Increasing supporting methods of disadvantaged children and measuring effectiveness of new methods

Team's meeting room in Adobe Connect is behind this link:

https://raisio.adobeconnect.com/team4/

The next team meeting using Adobe Connect is on the 22nd of May at noon London time

Increasing children’ well-being

Increasing supporting methods of disadvantaged children and measuring effectiveness of new methods

Group members

Johanna Olsson (Vaasa) johanna.olsson@edu.vaasa.fi

Kati Nuojua (Vaasa) kati.nuojua@edu.vaasa.fi team leader

Tanja Kytoniemi (Raisio) tanja.kytoniemi@edu.raisio.fi

Terhi Norrena (Raisio) terhi.norrena@raisio.fi social worker

Mariá del Carmen Santos (Rota) maricarmen.santos@salesianos.edu

Shelagh Thomson (Leicestershire) sthomson@merton.leics.sch.uk

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Next table is Team 4 plans and acts for spring 2019 after Vaasa project week

Next table is Team 4 targets and planned acts before and until Vaasa project week 2019

Vaasa project week participants: Tanja Kytoniemi, Terhi Norrena, Shelagh Thomson, Maria del Carmen Santos (these 4 travelled), Johanna Olsson, Kati Nuojua

Rota project week participants: Johanna Olsson, Kati Nuojua, Shelagh Thomson (these 3 travelled), Maria del Carmen Santos

Starting the team work

1. Every member of the team lists 3 – 5 challenges at their school or work, linking the teams objective.

2. What are the planned acts, acts taken in practice and acts that have worked?

3. How do you measure the results of the made acts, if you measure?

Members save their answers on this platform under his/her team link and 'city box'.

4. Team leaders collect the answers together.

The chart for this collective work is here.

5. The team goes through the summary during an online meeting.

We use Adobe Connect as our online program

- Every member of every team gets personal guidance for about half an hour.

- Team leader sends the team meeting invitation through Seppo.

- Everybody needs USB – headphones with microphone!

- You should use the same computer every time you use Adobe Connect.

- Team leader must inform team members about online meeting dates as early as possible (time in GMT).

online meeting should not last more than hour

6. Every good idea and innovation must be saved on this platform.

Getting prepared for the project week in Rota

a) Seppo sends the starting query to Rota in early October at the latest.

b) Salesian save their answers on this platform and under Starting Query before the middle of November (Seppo reminds Antonio if needed)

c) Every teams every member reads the answers before the Rota week

The query is opened and discussed together in the beginning of the project week

Discussions are saved (in writing) on GS

Some Finnish ways of measuring well-being

• school health query (10y, 11y and 14year old)

https://thl.fi/fi/web/lapset-nuoret-ja-perheet/tutkimustuloksia

• Nurse's and doctor's wide student check (7y, 11y and 14year old)

https://thl.fi/attachments/kasvunkumppanit/kouluterveydenhuolto/THL_kouluterveydenhuollon_opelomake_FI.pdf

• Move- measurements (11y and 14year old)
• https://koulunhyvinvointiprofiili.fi/

You can change the language in English!

Leicester

10.10.2018 Shelagh Thomson

Team 4 – Increasing support for disadvantaged children

Challenges:

· Narrowing the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and non disadvantaged children is difficult as often these children are at a disadvantage in more than one aspect of their lives e.g lack of parental support , financial hardship, low cognitive ability, SEND, dysfunctional home setting.

· Finance for additional staff in order to run appropriate group/indiv intervention is a problem.

· Recruiting staff with appropriate skills is difficult – especially for the older children where the demands of the curriculum are more.

Actions:

· Full time pastoral support

· Targeted re-teach with TAs

· Forensic gaps analysis followed by teacher led intervention groups

· Financial support for off site day trips and residentials

· Forest School provision

· Financial support for after school clubs and breakfast club

Measure impact by

· Close tracking of these children using data software

· Work scrutiny

· Internal formative and summative assessment

· Statutory assessment – with comparison to national

· Observation of behaviour

Raisio

12.10.2018

Päivi Juntti

1. Challenges

To arrange educational support to children with very demanding special needs.

The need to increase co-operation with workers on children's welfare ja social sector - teacher try to manage without their support for too long and the problems get more serious.

Lack of motivation and concentration on different tasks - children are addicted to social media and digital games more than being interested in learning new skills.

Teachers need to work in teams ja do coteaching to cope with the pupils special needs.

2. Actions

Co-operation with educational and social sectors

Enhancing co-operation with parents

3. Measuring

The number of students with special needs

Measuring the students' well being with national queries

Keeping record of absencees and having the procedures to be followed if absencees are over 50 hours.

10.10.2018

Terhi Norrena, social worker, Vaisaari school.

1. Authorities working with children and families are obliged to submit a child welfare notification, if they suspect that a child needs help. Sometimes authorities have difficult to submit a notification. Usually problems have already grown too big, when we are being contacted. The aim is to offer support and help as early as possible, before problems arise.

