When A Student Faces Difficult Circumstances, How Much Information Should You Give To Other Staff?
There is a reason why some issues need to be kept confidential. Children need to be kept safe. But a little bit of information here and there can help colleagues better understand certain children's behaviours
- by Paul Dix
You know why Kyra is behaving badly, why George won’t speak on Fridays and why Joel reacts aggressively when given any form of sanction. The sins of the adult world weigh heavily on their lives.
Your position as the safeguarding lead affords you a level of detail and confidentiality that gives you greater insight than most. The behaviour system is being used on the most vulnerable children who are most in need of kindness.
Punishment is not going to solve the acute difficulties these children are experiencing. No amount of lunchtime detentions or extended periods on the thinking spot are going to help.
Yet there are a small amount of adults who don’t get it. They confront behaviour too hard and judge too quickly.
For most children this is just a bit unnerving. For the most unstable, it can provoke utter chaos. The behaviours that result from adrenaline and fear are extreme.
As some clamour for more punishments, to punish the reaction to punishment, you realise that your challenge is to educate the adults to protect the child. The final straw is seeing a midday supervisor shout, ‘You wait until I see your mum!’ at a child who’s home life is in meltdown.
What will you do next…?
A. Sharing is caring Relate all the information in a controlled manner – have a staff meeting and get everyone up to speed.
B. Secret squirrel Use case studies and proxy narratives – protect identities and lead a training session.
*Spotlight idea from The Bridge AP Academy, Fulham.
Your style
A. Careless talker There is a reason why some issues need to be kept confidential. Children need to be kept safe. The detail is rarely for sharing, the headlines are often too much. The amount of information that is shared, when and with whom is a fine judgement. You are not going to create understanding by breaking every confidentiality.
B. Story teller Case studies are useful but can become stories about ‘other people’s children’. Make sure that there is time to return to ‘our children’. Encourage everyone to imagine, as well as empathise. Many will never have walked in the same shoes as your pupils, but they can all imagine a little more and judge a little less.
C. Whisperer Little and often works well. The morning briefing is perfect for spotlights. The practical focus means that people leave with ideas, not questions. The regularity of the information means that everyone knows the first response to even the most extreme behaviours.
Paul Dix podcasts at pivotalpodcast.com and tweets at @PivotalPaul. The Pivotal Curriculum is a licensed trainer scheme that allows every school to deliver Pivotal Behaviour and Safeguarding Training.
Talking behaviour: • What is missing from this training session? • How do you transfer ideas from the training room to the classroom? • Why haven’t other people’s stories affected a change in daily responses?
C. Spotlight session
Begging two minutes from a staff briefing that is only supposed to last for ten was a difficult negotiation. When the head realised that you wanted this every week a deal had to be done. You realise that your promise to ‘take care of open day’ is delayed pain, but it did the trick. The head has sacrificed her jovial anecdote to make space for your ‘spotlights’.
Each week, a different member of staff will talk about some of the children who are wobbling. A balance is struck between essential information about the difficulties they are experiencing and positive ways to work with them. The child’s photograph is displayed alongside key bullet points about what works well, what to avoid and where they excel.
After fours weeks of this the routine is embedded. Everyone leaves the meeting with the ideas fresh in their mind. On the tables are checklist of the key points and the slides are uploaded to the central file for staff who don’t attend briefings.
Almost immediately colleagues offer to deliver spotlights on children they know well. There is heightened awareness of the diversity of the school community. Everyone is a little kinder when the children act out. Rumour has it that Kyra has been calmer, George feels safer and Joel almost made it to the thinking spot.
Talking behaviour: • Is less information easier to deal with or would you want more detail? • Can you think of a child that could be the subject of your first spotlight*? • If you couldn’t get a slot at staff briefing, how else could you make sure the information is shared properly?
*Spotlight idea from The Bridge AP Academy, Fulham.
Your style
A. Careless talker There is a reason why some issues need to be kept confidential. Children need to be kept safe. The detail is rarely for sharing, the headlines are often too much. The amount of information that is shared, when and with whom is a fine judgement. You are not going to create understanding by breaking every confidentiality.
