Agenda item

Discussion with our lead Educational Psychologists on the support being provided in schools to assist emotional wellbeing during Covid 19 pandemic.

Educational Psychologists Morwenna Wagstaff and Lucie Doyle delivered the presentation and answered the members’ questions, with additional responses from Will Mclean and Sharon Randall-Smith.

Challenge:

Is the service Gwent-based or Monmouthshire-based?

We are Monmouthshire Educational Psychology Service, although we work increasingly at a network level with our regional colleagues.

ALN covers different conditions, requiring different approaches. How are teachers trained in these different areas?

Yes, we encompass all of the ALN needs. Alongside the work described in the presentation, there are many other strands to the work that we are involved with, in regards to the ALN strategy. In particular, our focus on children that have ALNs, social communication, autism, challenging behaviour, etc. As an EPS we offer layers of work: if it’s a complex pupil, we would engage around that child individually, with other professionals, staff and the parents. We then might work at a school level, identifying what each school needs – if a school would benefit from whole school training in a particular area, for example. We also think on a systemic level about what we can offer in that area across the authority.

As we don’t have a designated special needs school in Monmouthshire, some children will go to school outside the county. How do you ensure that the private school children benefit from the same training and support as those in state schools?

We are in the process of exploring how to deliver training. While we no longer have a specialist school, we do have four special needs resource bases. We (Drs. Wagstaff and Doyle) are part of the special needs resource base network across Monmouthshire, which brings together professionals from ALN, our service and each of the bases to develop the training and skills to support our children with the most complex needs. When a child has a statement of special educational needs, we are often involved with those children who attend a school outside the county, whether it is being part of reviews, updating support. These can be some of our most complex cases. We have a high level of work in supporting those children, with the ALN team and other colleagues such as Social Care, to ensure that placements are appropriate, staff are well trained, and the quality of education is what we would want for them.

The hubs are based in the state schools, but is the same support available to non-state schools?

Our service would get involved at an individual level, i.e. if there were an individual training need around a Monmouthshire child at one of those schools. The process we go through before placing a child in an out-of-county school is extensive. The team will be heavily involved in working with the school, parents and health professionals to arrive at a diagnosis that leads to a statement of ALNs. We then go through an extensive process by which we commission a place in a special school for that child, if we can’t meet their needs in one of the special needs resource bases in county. We review their statement annually, in consultation with the schools. Although sometimes specific training might be needed, the whole purpose of the process is to put the child in a school whereby the school provides that support and education – it would be unusual, therefore, for us to provide significant training into independent special schools, as that’s the very thing that we commission in the first instance.

Have we been able to target the schools attended by children from the most deprived households?

Resilience is not fixed. While there are many children who experience difficult home lives, and extra risk factors, one of the protective factors is the relationships and support that children get from schools. So while we can’t change a lot of those home-based factors, schools can do a lot to develop and build resilience. Two weeks ago, we did training that was available for all staff across the schools, in which the focus was building resilience following the pandemic. There were a lot of resources and materials that schools took away, and they all found the training very helpful. Our schools have an identified link EP who is in communication to discuss particular groups of children who might have particular needs.

There has been a 6-month regression in maths for our Year 7 pupils in King Henry VIII – if we go into a further lockdown, do we risk losing a generation of education?

Children regress during the summer holidays anyway, so it’s natural for a long closure to have had an impact. Child Services has done some work with Sharon Randall-Smith relating to the ‘Closing the Gap’ grant from Welsh Government, and works with schools to develop children holistically, so that they have the confidence and other capacities when it comes to trying to close the gap.

Sharon Randall-Smith: We have been working with EPs to look at how we can use some of our funding for accelerated learning provision, to support learners who have moved from Yr 6 into Yr 7 that we have identified as struggling a little bit. We have looked at how we will assist schools in their accelerated learning plan, where they have additional staff to focus particularly on literacy and numeracy, to accelerate that progress over the next six months, to close the gap as much as possible.

Parents congregating at school gates are a problem. Is there a way in which we can intervene as an authority?

We agree that parents need to model the behaviours that we expect children to follow. The school sites are very clear about movement flows and social distancing. To try to ease the parents gathering in certain places we are looking at road closures in some schools; if successful, we will roll those out further. Beyond that, the relationship between headteachers and parents is critical, but the message would be stronger coming from Headteachers themselves. We have discussed the matter with Heads in the last few meetings, and we will take this point to the Enterprise and Operations teams to see if there is anything further that we can do.

How are you managing to do your work with the Covid restrictions?

We have been, and are still, going into schools where it is essential, based on Welsh Government’s guidance – this is a bit vague, so we always take a person-centred approach, looking at the individual circumstances. In some instances, parents are perfectly capable of participating in a Teams meeting with other professionals; this has been quite positive. But in other instances, we need to have those meetings in schools, in line with risk assessments. We try to do as much of our work as possible online. Our schools, professionals and parents have been fantastic in taking that up.

How are the ELSAs managing to go in without breaking the bubbles?

This depends, again, on individual schools and how they use their ELSAs. There is a strong demand from schools to have more ELSAs trained, and we are looking at the national network as to how that can be done, as it is usually face-to-face. Some schools manage their ELSAs within bubbles – they will remain in these over a period of time. In some schools, this has been an issue, which is why they want more ELSAs, effectively one per bubble. Each school has their own risk assessment, which will affect how they use their ELSAs.

Chair’s Summary:

The Committee is very grateful to the officers for their work, especially during this time. We have discussed the importance of the four special needs bases in supporting vulnerable learners, and the service’s support to all children with statements. Resilience is a difficult concept and very important at this time for children and staff: if staff are not resilient, they will not be able to pass that resilience on to the children. The links between primary and secondary are important, and there is more of a danger of children regressing now than in normal circumstances. We are glad to hear of all the ongoing support. Parents congregating continues to be a problem, and we hope that the authority implements measures such as road closures. The ongoing ELSA work is very important, and we appreciate how difficult it is to provide in-person support in the schools. We need to always bear in mind the teachers who are on the frontline.