School Context
A range of staff in the teaching and teaching assistant team a Lancashire primary school have accessed training from LEHSS. The school is situated in an area of relatively high deprivation, with a significant proportion of families of low socio-economic status. A large proportion of students are dual language, with parents and family members who do not speak or have poor English language skills. These factors have led to challenges in the staff team communicating well with families (and some pupils), especially around expectations for school attendance, punctuality and behaviour.
Engagement with LEHSS
Feedback on LEHSS was given by the lead Pastoral Teaching Assistant in the school. She reported that her motivation for linking in with LEHSS was that much of her time seemed to be spent talking to pupils and their families around expectations relating to attendance and behaviour in school, and that the staff team felt that more knowledge around understanding these types of challenges, and more ideas around interventions were needed.
Reflections on LEHSS Support
The staff member felt that a key strength of LEHSS was the accessibility of the service: the school has a very limited CPD budget, and most of the TA team are in pupil-facing roles during the school day. Therefore accessing additional training and support that is free of charge, can be attended at the end of the school day, and was accessed remotely was invaluable.
The way that LEHSS training is delivered was therefore seen as a key strength. Another key point of feedback was how training was facilitated: attendees are encouraged to share ideas and interact, although no-one feels put on the spot to talk. She felt that the sharing of ideas from peers had been very useful, as well as offering reassurance that her thinking and approach was often on the right lines.
Impact on Students and Staff
The staff member reported that impact from working with LEHSS had been felt across the team. She felt that the way members of the TA team communicated with children had demonstrably changed, which had led to clear improvements in relationships between staff members and pupils, and with parents and carers. Ideas shared in training that had ‘stuck’ with them included how to understand emotions and emotional regulation, calming and soothing strategies, and understanding what happens in the brain and the body when upset.
One example of this shared was around how staff respond to children who are emotionally dysregulated. In the past she felt that staff would ask questions of the child whilst they were angry or upset to try to understand what had happened, or what they were feeling. However, as a result of attending LEHSS training, she reported that their approach had consistently changed.
They have purchased a range of toys and soothing materials for their pastoral room which pupils could use to initially self-soothe if there had been an incident leading to them leaving class. The staff then would take a patient approach and ask open, exploratory questions, or just comment on how they thought the pupil might be feeling. She also reported that this approach to challenging conversations had also been taken with parents, with positive results.
The staff member felt that there had been a significant impact of using ideas from LEHSS training on relationships with pupils and parents, and whilst challenges in terms of attendance (e.g. emotionally-based school avoidance), low mood and peer relationships remain, the skills in the staff team for responding to these issues had improved, and that children were learning to self-manage their emotions more effectively.
A key point of feedback from the staff member was that the practical strategies that they have developed since coming to LEHSS training are not, on the face of things, complicated. For example, she felt that staff were trying hard to be more patient, to listen more, and to not intervene when children were emotionally dysregulated.
“The main thing that has changed is that we now know why these strategies are important. Having the understanding of why has helped embed them what we do, as we are clearer on what we are trying to do, and what works.”