B. Story teller Case studies are useful but can become stories about ‘other people’s children’. Make sure that there is time to return to ‘our children’. Encourage everyone to imagine, as well as empathise. Many will never have walked in the same shoes as your pupils, but they can all imagine a little more and judge a little less.
C. Whisperer Little and often works well. The morning briefing is perfect for spotlights. The practical focus means that people leave with ideas, not questions. The regularity of the information means that everyone knows the first response to even the most extreme behaviours.
Paul Dix podcasts at pivotalpodcast.com and tweets at @PivotalPaul. The Pivotal Curriculum is a licensed trainer scheme that allows every school to deliver Pivotal Behaviour and Safeguarding Training.
Talking behaviour: • How much information on child protection can be shared ? • Are there better ways of sharing information than printing it as a handout? • If you operate on a ‘need to know’ basis, how do you decide who to tell?
B. Soft lighting
You spend some time creating genuine case studies whose characters cannot be identified. They are a collage of different cases. All non-teaching and part-time staff are invited and you introduce the case studies at a staff twilight training session.
As staff read through the materials there is a respectful silence followed by questions and intense discussion. The atmosphere is positive and the conversations are sensitive and empathetic.
Even some of the less generous adults appear to have a complete about turn. You make checklists of strategies, talk about preventative time outs and map a less punitive route than the current policy allows. You are quietly satisfied that you have dealt with the problem at source.
However, the morning brings a new reality as you realise nothing has really changed: Kyra’s name is on the whiteboard with two sad faces next to it (the world’s worst classroom management strategy), George hasn’t said a word and Joel ran out of the room in a whirlwind of bad words some time ago. It seems that last night’s empathy was another country and we are back to trying to punish children out of problems that they cannot control.
Talking behaviour: • What is missing from this training session? • How do you transfer ideas from the training room to the classroom? • Why haven’t other people’s stories affected a change in daily responses?
C. Spotlight session
Begging two minutes from a staff briefing that is only supposed to last for ten was a difficult negotiation. When the head realised that you wanted this every week a deal had to be done. You realise that your promise to ‘take care of open day’ is delayed pain, but it did the trick. The head has sacrificed her jovial anecdote to make space for your ‘spotlights’.
Each week, a different member of staff will talk about some of the children who are wobbling. A balance is struck between essential information about the difficulties they are experiencing and positive ways to work with them. The child’s photograph is displayed alongside key bullet points about what works well, what to avoid and where they excel.
After fours weeks of this the routine is embedded. Everyone leaves the meeting with the ideas fresh in their mind. On the tables are checklist of the key points and the slides are uploaded to the central file for staff who don’t attend briefings.
Almost immediately colleagues offer to deliver spotlights on children they know well. There is heightened awareness of the diversity of the school community. Everyone is a little kinder when the children act out. Rumour has it that Kyra has been calmer, George feels safer and Joel almost made it to the thinking spot.
Talking behaviour: • Is less information easier to deal with or would you want more detail? • Can you think of a child that could be the subject of your first spotlight*? • If you couldn’t get a slot at staff briefing, how else could you make sure the information is shared properly?
*Spotlight idea from The Bridge AP Academy, Fulham.
Your style
A. Careless talker There is a reason why some issues need to be kept confidential. Children need to be kept safe. The detail is rarely for sharing, the headlines are often too much. The amount of information that is shared, when and with whom is a fine judgement. You are not going to create understanding by breaking every confidentiality.
B. Story teller Case studies are useful but can become stories about ‘other people’s children’. Make sure that there is time to return to ‘our children’. Encourage everyone to imagine, as well as empathise. Many will never have walked in the same shoes as your pupils, but they can all imagine a little more and judge a little less.
C. Whisperer Little and often works well. The morning briefing is perfect for spotlights. The practical focus means that people leave with ideas, not questions. The regularity of the information means that everyone knows the first response to even the most extreme behaviours.
Paul Dix podcasts at pivotalpodcast.com and tweets at @PivotalPaul. The Pivotal Curriculum is a licensed trainer scheme that allows every school to deliver Pivotal Behaviour and Safeguarding Training.
C. Little and often Share limited information regularly – try to beg two minutes from every staff briefing.
A. Bright floodlight
As you are compiling the information to give to staff, you have doubts about whether this is something that you can share. Yet another voice tells you to push on and focus on the outcomes that you want.
