# RootShift

> RootShift embeds inside your pastoral team in Croydon & South London, delivering early intervention, family mediation, and 1:1 student support before exclusion hits.

- Kind of business: Education & Youth Advocacy
- Serves: South London & Croydon (expanding to Greater London)
- In their words: RootShift embeds inside your pastoral team before exclusion happens, reducing fixed-term exclusions and rebuilding family trust within a single term.

## Services

- Crisis Mediation Session: Quoted per job. A single structured 90-minute family-school mediation for one student facing exclusion or serious breakdown — includes 30-minute pre-calls with both school and family separately, the joint session, and a written agreed action plan
- Annual School Partnership: £9,500. Three full terms of embedded delivery (the full Termly Embedded Programme across the academic year) with priority booking, half-termly leadership briefings, and staff CPD session on trauma-informed exclusion prevention — designed for MAT or whole-school commissioning

## Contact

- [Enquiry form](https://rootshift.wenbuidl.app/#contact): Commission a brief
- [Website](https://rootshift.wenbuidl.app/)

## FAQ

### How does RootShift fit alongside our existing SENCO and DSL structure?

RootShift does not replace your SENCO or DSL — it takes on the relational work that structurally cannot sit with them. Your DSL holds safeguarding authority, which means parents with grievances against the school will not speak honestly in a meeting they chair. Your SENCO is managing EHCP assessments and SEND administration. RootShift operates as a neutral, community-embedded advocate — coordinated directly with your Head of Year each week, but independent enough that students and families trust the relationship. The three roles work alongside each other, not in competition.

### What does a typical week of embedded delivery look like in practice?

During a standard week in the Termly Programme, the RootShift founder is on site for scheduled group workshop sessions with identified Year 9–11 students, fortnightly 1:1 check-ins with the highest-risk pupils on your caseload, and any family mediation sessions booked that week. Before each family session, separate 30-minute pre-calls are held with both the school contact and the parent or carer. All of this is coordinated directly with your Head of Year, and a written termly impact report goes to your headteacher at the end of each term.

### How do we fund the Termly Programme — Pupil Premium, inclusion grants, or pastoral budget?

Most schools commission RootShift through Pupil Premium, which Ofsted expects to see directed at evidence-informed interventions for disadvantaged pupils at exclusion risk. The Termly Programme at £3,500 sits well within a single school's PP allocation, and the Annual School Partnership at £9,500 can be split across two budget instalments. Local Authority inclusion officers and Virtual School Heads also hold exclusion-reduction grant budgets that RootShift qualifies against. If you are unsure which budget line applies, raise it in your initial conversation and the founder will work through the options with you.

### What makes RootShift different from a generic PSHE programme or external mentoring provider?

Most external programmes arrive with a printed curriculum, deliver six sessions to a full tutor group, and leave. RootShift works in groups of six to ten identified students, builds a personal relationship with each one over the term, and connects that work directly to structured family mediation and 1:1 mentoring for the highest-risk cases. The founder has lived cultural fluency with the specific communities — Black British, dual-heritage, working-class South London families — where exclusion risk is concentrated and where a stranger with a lanyard and a PowerPoint will not get traction. The work is relational and manual because that is what the evidence shows actually reduces exclusions.

### How quickly can we get started and what does onboarding look like?

Once a school commission is confirmed and the invoice raised, onboarding takes one week. The founder meets with your Head of Year and DSL to identify the cohort of students for the programme, agree the weekly timetable slot, and set the terms for family communication. The first group workshop session runs in week two. For the Crisis Mediation Session, the pre-calls can be scheduled within 48 hours of the referral — so if you have a fixed-term exclusion review on the horizon, it is worth making contact now rather than after the governors' panel date is set.