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Evidence of learning

realistic expectations of themselves — no one feels safe if expected to do what one cannot do. We try to offer accurate feedback, not false praise.
There is a different pastoral care team for every child — two workers who together ensure an integrated care, education and therapeutic programme. One is a member of the teaching staff, who monitors, supports and feeds back educational progress; the other is a pastoral care worker (a post that in other settings might be termed residential social worker), who helps the child with life activities such as keeping their rooms clean, shopping for clothes, and generally being there for them — in effect, being in their corner, whatever the child has done, helping them to view their behaviour options in less limiting ways.

Janet Redpath, our new registered manager, is developing a strong team with a wide range of professional experience. The pastoral care workers have set sessions with their charges once every week, and additionally as needed. They also sit in on 'their' child's formal therapy sessions when they can (often choosing to do so in their own time), so that they can reinforce what has been learned.

Getting children ready for more conventional learning is an important early task. Having lacked the kind of early supportive psychological experiences that normally encourages children to explore and take risks and develop competence and mastery, our children have a history of failure leading to expectation of further failure.

A cycle of perceived inadequacy, anxiety and inability to cope has to be broken. We do this by ensuring that children are calm (stories to engage attention are a wonderful means of doing this), setting small, achievable tasks that are of interest to them, and providing positive, constructive feedback. A small achievement can lead to the 'ripple effect', creating a desire to embrace education.

Although increasingly we are seeing our children sit examinations, including, for the first time, GCSEs, we have successfully been disapplied from the National Curriculum, so that we can concentrate on personal and social development as much as on academic learning — social, practical and vocational skills are valued by us as highly as academic ones. Our heads of education, Neil Nortcliffe and Maggie Scott, and their talented teaching staff work hard to bring learning alive. For instance, project work in a maths lesson led to a great adventure and true learning experience, in which all our young people and four staff planned and then completed the 135-mile, coast-to-coast cycle ride from Whitehaven to Sunderland in three and a half days.

Fourteen-year-old Chris, at the time labelled as "high achieving Asperger's", had broken his collarbone, so was put in charge of the 'logistical support plan'. Among other things, he co-ordinated breaks and helped the riders keep their daily diaries, had a great time and felt fully involved in the whole adventure. The people we met along the way, the experiences we shared (the memory of Paul missing a right-hand bend and ending up, unhurt, in a hedge, still makes us all laugh) and the sights we saw — of such things are memories made and a sense of belonging created.

Testing for evidence

Every day there are two review meetings, one held at the end of the educational day and another at the end of the evening (where possible, attended by all staff). Here, we test 'evidence of learning' — not, in this context, evidence of ability to recite times tables or identify a noun but something much more profound.

Our young people will tell us if, when they did good work in class today, they focused on their own work and didn't distract others; or that they had allowed someone else to answer in class, even though they themselves had known the answer and dearly wanted to shout it out; or that they had stayed calm and hadn't reacted angrily when someone else did keep shouting out the answer. One lad recently commented on how he had formed a relationship with a boy who had just joined us, without trying to dominate him. Someone else might mention that they had offered to take a turn at the washing up without a quibble, even though they had really wanted to watch a particular TV programme.

Especially important, children will describe an instance of how they had behaved appropriately that day in the face of disappointment or being corrected, instead of kicking, having a tantrum, running away or whatever their old coping mechanism had been. This, in turn, translates to a greater understanding that, when caught out in wrongdoing (such as smoking in the toilets at their old school), it is not the wrongdoing itself that leads to the dire consequence of exclusion but the reaction of punching, kicking or extreme verbal abuse, when caught by staff.

Every child is asked to 'scale' how they feel they have performed each day, on a scale where zero is not at all good and 10 is great. This is an excellent, inclusive method of giving everyone a voice, because, for some youngsters, descriptive language is difficult at the start. As some children are less likely than others to award themselves the highest scores, it quickly became understood that 8, 9 and 10 can all mean excellent, 5, 6 and 7 can all mean good and below 5, not so good. Nothing rides on the outcome except personal satisfaction and pride: the scale is also an educative tool because staff scale each young person's day too, and discrepancies in scoring (whether higher or lower, and what that might mean) can be discussed and reflected upon. We have just introduced scaling for staff as part of their own team and self-evaluation; it has been well received, so far, with some very positive feedback.

Understandings from the human givens approach are common parlance here. All the children know that we have a primitive (reptilian) brain, a still fairly primitive (mammalian) emotional brain and a more sophisticated rational brain, although they refer to this in different ways. Vanessa, for instance, thinks about her snake brain, her dog brain and her 'thinking' brain, while Ryan responded to the image of the Incredible Hulk as his emotional brain (powerful but not overly bright) and Batman as the neocortex (the thinking superhero).

They know that over-emotional arousal stops them from thinking straight and makes them stupid. They know about incorrect pattern matching, done by the brain structure called the amygdala, whose job it is to keep us safe by alerting us to possible dangers (often getting it wrong because past trauma can make it hypervigilant and because it also doesn't know the difference between real and imagined dangers). Ryan's amygdala is a security team in the basement of his brain; Colin (aged nine) has "sentries on duty at the gates of the castle" in his mind.

