The protective factor cascade that we anticipate for students, also applies to adult family members.
Protective factors in a school are observable features, qualities and strategies that support students to learn and thrive, and which mitigate risk factors students may encounter. (Parents and carers observe these factors and the intent of these factors).
These factors shape students’ perception and ‘sense’ of the school setting, hopefully positively, with more students feeling safe, valued and cared for. (Parents and carers see more students feeling safe, valued and cared for. This positively influences parent and carer perception of the school).
This stronger connection to school improves conditions for the development of pro-social and pro-learning values, dispositions and behaviours that increase chances of students experiencing a successful educational pathway. (This improved perception of school positively influences productive parent and carer partnerships with the school).
Compare this preferred pathway with that of the disconnected student and family, called to a meeting, likely (in their view) to confirm or increase this disconnection.
CONDITIONS THAT FAVOUR PRODUCTIVE STUDENT SUPPORT CONVERSATIONS AND MEETINGS
1. An explicit, informed and effective student support framework is in place in the school
(Living Well, Learning Well, in the Armidale Diocese).
2. A multi-tiered system of support for academic, wellbeing and behaviour domains is in place in the school.
3. An informed, skilled and coherent staff.
4. An aversion to labelling of behaviours and students and a focus on skilled adult concerns
about student behaviour and wellbeing (see sample protocol for SEBD, below).
5. Tier 1 interventions (all staff, all students, all the time) are tightly focused on building student
connection to school and on more students feeling safe, valued, and esteemed as learners in the school setting.
6. Tier 2 interventions, including family-school meetings to plan interventions, are similar in intent and
format for the academic, wellbeing and behaviour domains. They seek to mitigate a risk factor,
remove a barrier, provide support, negotiate adjustments and similar to increase chances of students
experiencing a successful educational pathway.
7. The complexity of Tier 3 interventions, which often involve intensive specialist support, is recognised.
Increasing concerns for all schools and systems is the necessity to assess the realistic capability to provide effective Tier 3
support for highly complex issues and the ongoing challenge of funding these supports.
8. A conversational tone with the minimum required formality (as determined by the nature of the concern).
Email is not a suitable tool for partnership-solving of complex problems or for informing about complex problems.
Sensible adults, working and talking together to remove barriers and make adjustments, provide the
best chances of a productive outcome.
9. Parent or carer history of positive partnership with the school.
HERE IS A SAMPLE PROTOCOL.
It’s a framework for thinking, rather than a checklist. Successfully modelled by leaders, protocols can shift thinking and practice towards more informed and contemporary approaches.
A PROTOCOL FOR SUPPORTING STUDENTS WITH SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL OR BEHAVIOURAL DIFFICULTIES
Any behaviour by a child or young person that causes an adult’s concern, and signifies unusual, disturbing or confronting behaviour outside the ‘normal’ spectrum of experience.
1. Does this behaviour cause adults concern? Is this concern purely my own or is it shared by other
adults including caregivers? Is the behaviour happening just at school, or also at home and in other environments?
2. Does this require immediate intervention on child welfare grounds? Is this an expression of distress? Is the
behaviour likely to cause self-harm or harm to others? Should I involve caregivers at this point? Who else do I involve?
3. Is the behaviour because learning needs are not met?
4. Do I, or we, need additional support to better respond to this student’s needs? What school-based supports or
interventions are realistically available? Are we meeting needs through the educational response in the classroom?
What data do we have on how the child’s needs are being met? Have we asked others (school and home) about their
perceptions of how the child’s needs are being met?
5. Is a mental health service referral required? How and to whom?
(Armstrong et al 2016)
TAKE THESE STEPS FOR A PRODUCTIVE STUDENT SUPPORT CONVERSATION OR MEETING
1. Establish purpose: a call is made or a meeting proposed because one (or more) adults is concerned about a student.
A call or meeting is initiated to enlist adult family member support to help achieve a desired positive outcome.
Identify/clarify the cause of the concern (attendance, learning progression, work habits, wellbeing, unproductive or
unsafe behaviour, other barriers to successful learning and wellbeing pathways) along with data or observations
justifying the concern.
2. Check that adult practice so far has been skilled and appropriate in the setting where the concern has been noted. This
is particularly important for conversations and meetings for students who have Personal Plans, for unproductive
behaviours, those not progressing or with work habit concerns.
3. Choose: phone call or meeting?
a. Phone calls are good for less complex issues or issues confined to a single setting, with obvious potential
adjustments. They typically do not involve the student and are not suitable when there is a lack of clarity or
agreement about the causes for concern. They are most productive when a conversation has already
taken place with the student and general agreement reached on supports/steps/strategies/adjustments
to mitigate the concern.
b. Meetings are necessary for more complex issues, multiple-setting issues, safety issues and serious unproductive
behaviour issues. Student Plan scaffolds are useful as a meeting guide even if a formal plan is considered not
required at that point.
4. Staff coherence: a phone call conversation or meeting invitation ideally sounds the same to a parent-carer regardless of
which staff member makes the call. If there is a history of unproductive conversations between a specific staff member
and a parent-carer, another staff member makes the call where possible. Don’t knowingly initiate an unproductive
conversation. Choose the caller, where possible, who is most likely to initiate a productive response if there is a concern
in this regard.
CHECKLIST FOR PHONE CONVERSATIONS
1. The issue of concern is not overly complex, is not observed across multiple settings, does not require
adjustment to a Personal Plan, does not require specialist input.
2. Confident in proposing a logical support or improvement pathway.
3. Confident of skilled staff practice in the setting where the concern is reported.
4. Confident that student needs are being met in the setting.
5. For work habit and learning progress concerns: clear about the specific work habit or learning habit concern
and about suggested improvement strategies and supports.
6. For unproductive behaviours: clear about the unproductive behaviour and the impact of the behaviour on
learning/wellbeing/ecology of setting. Student (ideally) has acknowledged impact of behaviour and
recognised suitable replacement behaviours.
7. Communicate agreed outcomes of call to staff who need to know.
PROTOCOLS FOR MEETINGS
1. Meetings have a general purpose of maintaining, rescuing, restoring or building successful educational and
wellbeing pathways for children and young people. Sometimes they are necessarily directive, with continued
access to school dependent on the satisfying of specific (usually safety and risk assessment) criteria. Meetings
are planned with a stated positive preferred outcome (usually the forming of a support plan).
2. A meeting is requested by phone contact as first preference. Leaders, teaching staff and support staff who
phone to arrange meetings understand that this contact sets the tone for the meeting and are careful to frame
the conversation in forward-looking, hopeful language.
3. Meetings are planned so that student and parent/carer voices are heard and considered.
4. Meetings about complex Tier 2 and Tier 3 concerns require careful ethical practice from education professionals,
including the avoiding of overly optimistic predictions about outcomes, avoiding unqualified professional
judgement, and ensuring appropriate specialist expertise is present or consulted as required (or acknowledged
as desired but unavailable in the short term).
5. Common Student Plan scaffolds are used for some high-incidence causes of concern and can serve a
double purpose as a meeting outline. These include Attendance Plan, Learning Plan, Wellbeing Plan, Mental Health Plan,
Behaviour Plan and Risk Assessment & Management Plan.
6. Some plans include the important questions: ‘what information can be shared with staff?’ and ‘which staff?’.
Promote ‘all staff who can help support the plan’ as an ideal, but accept less than this if preferred by the
student or parents/carers.
7. Reassure that a plan will be communicated quickly to involved staff, who share a collective, ethical
responsibility to assist in the achieving of the success goals of the plan.