Through the Pivotal Blog, we are publishing in full "Views from the Bridge" a book about the Bridge Project in Chesterfield.
We are publishing this book in chapters. Every week a new chapter will be uploaded to the blog. So make sure you bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you have questions for the authors, please contact us and we will pass them on.
Get up to date before you begin this chapter.
We have already published the following:
Project Headlines and Foreword
Chapter 2
The Beginnings
In 2004 the secondary schools in Chesterfield and North East Derbyshire formed a collaborative to share strategies for managing troubled and troublesome pupils. In this they followed the lead of the Peak 11 group of schools, located in the High Peak and Derbyshire Dales, which had initiated a "Pastoral Panel" some years earlier. By 2008, in line with what was by then government (Labour) policy where, all schools were expected to join a Behaviour and Attendance Partnership, there were four such collaborative groups in Derbyshire and a fifth followed later.
Although these groups shared many features the titles they adopted reflected nuances in their approaches and priorities. "Pastoral Panel" reflected a wide brief and a concern to provide support for the adults working in the field almost as much as finding solutions for individual young people. The Erewash District group's use of "Fair Access" indicated a high priority on equity for pupils and for schools when young people were to be placed in a school by the Local Authority, most commonly when they were being reintegrated after a permanent exclusion. Membership of the groups varied a little but usually saw LA support services and other agencies join representatives from schools.
The Chesterfield and N.E. Derbyshire group took the title "Area Inclusion Group" (AIG) which later changed to Area Inclusion Strategy (AIS), reflecting an intention to discuss all aspects of inclusion and to share strategies from the pupil level to area-based plans.
All of the groups shared ideas for dealing with troubled youngsters and brokered managed moves when appropriate. Members of the group, received a degree of moral support too. Working with pupils in difficulty, who also cause difficulty, takes an emotional toll on the adults working with them. It was of benefit for workers in the inclusion field to hear that others encountered similar frustrations to theirs and also experience some "emotional fatigue".
Whatever the slight variations in emphasis between the groups, it was accepted by all that trying to reduce the numbers of permanently excluded pupils in the county was a desirable outcome and formed a central part of their brief.
It was agreed at the outset that referrals to the Bridge Project should first of all be discussed at the full AIS group. The Bridge Project is a precious resource for them and is "owned" by all the schools in the Learning Community. The normal AIS group discussions about pupils was led by the presenting school and usually invoked suggestions of further strategies, offers of help from - or direction towards -agencies or services of the LA.
This process was designed quite deliberately to lead to a moderating effect on presentations and a leveling-up of schools' management of inclusion. In one of the early meetings two schools were each to present a case, both saying they were experiencing great difficulties with their respective pupils leading them to consider exclusion. The first school related all the strategies they had tried, all the time and energy expended, the patience and resourcefulness they had shown, but all without improvement in the pupil's behaviour. All present were impressed by the efforts this school had made and the commitment they had shown to the young person. The representative from the second school then quietly told the chair, "There is more we ought to do for the pupil I was about to discuss. We can learn from the first school. I withdraw the case for discussion."
It was a recurring theme in several of the county groups that there were pupils who had only just "limped through" the junior school stage who then struggled to cope quite early in their secondary career. A common picture was of a child with a disrupted family background or one facing multiple problems who had displayed challenging behaviour in junior school. Often these children had been kept indoors at playtimes due to problems with other children and spent time separated from the others - often with the head teacher - and were not allowed to attend lessons, due to their persistent disruption.
Not unexpectedly the head teacher was often able to strike up a relationship with the pupil which was positive enough to keep the child in school and to prevent the need for exclusion. Junior schools hung on to some difficult children, hoping for improvement after the transition to secondary school, as experience shows that pupils who have been difficult at junior school can settle reasonably well at secondary. However, very often, such pupils do not. Commonly, by the term after Christmas the secondary school has exhausted its usual strategies and feels it necessary to bring the "case" to an AIS meeting.
In 2009 a proposal to establish some sort of intervention group for such children was put to the Chesterfield AIS. At this time, Derbyshire had established area-based Multi-Agency Teams, led by a District Manager, aimed at bringing a number of services such as social care, the Connexions service and Education Welfare workers (attendance and other services) into local partnerships rather remaining in separate county-wide services. The District Manager therefore was in a position to identify local issues and trends and confirmed that whilst there was a range of alternative provision for KS4 pupils there was a lack of resources for the KS3 age group.
