Interventions for Pupils

Services within Wrexham County’s Education and Early Intervention Department :

2019-09 Education Service Booklet (final)

 

Services that we are able to apply for/ offer in school:

BEHAVIOUR SUPPORT 

What is our aim?

To reduce exclusions and increase capacity of Primary Schools to support learning of pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.

 What do we offer schools?

  • Advice to schools on writing SMART Individual Education Plan (Behaviour) targets.
  • Advice and guidance to develop a pupil one-page profile.
  • Advice on reintegration plans and strategies following fixed term exclusion
  • Improvement of individual pupil behaviour by attending and contributing to multiagency, TAC, IBP, PSP, review meetings where appropriate.
  • Year 6 transition into High school programme for identified vulnerable pupils
  • Support staff to develop effective and consistent strategies to effectively manage challenging behaviours through Modelling, Mentoring and coaching.
  • Co-facilitating interventions and support programmes with school staff that improve pupil emotional literacy i.e. fun friends, SAP, transition (yr. 6 pupils).
  • Specific programmes tailored to individual pupils needs over a set number of weeks. Delivered as direct 1-1 sessions or as small group sessions

 

ENGLISH AS AN ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE (EAL)

What is our aim?

  • To provide a service to support children whose first language is neither English nor Welsh.
  • To work in partnership with schools to provide support for children’s language development and curriculum access needs.

What do we offer?

  • Advice, support and training to develop schools’ awareness, understanding and capacity to provide for the children.
  • Targeted intervention for EAL pupils based on language development need, age and stage.
  • Liaison with other agencies, organisations, communities and families to share expertise and provide advice, support and training.

 

 

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE OUTREACH

What is our aim?

  • To support children and young people with specific speech, language and communication needs, delivered in partnership with health services (Speech and Language Therapy service).
  • To support educational settings including early years’ in building their capacity to understand and provide for children with speech, language and communication needs.

 What do we offer?

  • Targeted intervention for individual children with speech, language and/or communication needs on referral to the service.
  • Advice, support, training and skill sharing for schools and settings.
  • SAP groups

 

LITERACY OUTREACH TEAM

What is our aim?

  • To provide an outreach service to support primary aged children who appear to be demonstrating a specific learning difficulty, i.e. demonstrating average or above average cognitive skills, but weak attainments in reading and/or spelling in comparison.

 What can we offer?

  • Assessment of pupils on a 1:1 basis using an ‘Initial Literacy profile’ and to collate these results into a report.
  • Twice weekly teaching intervention to pupils who meet criteria to access the service and who are considered appropriate for more intensive support.
  • Monitoring of pupils for 1 term following targeted intervention
  • A teaching file, an IEP and advice for pupils who are not considered appropriate for teaching intervention and to monitor these pupils for 1 term.
  • Advice, support, training opportunities and skill-sharing to schools
  • Attendance at progress reviews following each term of targeted intervention.
  • Re-assessment pupils’ progress at the end of each term and collate these findings into an interim or final report.
  • Advice and resources for parents where requested.

 

Student Assistance Program:

The Student Assistance Program (SAP) covers a range of issues which may affect children in our modern day society. The Student Assistance Program supports children in dealing with such issues by providing them with a secure and confidential environment to express any worries or concerns they may have.

The Student Assistance Program is group work based, where children meet once a week over a period of 8 weeks. The group is designed to help children build self-worth and confidence, look at their own behaviour and how it affects themselves and others, build communication skills and help promote and encourage healthy lifestyles.

Some of the topics covered within the sharing sessions include:

  • Dealing with different feelings
  • Knowing who to trust and who to turn to for help
  • Building friendships
  • Caring for ourselves and others
  • Leading a healthy lifestyle
  • Boosting self esteem
  • Receiving nurturing affirmations for growth

Each session involves discussing a particular topic/theme, giving children the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings on the topic of discussion. Each session is interactive and includes fun activities for the children to engage in.

During your child’s time at Victoria, we would like to give them the opportunity to take part in SAP sessions when deemed appropriate with your full knowledge.

Support groups provide a confidential setting where pupils can share their thoughts and feelings in a safe and caring environment, and will be led by specially trained staff. Pupils attending a group may find their worries are similar to those of others, so reducing feelings of isolation.

Issues arising will depend on the membership of each group and may have a particular focus such as bereavement, dealing with friendship issues, anger management, or it may be more general, such as building children’s self-esteem for example.

The groups are designed to help the children build self-worth and confidence, look at their own behaviour and how it affects themselves and others, build communication skills, develop coping strategies and help promote and encourage wellbeing. Each group will have up to 8 members and will meet once a week.

If your child is selected for participation in a SAP group we would seek your permission first. Equally if you feel your child would benefit from attending a nurture group such as SAP, please let us know.

Should you require any further information regarding the Student Assistance Programme, please do not hesitate to contact the school and we will be happy to discuss this initiative further. For further information on the SAP programme click on the link below:

https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/education/sap.htm

 

School Based Counselling:

What is the aim of Inside Out Counselling?

The Outside In Counselling Service for young people offers person centred counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy and integrative counselling for a range of issues, which can include: bereavement, suicidal thoughts, relationships with family and peers, abuse, feeling low or any issue of importance to the young person that is impacting on their daily life.

ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant):

There will always be children and young people in schools facing life challenges that detract from their ability to engage with learning. Some will require greater support to increase their emotional literacy than others. Emotional literacy is about understanding and coping with the feelings of ourselves and others. It involves developing high self-esteem and creating positive interactions with other people. Being emotionally literate helps children to focus better on their learning and has a positive impact on their general happiness and well-being.

ELSA is an initiative developed and supported by educational psychologists. It recognises that children learn better and are happier in school if their emotional needs are also addressed. ELSAs are specialist members of staff with a wealth of experience of working with children.

 

Fun Friends:

The Fun FRIENDS Program was developed by Dr Paula Barrett to help guide the social and emotional development of children aged 4 to 7 by using fun, play-based group activities. Fun FRIENDS nurtures the child’s development by teaching them to engage resilience early on, encouraging them to thrive and smoothly transition into school life.

 

Volcano in my Tummy:

Volcano in my Tummy helps children to handle anger presents a clear and effective approach to helping children and adults alike understand and deal constructively with children’s anger. Using easy to understand yet rarely taught skills for anger management, including how to teach communication of emotions, children are provided with short 1:1 sessions with a trained member of staff.

Pets as Therapy, Reading2Dogs:

Research shows that young people can become nervous and stressed when reading to others in a group. However, when a PAT Dog enters the group, they often become less stressed, less self-conscious and more confident as the dogs are non-judgemental. Before long the young people are starting to look forward to the reading experience as they are going to read to their new friend, the PAT Dog. PAT Dogs provide comfort, encourage positive social behaviours, enhance self-esteem, motivate speech and inspire young people to have fun. The teacher should remain in charge of the reading sessions at all times. The students will be selected by their teachers as those who would benefit most from this intervention; normally young people who lack confidence, or have difficulty with reading or attention deficit. The teacher chooses and provides appropriate books. It is suggested that the sessions for each young person should be no longer than 15 minutes.

SAFMEDS

SAFMEDS is an evidence-based practice and assessment strategy developed by experts in the application of learning sciences to education. The intervention has been designed to enable pupils to improve their rate of learning and achieve fluency in the designated skill, in this case mathematics skills. Typically, pupils receive three 20 minute sessions per week in school.