Person Centred Approaches in Mainstream Schools
The usefulness of Person Centred Approaches is being utilised by twelve mainstream schools across Wirral. Wirral Children and Young People’s Department have undertaken a project with Paradigm to train and enable teaching staff in mainstream primary and secondary schools to plan with their students.
The usefulness of Person Centred Approaches is being utilised by twelve mainstream schools across Wirral. Wirral Children and Young People’s Department have undertaken a project with Paradigm to train and enable teaching staff in mainstream primary and secondary schools to plan with their students.
Teaching staff are being empowered to develop one page profiles and person centred action planning with a range of students of different ages. Paradigm is training the teachers, educational psychologists and special educational needs coordinators (SENCO’s) to include students in the planning around them. Also Wirral Special Educational Support Services (SESS) are looking at using person centred approaches, with support from Paradigm, in order to even further improve their holistic and inclusive approach. This is a fantastic opportunity for Paradigm and we’re really proud to be part of it.
Already, early on in the project teaching staff are feeding back stories of improved well-being and more informed and enriched planning. Some teachers have developed classroom plans with person centred values, encouraging children to focus on what they like about each other and build on this. Teaching staff have uncovered many small but very enlightening pieces of information from the child’s perspective and have made changes to improve the student experience for children.
The person centred tools being used by schools allow the children to have their own one page profiles which teaching staff can reflect on and make small changes to their teaching or pastoral approaches. What is wonderful about the project is there are no qualifying criteria for a child to have a profile. The teachers and children are empowered to decide if one is needed and should be done. This is a truly mainstream inclusive approach, empowering teachers to use planning within their own discretion whilst ensuring this is what the child wants. A headmaster on the Paradigm Person Centred Training commented that ‘...we all want the same outcome: a good lesson.’
Wirral’s trailblazing approach to the wellbeing of its students is a refreshing change to what could be described as a sector bogged down in initiatives and criteria based responses. The project is running with 12 schools currently, and all schools have praised the person centred approaches as very useful. Paradigm is proud to work with Wirral LA on such a wonderful use of Person Centred Approaches and looks forward to the evaluation and reflecting on the outcomes in the near future. Have a look at the pdf to see how the process of learning with each other seems to be developing. We look forward to the evaluation and positive outcomes for children.