

One to one sessions are delivered in a sensory environment using the natural medium of play. The structured sessions are tailored to meet individual needs, assisting in developing, listening and communication skills, addressing anger management issues and helping children and young people to deal with the consequences of their actions. It is designed to equip children and young people with the necessary resilience, social and life skills to manage the issues that confront them enabling them to access the curriculum and achieve their potential.

Play Therapy support aims and objectives:

• to allow young people a space to express and communicate feelings and difficulties in their lives, through a variety of media in constructive rather than aggressive ways and in a safe non-threatening environment

• to help young people feel good about themselves and raise self-esteem by providing activities that look at their strengths and by valuing what they do and making it special

• to provide a non-authoritarian, supportive, reliable, safe, unconditional relationship within schools and other settings

• to provide some of the early experiences that may have been missed but which are necessary for formal education and social interaction

• to help young people acquire the complex range of life skills needed to achieve their full potential.

Household Support Fund

Derbyshire County Council has been awarded funds from the DWP to help support families and households who are facing financial hardship to pay for food, energy and essential living costs over the winter. The fund is known as the Household Support Fund (HSF). Households facing financial hardship can apply to the Household Support Fund for help.

A maximum of two payments can be made worth £64 per household plus an extra £20 will be provided for each partner / spouse and any dependent children.

All payments must be made before the fund closes at the end of March 2022.

Payments are in addition to any support received from the existing Derbyshire Discretionary Fund, which allows eligible residents to receive up to three Emergency Cash Payments (ECP) over 12 months.

This means that an eligible household who has already received the maximum of three payments from the ECP scheme and is facing hardship this winter, can apply to the Household Support Fund for additional financial support.

How to apply

You can apply to receive support from the Household Support Fund by telephone. Please tel: 01629 533399.

When an application is made an assessor will take some personal information during the call and then a further assessor will phone back to discuss the application in more detail.

The assessor will need to know:

• how a person or family is in crisis and what will happen if help is not quickly made available

• what money and savings might be available or have been applied for

  Please be aware that payments can only be to someone who is over 16, and who lives in Derbyshire and that there is a limited amount of money and all applications will be assessed on the basis of need, urgency and risk.