The UK’s leading education workforce provider has acquired a children’s services provider to help extend its support for vulnerable young people.

Affinity Workforce Solutions has today announced that it has acquired Sugarman Children’s Services, a specialist provider of education, tutoring and mentoring for vulnerable children and young people across England.

The move follows Affinity’s recent acquisition in September of education training platform Training Toolz and takes the group further into direct support for children, alongside its work supplying staff to schools, multi-academy trusts and colleges.

Sugarman Children’s Services delivers personalised, child-centred support tailored to each young person’s educational, social and emotional needs. Working in partnership with Local Authorities, schools and families, it provides trauma-informed tutoring, mentoring and alternative provision for children with SEND, SEMH needs and mental health challenges, and for those at risk of exclusion. Its specialist services include therapeutic mentoring, ESOL support and Speech and Language Therapy assessments.

The business also helps young people reintegrate into mainstream education and achieve recognised qualifications, with every professional rigorously vetted.

Esme Bianchi-Barry, CEO of Affinity Workforce Solutions, said:

“Children who face barriers to education need the right support at the right moment, and too often it isn’t there. Sugarman Children’s Services has built a trusted, safeguarding-led service for some of the most vulnerable young people in England. Bringing it into Affinity strengthens our alternative provision and educational support offer, deepens our specialist expertise in SEND, SEMH, mentoring and reintegration, and makes us a genuinely stronger partner for Local Authorities and education partners working to improve outcomes for these children.”

The acquisition supports Affinity’s mission to improve outcomes for children who face barriers to education, and builds on its existing work beyond recruitment, including its eSafeguarding service under The Protocol Group.