Around this time, the LA Assistant Director for Children and Families had been devolving funds to the partnerships to help them in their work with vulnerable children and in preventing exclusions. Each partnership had the freedom to use the funding in ways which met its local area or schools' need. The Chesterfield AIS established the principle that the money should be pooled rather than divided amongst the schools and be used to fund a joint provision of some sort. It was hoped that this would have more impact than small in-school projects and would lead to shared learning for all the schools and other groups of professionals.
So it was agreed to establish some kind of alternative provision to which any of the participating schools could refer pupils. But what kind of provision? At this stage there was no clear picture of what it would be other than the belief that there were in the schools a number of pupils who might benefit from an alternative to full-on mainstream schooling. Each school had pupils who were failing to thrive and who were likely to be excluded or to exclude themselves. More than likely, the pupils to be referred would probably be identified by their schools as having poor emotional and social development.
In this extended discussion it was suggested by a local Behaviour Improvement Partnership (BIP) manager that this alternative provision should follow nurture principles. She had visited and been impressed by the work of a Derbyshire LA run Key Stage 2 Nurture Group which took referrals of young pupils from county schools. When this idea was presented to the AIS it was agreed that nurture principles would underpin the workings of the project and the title "The Bridge Project" was adopted to reflect the aim of helping youngsters to bridge the transition from primary to secondary schooling.
What is meant by Nurture - from the funding bid to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Our view of what was meant by "nurture' was spelled out in a bid to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for extra funding.
Nurture groups address attachment needs that have not been provided early in life. They provide missing experiences that enable the child to begin to make positive human relationships and function more maturely emotionally and socially. This in turn leads to a better functioning individual more likely to succeed in life and school...
"Research carried out within the county shows that many strategies for pupils at this age range are biased towards a behaviourist approach (eg seclusion rooms). Young people who cannot function because of attachment difficulties will become increasingly angry and frustrated as they move through secondary school and leave behind the safety and security of the primary school experience. They are physically developing but emotionally they have been left behind. Poor and extreme behaviour or sometimes very unresponsive and withdrawn behaviour is presented.
(The Bridge Project) ...will be a proactive approach where pupils would be identified before they reach permanent exclusion level and offered a place at The Bridge. This project would be very different to other interventions and therefore highly innovative in two ways. Firstly, the 11 secondary schools have an entirely new approach to meet the difficulties young people with attachment disorder. Secondly, all activity that takes place is planned to address attachment difficulties, build self worth and confidence as its underpinning principle. Curriculum needs would be a secondary consideration whilst the young person attends The Bridge but the intervention is designed to enable pupils to function better on their re-integration to school. This approach provides a challenge in thinking for schools that have curriculum needs as a first priority. We plan that this project will help schools to understand that quality learning is unlikely to take place whilst a young person suffers from attachment difficulties and that the need to address this is paramount and ultimately will lead to a calmer and more productive working environment for all young people in schools.
A model was devised where up to twelve pupils would attend on four days each week for twelve weeks in the first instance. On Friday of each week the pupils were to attend their own school. In the planning phase there were discussions about whether the pupils would find it difficult to adjust on that single school day's attendance each week but it was thought that they should keep contact with their school and that the school should be reminded of the pupils' existence.
The Bridge Project location and accommodation became an issue for a while. The Donut Creative Arts Studios (DCAS) were mooted at an early stage and there is no doubt that it is a beautiful building with excellent facilities for the arts, located conveniently in the centre of Chesterfield. A lot of successful youth work takes place there and it is regarded by young people as a "cool" place.
It was agreed at a very early stage that the Bridge should be located away from any of the schools and DCAS was an attractive prospect. However, it was here that some differences in the professional backgrounds of the management group driving the project forward arose. Those with a youth work background of flexible working underestimated the teachers' need for a classroom (of some sort). A wish for a room reflected their need to anchor their work in some elements of the familiar.
Working with young people who have issues with relationships would mean that they would not all be happy to co-exist in the same work room all of the time so a suite of rooms would be required - a work room, a quiet room, a room to talk privately and a kitchen and dining area, critical in the nurture approach.
