Through the Pivotal Blog, we are publishing in full "Views from the Bridge" a book about the Bridge Project in Chesterfield.
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Get up to date before you begin this chapter.
We have already published the following:
Project Headlines and Foreword
Chapter 7
A Good Referral
Many young people would benefit from time in the Bridge Project, especially those who find mainstream a struggle. It is a very pleasant environment, nice food is provided, the staff are calm and friendly and the work tailored to needs and abilities. There is a stability, regularity and predictability about the routines of the day and of the week. It represents some time out from mainstream school, with the opportunity to be helped to think about school and how to get the best from it.
But, as it is a limited resource it is very important to accept only those referrals with the right balance between the greatest need and the greatest likelihood of success.
From the original funding bid for the Bridge Project:
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.
... 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 ...
The Bridge experience 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.
In Nurture Groups in Schools (p206): Boxall M, rev Lucas S, (2002,2009) London : Sage Publications, there are checklists to help decide which are appropriate referrals
Children who need nurturing (are)
- Children from families under long term stress. (e.g. illness, disability, depression)
- Children who have experienced, or are experiencing, trauma (loss of a key relationship)
- Bereaved children
- Well cared for Children with parents involved in time and interest consuming work. Childcare is unsatisfactory leading to loss of familiar support.
- Children of parents who accept nurture as an alternative to psychotherapy
"Children for whom the nurture group would not be recommended
- Children with a long term need - nurture group too short term
- Children who need more intensive help
- Situations where the nurture group is not the only or most suitable provision (my wording)
- Children who are likely to need special needs provision throughout their schooling
So, not too difficult, then!
However, how long is "long term"? Just how much is "more intensive" and where would this help be found? A description of children's problems and life histories do not lend themselves to putting them into boxes or categories and we certainly had to work at developing an understanding of what would constitute a valid and a good referral.
In the early days of discussion amongst the management group and assessment group (which determines admissions), we were at pains to develop our ideas as to just how a nurture group would differ from other alternative provision. What would make it distinctive? Which referrals of young people it would be most appropriate to accept? Although a "nurture" approach was seen as key to meeting the needs of the intended client group the team needed to develop its language around our common understanding of nurture.
We came to recognise that there will be an overlap of approaches used in different settings which may have a different rationale and this is recognised too in Boxall and Lucas, Nurture Groups in Schools: "....different types of provision have elements of nurture although the rationale of the work is different."
(see also the section on our growing understanding in Chapter 2: The Beginnings)
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 for the long term. By early October these 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 had been enrolled at the beginning of the autumn term.
One of this early group of pupils had been identified as having "oppositional behaviour disorder". I found it quite difficult to move beyond a theoretical understanding to recognising a "disorder" in an individual young person. Thankfully the group of fellow professionals in the referral group had more experience of this than me. One pupil to be admitted later had been permanently excluded followed by a period of time in both the local P.R.U and the Bridge. He made us think again, but more of him later. He didn't fit easily into a tick box or category! (Chapter 11: Not Always Successful)
The Bridge Project serves eleven of the secondary schools in Derbyshire and early discussions of referrals take place in the Area Inclusion Strategy (AIS) sub-group. This is where schools send an inclusion staff representative to discuss individual children with other agencies and LA workers with a view to finding solutions or agreeing inter-agency strategies. It is in this group that an initial agreement for a Bridge referral would be agreed.
After these first four informal referrals, the admissions group tried to firm up on the process by returning to the AIS group to re-state the criteria and the need for full information. That brought about an improvement in quality, although even now the most frequent reason a referral is declined is the need for more information to enable the Assessment Group to make a decision. One head teacher did try to circumvent the whole process and go directly to the teacher in charge. "That's head teachers for you!" says your author, a poacher turned gamekeeper himself. The team stood firm in rejecting this approach.
The acid test of improvement in quality of referrals is that over the course of the two years there have been increasingly fewer which were deemed inappropriate. The Lead Teacher regularly feeds back to the AIS group and his approachability has meant that school staff often consult him before making a referral. Conversations between Bridge and school staff around the reintegration process have been provided good learning from real examples.
