“It takes a village to raise a child”, says the proverb. No one knows the importance of that “village” better than the families of children with additional needs. Our ideal community response to any crisis is to draw together; physical contact and face-to-face interaction make us stronger. But to defeat COVID we needed to stay apart – literally to isolate. Sadly, families of children and young adults with additional needs can be all too familiar with isolation. Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership into the experiences of children and families during the first lockdown showed that in far too many cases COVID had caused support to be reduced just when it had been most needed. More recently, many positive stories have emerged nationally of the adaptations that schools and services have made to support families. In many cases these improvements have now become standard practice.
The Eden Academy Trust is a family of SEND schools and the Trust’s central provision in its southern hub includes a therapies team and family services. When COVID struck and the first lockdown was imposed, around a dozen staff from across the Trust and the central team were just getting started on action research projects as part of our middle leaders’ training programme. None were fazed. They immediately set about making necessary adaptations. Indeed, some projects seemed designed for the times that had arrived.
Lauren Jacobs, Office Manager at Moorcroft School, had begun her project on parental engagement. Pre-COVID, the school had faced familiar issues. School events were often attended by only a handful of parents and, even then, it was the usual faces. Consent forms, such as those requesting permission for pupils to appear in photos, were rarely returned. Lauren knows that to dismiss certain families as “hard to reach” is to dodge our duty as inclusive practitioners.
Lauren’s objective was to explore as many methods as possible to improve communications and to engage more effectively with parents. Lockdown sent this project into overdrive.
With most pupils now at home, Lauren’s initial work involved ensuring an up-to-date database of email addresses for every family. She also worked with our family services staff to find external events and opportunities to share with parents to help stave off potential feelings of isolation. Newsletters immediately became more frequent. They shifted to an online format and were written in much simpler sentences and with extra visuals. They included information about virtual coffee mornings where parents could raise any topic they liked. Paper communications switched to texts, text forms, emails, digital files and videos. One result of this was that data collection (digital, secure and GDPR-compliant) improved. Photo consent multiplied, meaning that many more pupils could be shown on the school website, which in turn improved visits to the site and all-round engagement. A Moorcroft School YouTube channel was set up and quickly filled with daily content from a huge number of staff members, including sensory stories, songs, signing, activities, therapy advice and the adventures of Marley the dog. It’s had over 33,000 views and counting.
Separately, a wealth of communication videos were created by or with our therapy team and shared with families. These covered the curriculum, celebrations, transition and even content from members of the school’s Local Advisory Board. These complemented the extensive online teaching being done by the class-based staff.
The efforts of Lauren and her colleagues to be more inclusive in their communications with the parents of pupils at Moorcroft Schools are being picked up by our Trust’s anti-racism working group and shared with other Eden schools as part of a drive to improve our support for families who use English as an Additional Language (EAL).
Another of our middle leaders programme participants was speech and language therapist, Sophie Jackson. Sophie wanted to address parental engagement too, but from a different angle and across the schools in the southern hub of the Trust. Pupils’ interactions and communications can be greatly helped by the effective use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices. However, the use of these devices is often abandoned at home, especially when pupils transition from further education into adult services. Clearly there is a gap to bridge, and Sophie’s aim was to address it. As with Lauren’s project, with lockdown looming this work could not have been better timed.
Sophie’s objectives were to ensure that families were better equipped to support their child’s communication out of school, and to ensure that pupils have a means to express themselves successfully at home. Our Speech and Language Therapy and Family Service teams joined forces to provide regular parent workshops and weekly drop-in sessions, which transferred to an online format once lockdown began – helped by efforts by Lauren and others to support families with this switch. These were backed up with a wealth of communication videos giving tips and suggested activities to aid communication development.
The results of all this improved support and engagement are very encouraging. To take just two examples, one pupil who was using a physical picture exchange communication system (PECS) in early 2020 is now fully confident using AAC programmes on an iPad at home and at school. Another, who did not have an established communication method before the project, now uses a communication book consistently at both home and school. 100% of parents agreed that the extra support had been helpful and 96% said that they felt more confident in supporting their child’s communication.
In discussions across the Trust, a common positive outcome from our lockdown provision is parents’ desire to become more involved in their children’s learning and to learn the best ways to do this. Sophie and Lauren are now both working with their teams to ensure that this desire is fulfilled and that the progress achieved is maintained. Schools in the Trust are used to supporting pupils and their families through the challenges they face and now, with new ideas, will continue to focus on improving communications and relationships with parents.
Lockdown was the mother of invention, bringing a more holistic approach and the creation of online communities. Parents have voiced their thanks for the increased feeling of inclusion and support during these testing times.
The village may sometimes be virtual, but it is stronger than ever.