Listening Matters

Supporting Children with SEBD

We are developing a new initiative in the North-East, whose aim is to provide early intervention to support individual and small groups of children with social, emotional and behavioural needs in mainstream primary schools.

It is costly for schools to buy in external services to provide this much-needed support, so some schools in the North-East have banded together to provide training to give their own staff the skills to do this work.

Brenda Meldrum, Director of Playing Matters, an Open College Network (London Region) Training Provider, has trained 12 Learning Support Assistants from 7 schools in the Stanley and Annfield Plain areas in emotional literacy and the counselling skills needed to support children in their schools.

The 6-day Course – "Listening to Children" is delivered one day a week and the LSAs build on their existing skills to become active listeners, to take a constructive and non-judgemental approach to children’s issues, to be solution-focused and to reflect on themselves, the children and their practice.

The course is training the LSAs in these skills:

• To give one-to-one emotional support to children with moderate social, emotional and behavioural difficulties which are causing them unhappiness and preventing them from settling in school.
• To keep the work, the children and themselves safe through contracts, consistency and clarity of role.
• To develop the skills to make warm and appropriate relationships with children based on respect, trust, positive regard.
• To enter the child's world through non-verbal and verbal communication using the language of play and creativity.
• To be models of calm, consistent, warm, playful, and respectful adults who like and believe in children and who want to help each child with whom they work reach their potential socially, emotionally and developmentally.

Children who will benefit from working for 6 to 8 weeks with a Listening Supporter are identified by the SENCO/Teacher through a referral and assessment procedure.

Supervision of the Listening Supporter's work is an essential part of the process, both to support the LSA and also to make sure that she is working within her competence. The Head Teachers have systems in place within their schools and school community to ensure the success of the work, e.g. communicating fully with parents and securing their support.

We aim to bring this training to other groups of schools and we should be very interested to hear from schools and staff who would be interested in learning more.

If you would more information about any of the courses, please contact Brenda Meldrum.