Discussions about room and spaces served to help the management group come to a deeper understanding of the underlying nurture principles and how the project would operate. A Service Level Agreement was eventually put in place with the manager of the Donut Centre and he continued to be part of the management group and this presence, together with the District Manager's, gave a helpfully different viewpoint to those steeped in school culture.
Twelve pupils with complex needs being housed all day in two smallish rooms and a break-out room seemed a lot for staff to cope with and could have made it difficult for pupils to be able to cope with each other. The management group agreed that the aim to work with twelve pupils at a time should also encompass those in the process of being reintegrated to mainstream school, i.e. there could be "up to" twelve pupils "on the books" but not all present at the same time.
The bid to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation took some time to bear fruit but eventually did so. When all the funding was in place the formal agreement of the head teachers of the eleven schools was obtained. When the methods to be used were being explained head teachers they raised the question as to how much curriculum content there ought to be, with some assuming that pupils would work on individual programmes on computers. These queries emphasised the need to explain how nurture principles might work in practice. The heads were referred back to the bid and advised that the pupils with attachment issues would not improve their interactions with others through a computer-based curriculum. Teachers have a difficulty in letting go of "the curriculum". We might embrace nurture principles in a general sort of way but we are still uncomfortable unless we can answer, "What we are going teach on Monday?"
The funds from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation were amalgamated with those from the LA meaning the Bridge Project could run for two years.
From that first suggestion for the schools to work together to the intake of first pupils took several years, but the extended lead-in time did allow for a management group to discuss principles, structures and procedures. They worked together to agree principles for the funding bid and continued working at increased pace when the funding was secured. Individual interviews carried out by the Project Assessor at an early stage showed that although management group members came from different professional backgrounds there was by now a well-developed understanding of the nurture principles and of how the project would be different from other provision.
In the spring of 2011 the Management Group appointed a teacher and two TA's on secondment from local schools to become the project staff. At the same time part time input from the Youth Service was agreed.
The management group had wrestled for some time to identify how to manage the administrative and personnel arrangements, which would be dealt with as a matter of course in an individual secondary school or in an LA run provision. Here I am referring to tasks of line management and supervision as well as administrative issues such as payroll and budget control. After some work to clarify the needs in these aspects, two members of The Bridge Management Group negotiated time from their posts to become line managers/supervisors for the project. One school in the Learning Community - Parkside Community School - took responsibility for budget monitoring and payroll. However, it was clearly agreed that Parkside was not to be held accountable for the running of the project.
On appointment, the Lead Teacher and TA's had to work quickly both to get internal structures, policies and procedures in place and to introduce themselves to the Learning Community. They also wanted to meet the first four pupils and their parents. There was also the not inconsiderable task of equipping the accommodation, particularly as the nurture element was to be so strong. It wasn't a simple matter of ordering desks, chairs and exercise books.
We kept the management structures simple. From the decision of the AIS to go ahead with a nurture provision a Bridge Management Steering Group was established. This early planning group morphed into the continuing Bridge Management Group retaining some but not all of the original members. In the second year of operation three practitioners from the AIS group joined the group: a deputy head, a school inclusion centre manager and a person in charge of a school's external services.
Referrals were considered by the Bridge Asessment Group (BAG). Here the members were the BIP manager, a senior educational psychologist, the retired LA head of Access and Inclusion, a retired head teacher, an inclusion manager and a local authority inclusion officer who dealt mainly with special needs.
Points to consider at the planning stage
- The long lead-in period allowed extensive discussion of the purposes and nature of the project amongst the core members of the planning team.
- The pace of planning increased rapidly from the autumn of 2010 when funding was secured. Sharing ideas and information with the Learning Community took a back seat as the management group worked through issues of recruitment, finding administrative support, identifying accommodation and so on. The heads needed bringing up to speed later.
- There was an obvious desire to get the project started and to do so before the end of the school year 2010-2011. This may have meant that a less-than-full understanding of the project on the part of some AIS members pertained. The evidence for that is that the majority of the second tranche of referrals from schools in October 2011 did not follow the correct referral route or criteria and some of them seemed rushed.
- All of the prime movers for the Bridge Project had full-time jobs and some changed jobs in the planning period. This meant they were developing the philosophy and planning and implementing under time pressure. The long lead-in time meant that possible negative effects of this part-time approach were minimised but any group planning such a provision should consider appointing someone to lead the project through the planning phase, particularly when there is an urgency to start.