It has also helped that the Assessment Group comprises some highly experienced professionals who share a common view about how young people should be educated. Those members are: a senior education psychologist; an LA Inclusion Officer with a wealth of experience in SEN matters; the former head of the LA Access and Inclusion Services; the former Behaviour Improvement Partnership (BIP) manager, a retired head teacher, an Inclusion Manager from a local school and the Lead Teacher of the Bridge Project. Having professionals who have worked in schools or who work closely with them has lent credibility and acceptability to the reply to a referral that says, "The school could do more with this young person."
The timing of a referral and the subsequent engagement of the young person with the Bridge Project is key (see Chapter 11: Not Always Successful). A family situation that has been abusive and where the parents' capacity to nurture was impaired very often leads to difficulties for the child in school. Where that home situation has settled down and the child then comes to the Bridge Project, there is a good prospect of a successful placement in the project and a successful reintegration into school.
This was just the circumstance for one lad who, in his mainstream school, couldn't maintain friendships, couldn't work in mainstream classrooms and engaged in inappropriate behaviour such as walking through busy corridors with his head down, bumping into other children and staff. In his time at the Bridge his feelings of self-worth improved, he learned to trust others more - particularly other youngsters. He learned new, more positive ways of coping with his feelings rather than relying on the approach that said "this is the way we respond in my family" - in fact modelled on his father. Now back in school, his inclusion manager - who formerly spent large amounts of time with him - rarely sees him as he successfully navigates his way through school.
One case we might have managed differently was a Year Seven boy who I will call "Steve" (Chapter 11: Not Always Successful).
Over the course of the two years, each combination of young people attending has led to differences in group ethos. When Steve came along there were a number of boys who, in addition to whatever other behaviours they showed, were not biddable and found it difficult to accept constraints. This was Steve to a tee and he quickly adopted a strategy where he tried to enlist the others in his disruption and if this failed he provoked them until there was a reaction. The others, as you can imagine, did not react by saying, "I say, Steve, would you mind not doing that."
Steve did respond positively at times, particularly when he was alone with staff, but those positives were heavily outweighed by the negative influence he was having with the whole group. After a decent amount of time and patience, but before too much damage was done, his place at the Bridge was terminated and the LA asked to try to meet his needs.
Such problems between pupils are described very well in Nurture Groups in Schools.
Boxall M, rev Lucas S (2002,2009)
Fights or temper tantrums break out ... it sometimes erupts when one child looks at another. ...Normal classroom management strategies are of no avail as there is no relationship between adult and child, no acknowledgement of the existence of the adult, and any interaction between the children is negative. There is no sense of a group, and there can be no appeals to standards, even were the children to listen, because there are no shared values; and there is no response to the adults' feelings because there is no shared experience of feelings.
Matters in the Bridge Project were never as dire as that description, but we recognize that we were on a continuum which could lead there. Letting Steve go back to the P.R.U. helped to stop that possible slide.
With changing groups, each with a different tenor, the timing of the introduction of new members is critical. The development of a positive group dynamic between the others present at that time was not strong enough to withstand a challenge like Steve. There have been other periods and other groupings where we think he may well have made much better progress.
The Bridge operates a rolling programme of admissions and reintegrations. New admissions come along in ones and twos and as time passed this has made it easier to plan for and to control the effect of new arrivals. The "old hands" help show the "newbies" how things are done at the Bridge.
In addition to the need to weigh up the effect of a newcomer on the existing group dynamic we now recognize the need to work with schools on just when they decide to refer. We think there is an optimum period for a successful placement and to miss that opportunity results in the technical phenomenon we call, "Too far gone." Perhaps Steve was too entrenched in his attitudes and behaviour patterns for a placement in the Bridge to be successful in the time available.
To return to the criteria for "Children for whom the nurture group would not be recommended" (above), perhaps two apply to Steve:
- Children with a long term need - our nurture group input was too short term
- Children who need more intensive help
Also, by the time a school has used up all its strategies with a young person, the staff understandably have had an emotional response to that young person. Lessons may well have been ruined, staff and other pupils offended, the leadership and the very systems of the school called into question. A reintegration after 12-16 weeks may be too early for the school to show collective faith that the leopard has changed its spots. An early incident after reintegration with such a pupil may be enough to reinforce the view that "He hasn't changed and never will."
So, in conclusion, a "valid" referral would be one which meets the criteria for nurture provision and a "good" referral would include the best elements of timing - timely for the individual, not prejudicial to the existing group and allowing time for the school to contemplate reintegration.