You are only five minutes into the whole staff meeting when someone says, ‘Shouldn’t this child be in care?’. A loud and unprofessional argument ensues. There are some who are clearly shocked at the detail and weren’t ready to receive it. Others feel that things have been deliberately withheld from them. The meeting becomes more about the adults than the children.
A strong cocktail of guilt, blame and mistrust is being consumed. It is not the straight shot of empathy that you had hoped for. As you desperately call a halt to the meeting and collect up the printed information there are conversations that you wish you hadn’t overheard. You worry that some people’s idea of ‘confidential’ might vary wildly from your own.
As colleagues leave the room you realise that you are missing two information packs. It is likely that you have caused more harm than good. There may be repercussions that you cannot control.
Talking behaviour: • How much information on child protection can be shared ? • Are there better ways of sharing information than printing it as a handout? • If you operate on a ‘need to know’ basis, how do you decide who to tell?
B. Soft lighting
You spend some time creating genuine case studies whose characters cannot be identified. They are a collage of different cases. All non-teaching and part-time staff are invited and you introduce the case studies at a staff twilight training session.
As staff read through the materials there is a respectful silence followed by questions and intense discussion. The atmosphere is positive and the conversations are sensitive and empathetic.
Even some of the less generous adults appear to have a complete about turn. You make checklists of strategies, talk about preventative time outs and map a less punitive route than the current policy allows. You are quietly satisfied that you have dealt with the problem at source.
However, the morning brings a new reality as you realise nothing has really changed: Kyra’s name is on the whiteboard with two sad faces next to it (the world’s worst classroom management strategy), George hasn’t said a word and Joel ran out of the room in a whirlwind of bad words some time ago. It seems that last night’s empathy was another country and we are back to trying to punish children out of problems that they cannot control.
Talking behaviour: • What is missing from this training session? • How do you transfer ideas from the training room to the classroom? • Why haven’t other people’s stories affected a change in daily responses?
C. Spotlight session
Begging two minutes from a staff briefing that is only supposed to last for ten was a difficult negotiation. When the head realised that you wanted this every week a deal had to be done. You realise that your promise to ‘take care of open day’ is delayed pain, but it did the trick. The head has sacrificed her jovial anecdote to make space for your ‘spotlights’.
Each week, a different member of staff will talk about some of the children who are wobbling. A balance is struck between essential information about the difficulties they are experiencing and positive ways to work with them. The child’s photograph is displayed alongside key bullet points about what works well, what to avoid and where they excel.
After fours weeks of this the routine is embedded. Everyone leaves the meeting with the ideas fresh in their mind. On the tables are checklist of the key points and the slides are uploaded to the central file for staff who don’t attend briefings.
Almost immediately colleagues offer to deliver spotlights on children they know well. There is heightened awareness of the diversity of the school community. Everyone is a little kinder when the children act out. Rumour has it that Kyra has been calmer, George feels safer and Joel almost made it to the thinking spot.
Talking behaviour: • Is less information easier to deal with or would you want more detail? • Can you think of a child that could be the subject of your first spotlight*? • If you couldn’t get a slot at staff briefing, how else could you make sure the information is shared properly?
*Spotlight idea from The Bridge AP Academy, Fulham.
Your style
A. Careless talker There is a reason why some issues need to be kept confidential. Children need to be kept safe. The detail is rarely for sharing, the headlines are often too much. The amount of information that is shared, when and with whom is a fine judgement. You are not going to create understanding by breaking every confidentiality.
B. Story teller Case studies are useful but can become stories about ‘other people’s children’. Make sure that there is time to return to ‘our children’. Encourage everyone to imagine, as well as empathise. Many will never have walked in the same shoes as your pupils, but they can all imagine a little more and judge a little less.
C. Whisperer Little and often works well. The morning briefing is perfect for spotlights. The practical focus means that people leave with ideas, not questions. The regularity of the information means that everyone knows the first response to even the most extreme behaviours.
Paul Dix podcasts at pivotalpodcast.com and tweets at @PivotalPaul. The Pivotal Curriculum is a licensed trainer scheme that allows every school to deliver Pivotal Behaviour and Safeguarding Training.