Fourteen-year-old Shane, who was almost relentlessly disruptive when he first came, had his progress accelerated when Mike described the amygdala's role in cartoon form and then drew out for him a graph, in which the horizontal x-axis represented the events of his life, the vertical y-axis represented increasing stress and a dotted line running across somewhere in the upper half of the graph represented the level of stress that would effectively 'hijack' Shane's ability to think straight and lead to his disruptive (and often violent) behaviour.

They tracked important events in his life and he decided where, above or below the line, to score the stress levels induced. By the end, he could see that some stresses had been beyond his control whereas other times when he had been 'tipped over the top' were of his own making — he could have chosen to react differently, to get his needs met more positively and acceptably within the community.

In therapy, Mike used the rewind detraumatisation technique to deal with severe past stresses and then Shane himself decided he wanted to stay 'below the line' in future, so that he would have a better chance of things working out well. As he loves football and can quickly go into trance by imagining a football game, Mike linked cooling his behaviour to the idea of the referee's whistle. Now, when he is threatening to blow, staff are sometimes able to say, "The whistle's gone, Shane", and he regains access to the calmness he experienced in trance, and can lower his arousal.

In such ways, our children use their active imaginations to make sense of complex brain responses, and learn to bring them under their own control.
We also talk about the idea of their borrowing our brains when they have temporarily lost their own, through over-arousal. This has a very different feel from being told what to do, because it puts them in charge of what happens next — allowing themselves to be calmed down and listening to what a staff member has to say that may help them process a difficult situation differently.

Living these kinds of understandings makes them second nature. One day, a few boys were going into town with a member of staff to get a DVD. As they reached a particular spot on the outskirts of town, a pained look crossed one lad's face and he mumbled, "This is where I come to when I run away". Vincent is only 10, yet the staff member heard him say in response to the other lad's comment, "But now you can replace that memory with a really good memory of going out with your mates and choosing a DVD".

Our youngsters respond keenly, and usually responsibly, when given a big say in the things that affect them. For instance, a couple of years ago, when we needed to appoint pastoral care staff, we decided to ask the children what qualities such a staff member should have. After lively discussion they came up with: calm (not wind us up); confident (not scared of us); firm but fair (able to deal with things when they happen and not put it off till later); able to listen well (to hear what it is we really have to say); able to help us sort out problems and learn for ourselves (give us help with options, not tell us what to do); able to treat us as individuals (not seeing all behaviours as the same); able, most of all, to treat us in the way you yourself would want to be treated. These requirements now appear in every job vacancy we advertise, whatever the position.

Working on their world

Every child has what we term a therapy entitlement. Most therapy sessions take place at the Centre, a very attractive three-floor building in the town centre, which comprises a spacious reception area, training room, office and therapy rooms, all pleasantly decorated and furnished, with comfortable sofas and chairs (see right). We have three full-time staff at the moment: Tracy Watkins, the Centre manager and the vital first, calm and reassuring point of contact for people; Carla Tottoh, an experienced mental health worker and very talented human givens practitioner; and Mike Beard, who enjoys innovation and creativity. David Grist, deputy manager at Middle School, has just completed his Human Givens Diploma and helps part time.

Going to the Centre makes therapy something special and nearly all of the children look forward to it — the only exceptions are those whose previous experience of therapy was poor. That soon starts to change, as other young people offer effective advice and support based on their own experiences, and by our beginning individual therapeutic work in more casual settings and informal ways (see "Therapy 'on the hoof'"). Then those young people too start looking forward to their visits to the Centre.

Mike and Carla routinely see every child at least once every four to six weeks and, outside of that, as and when required — even three times a day, should there be need.

We also encourage our children's families to come for therapy sessions too (or, if impractical, Mike will visit them), as all of our good work can so quickly be undone if children return to a home environment where ways of relating have not changed. Nine-year-old Colin really started to move forward after we taught his family calming techniques and how to use positive language — giving instructions that described what they wanted, not what they didn't want, and, if Colin was pushing the boundaries, making comments on the lines of, "I notice that you don't find it as easy to do such-and-such [activity or instruction being struggled with] as you do to do such-and-such [activity or instruction successfully carried out]", enabling Colin to pattern match to success and apply those methods again. We have now been open for four

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© Human Givens Publishing Limited, Mike Beard and Fred Grist (2006)

This article first appeared in Volume 13, No, 1 (2006) of the Human Givens journal

FRED GRIST is principal of TheSPACE, which he founded in 2000 along with senior administrator, (and partner) Jane Leeson. He has nearly 30 years' teaching experience,the latter half spent teaching, or, as a head, in residential special schools in the North West. For a number of years, he was Chair of the Cumbria Registration and Inspection Unit. He holds the Human Givens Diploma.

MIKE BEARD became director of therapeutic services for TheSPACE in September 2004. He previouslly worked within Devon Local Education Authority, where his work focused on the development and delivery of training for health and education professionals working with vulnerable young children. He has also worked for the Criminal Justice Service and at a strategic level within ther Connexions service. He holds the Human Givens Diploma.

> More information on the human givens approach can be found in the following book, by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

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> More information on the human givens approach can be found in the following book, by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

Return to top