Effective practice |

Improving staff and learner wellbeing

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Provider
Bryn Tirion Hall School
Number of pupils
54
Age range
7-19
Date of Inspection
Information about the school
Context and background to the effective or innovative practice
Description of nature of strategy or activity
What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?
How have you shared your good practice?

Information about the school

Bryn Tirion Hall School is located on two sites outside Wrexham.  The school provides day and 52 week residential provision for pupils with a range of needs including social, emotional and behaviour difficulties and autistic spectrum disorder.  There are currently 54 pupils on roll with a range in age from 7 to 19 years.  Nearly all pupils have a statement of special education needs or an education, health and care plan.  A minority of pupils have looked after status and many of these pupils live in the company’s children’s homes.

Context and background to the effective or innovative practice

The school recognised that a whole school cultural shift, where the wellbeing of all (staff included) is the highest priority, was needed to improve the emotional health and the ability to learn of the some of the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK.  

Many of the school’s learners have suffered multiple adverse childhood experiences and as a result lack a safe arena in which to express powerful and profound emotions. This deprivation can either result in them bottling up their feelings, which is proven to be psychologically and physically damaging, or discharging them in ways that are destructive to self or others. The research shows that, for many such children and young people, a sense of connectedness with just one caring and consistent adult in their lives is enough to end their sense of aloneness, anger, and feelings of being misunderstood, and prevent them from doing to others what was done to them. In other words, the greatest healer for these children and young people is a good quality human relationship: a reparative emotional experience akin to re-parenting. However, in light of the severe impact of trauma on the security of attachment and emotional functioning, the school considered that providing all vulnerable learners at the school with just one therapy session per week was not a good enough model. Rather, leaders opted for a model of therapeutic support that was integrated into all interactions with learners throughout the school day.

Description of nature of strategy or activity

In order to provide all learners with a safe and therapeutic environment,  all staff (managers, teachers, LSAs, carers) receive a high standard of training on working therapeutically and creatively with vulnerable children and young people.  As part of this, leaders recognise that it is important to ensure that training equips all staff in the school to be able to respond compassionately to learners when they display behaviours that challenge.  At the same time, they recognise that they have a responsibility to ensure that training promotes the development of staff’s own emotional wellbeing and resilience.

To address these needs, the school has recently introduced a course entitled Therapeutic Counselling in Education (TCiE) : Educating the Mind and the Heart.  The course is bespoke to the school and was designed by the school’s psychotherapeutic counsellor in consultation with senior leaders.  Staff complete the course over an extended period of 12 weeks, on a one day a week basis.  During the course, staff explore a range of themes and are trained to use the arts and forms of non-verbal communication to help learners safely externalise, explore and process their experiences.  In addition, the school provides a 10 session course on speech and language support in the classroom, as well as bespoke training on inset days and twilight sessions on a very wide range of related topics, including child development, attachment theory, therapeutic re-parenting, play, language and cognitive development, ACEs, understanding and supporting sensory processing, cognition and learning, executive function, emotion coaching, wellbeing for staff and learners, and mental health first aid.

Underpinning the training model is a framework of support facilitated by the school’s multi-disciplinary therapeutic team.  The team, comprising the psychotherapeutic counsellor, educational psychologist, occupational therapist, and speech and language therapist, provide the wider staff team with a structured programme of clinical supervision, solution-focused team meetings, regular ‘catch ups’ and revision sessions to ensure that staff support and learning are ongoing.

What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?

As a result of this extensive and well-co-ordinated programme of staff development, staff feel supported in their work and are able to reflect on their own approaches in relation to working with traumatised children and young people.  They are able to understand how their own barriers, unprocessed experiences and painful attachment history might influence their interactions with learners.  They develop a sound grasp of the impact of trauma on emotional and neurobiological development and improve their abilities to form therapeutic relationships with learners, which in turn enables them to access and engage more successfully  in learning.

How have you shared your good practice?

The school has facilitated workshops for Coleg Cambria and given presentations on this aspect of its work at conferences for schools, youth workers and special school headteachers, and at the Welsh Independent Schools Council.

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