A beginning: the first pupils
The first four pupils began attending The Bridge Project in June 2011. As the imperative had been to get the project underway, the referrals were completed in a more informal way than was intended in future, relying heavily on a personal approach. By early October all four pupils had settled well and had made good progress, to the extent that discussions with them and their schools about reintegration had begun. Two more pupils enrolled at the beginning of the autumn term.
At this early stage in the life of the project all involved were keen to learn just what makes a "good referral." (See chapter 7) The bid to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation refers to "attachment disorders". One of this early group of pupils had been identified as having "oppositional behaviour disorder" and several of them were taking ritalin. Although a "nurture" approach was seen as key to meeting the needs of the intended client group - whatever their labels - the management group needed to develop the language and descriptions of nurture and attachment.
In trying to define what the project was to be and what it was not, we came to recognise that there is an overlap of approaches used in different settings. Philosophies and practices such as behaviourist and nurture which apparently differ, both consider establishing a routine, consistency and fairness to be important. We thought that perhaps these are just commonsense and perhaps the commonsense definition of a "good" or appropriate referral should be one where it is agreed that the Project can help the young person referred. But that could be a lot of children.
At this early stage the team (including the management group) had a gut feeling about "appropriate" referrals. It seemed to be that when schools had exhausted their strategies and felt that a youngster was in danger of being cast adrift or casting himself or herself adrift of school that we should accept that youngster. Our ideas, views and language developed during the life of the project and can be read about in Chapter 7: A Good Referral.
The terms "Nurture", "attachment issues" and a "good referral" returned to our discussions time and again, particularly when the first major review of the provision was being planned (Chapter 8: Assessment). One pupil to be admitted later had a period of time in both the local P.R.U and the Bridge Project, experiencing a behaviourist and nurture approach and made us think again, but more of him later too. (Chapter 11: Not Always Successful)
The newly-formed team were learning quickly. In the first couple of weeks of operation they wondered whether one particular lad's needs could actually be met. After time, they came to the view that since coming to the Bridge his behaviour had improved considerably. A second pupil showed quite extreme anger at times and again the relatively inexperienced staff had concerns about managing him. Issues with his violent behaviour diminished in frequency and gravity as the Bridge staff learned to recognise the triggers which led to his outbursts and learned too how to head off problems. This learning was fed back to his school in the reintegration phase.
In those early days - and continuing into year 1 - lack of information from referring schools was the most common reason for refusing or delaying a referral.
Schools also vary in the emphasis they place on pastoral care and in any group of schools there will be some whose systems of pupil support are less well developed than others. Deciding that a school "may need to do more" is quite a value-laden issue for those in the Assessment Group and for the referring schools. There was concern that some schools were applying for a Bridge place for a pupil before exhausting in-school strategies. To accede to a request from a school at too early a stage would be to validate that school's lack of willingness or imagination in seeking solutions to the problems their pupils bring forward.
Latterly some schools created the impression that they were prepared to forego a placement for one young person in favour of another. This stemmed from the belief that if one pupil was more likely than the other to succeed in the Bridge they wanted to have the choice of which it was to be. The group considering referrals thought that some schools were second guessing that - even with the Bridge Project support - one of their pupils was much more likely than the other to be permanently excluded from school and so to go ahead with that referral would be to waste a place, given that places are limited.
Several times in early referral meetings lively discussion focussed on the issue of equity in the award of places across the schools. It seemed likely then that over time more places would be requested by schools with higher deprivation indicators than others in more favoured locations. That lead to discussion about a possible place quota for schools. It was not quite stated in terms of "this school has used its places" - but there was a concern to ensure places were not filled too quickly by those schools which came to the table most frequently to the detriment of those who apply less often.
It was agreed by the Assessment Group that only when there was extreme pressure on places for the Bridge would the issue of the number of previous places allocated to a particular school be counted as one of the factors. The over riding criterion remained the judgment as to whether the Bridge Project could help the pupil.
Over the course of the first year, in the light of the learning that had taken place about successes and difficulties, the Lead Teacher returned to the AIS group and clarified the procedures and explained just what made for a good referral.
Over that first year, appreciation and understanding grew across the eleven schools that the Bridge Project was getting results with attendance and exclusions data backing this up (see Chapter 8: Assessment).