The co-operation and the common vision about the child´s issues is sometimes challenging. The obligation of confidentiality is affected by formation of common understanding.

2. Acts taken in practice and acts that have worked:

Raisio has introduced a new provincial approach to tackling school absenteeism is exceeded for 50 hours, the teacher starts to find out the need for additional student support, A multidisciplinary meeting is arranged to find solution to the situation of a student. Through multidisciplinary cooperation we have been able to significantly influence the promotion of child´s wellbeing

I worked earlier in Raisio´s child welfare. I started to work at Vaisaari a year ago. I see a great change in my work, children will talk about their problems more easily, they also dare to talk more about the home situation. This allows the family to receive real-time support for the real problems of the family.

3. The measures promoting the wellbeing of children aim to prevent the need to resort to the actual child welfare measures. The purpose of preventive child welfare measures is to provide help and support at an early stage, when the problems can still be prevented.

Rota

1. Challenges

1- For a few years at our school we are working the educational inclusion of disadvantaged children

2- Also students with educational reinforcement are attended in inclusive in the classroom

3- The training of the teachers are getting to attend properly to the students with special educational needs

4- Awareness of the rest of the students

2. Planned acts, acts taken in practice and acts that

1. To put into the practice the objectives we have adapted the curriculum to the needs of each of our students. We have also adapted the materials and we´ve even created specific materials for them. Timetables have been carefully studied to be able to work with them in the classroom at all time.

2. With the adaptation of the reinforcement timetables we want to care not only for the disadvantaged children or educational needs we also intend to help the rest of the students.

3. Throughout the year, training courses are planned for the teachers but unfortunately only the affected teachers participate in them.

4. We planned talks of sensitivity and information for students with the help of external equipment to the center.

3. How measure the results of the made acts

1. We measure results through quarterly assessments in which we evaluate achievements, and if the methodology and the used timing have been adequate.
2. The training of the teachers is not measure because it is not obligatory. But over time it is observed that teachers involvement is increasing.
3. Concerning the students we see as their behavior and attitude towards partners with special educational needs improves after knowing and understanding better their behaviour.

Vaasa

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18.10.2018 Priska Pennanen school psychologist

1. Every member of the team lists 3 – 5 challenges at their school or work, linking the teams objective.

- It has been a challenge for psychologists to focus on preventive and community based work, most of worktime is used to support individual students

- Children who benefit but are not acutely in need for a psychological assessment of their learning skills need to wait for a long time

- Big class sizes which increases psychological stress in children. Children with inappropriate behavior draw much of the attention and children whos struggles are difficult to identify from the outside get less attention.

- Children with immigration/refugee background and who have suffered severe traumatic events need a lot of support for mental health and learning.

- Due to lack of resources it has been challenging to respond to needs of children in preschool

2. What are the planned acts, acts taken in practice and acts that have worked?

- 1,5 new psychologists

- School psychologists have developed the OK-model since 2015, which has been taken into practice since autumn 2016. The aim is to strengthen positive behavior in school.

- Increasing the co-operation between professionals to support the transition from preschool to elementary school

12.10.2018 Kati Nuojua

Challenges:

1. Class sizes are big and the number of students with special needs in them is increasing.

2. The transition phase from prescool to primary school is giving us challenges every year. Too many of the disadvantage children/ children with special needs transfer from preschool to first grade without any "papers done". Their need of special education comes as a total suprise to the school.

3. Lack of time with co-operating with the school psychologist, the school social worker and the special education teachers.

Acts taken in practise:

1. More and more co-teaching.

2. Our first grade teachers, special education teachers and school psychologist are getting involved earlier to get to know the current situation in the preschool. Co- operation is done on monthly basis.

Measuring:

The number of students with special needs.

11.10.2018 Jenni Innilä

Challenges in our school:

1) The number of students with special needs (social and mental problems) is increasing and this affects their learning negatively and they do not reach their full potential.

2) Many of these disadvantaged children do not feel that they are part of the school community.

3) There is not enough time for co-operation and changing the information between different parties like homeroom teacher, subject teachers, special education teachers, school social worker, community social workers and school psychologist.

4) The problem is sometimes that despite the co-operation and the efforts teachers and other adults make do not help the situation because the child and his/her family do not commit to the agreed actions.

5) The co-operation between school and parents whose Finnish and English skills are lacking is challenging.

Acts taken in practice:

The culture in our school is positive and encouraging. Teachers try to do their best to help all the students with different backgrounds and different learning abilities to achieve their full potential.

We have a variety of models that we use:

OK- modell which focuses on positive enforcement of desired behavior.

Our class project gives students a chance to figure out how to improve the atmosphere and social relations in their own class.

We also have a student support team in our school.

30.10.2018 Johanna Olsson

Challenges:

1. How to deepen the cooperation between different authorities and teachers? How to develop multidisciplinary cooperation?

2. How to involve all the headmasters and teachers to the developing work in order to improve students well-being? Encourage schools to try different kind of methods for creating the caring and positive school atmosphere.

3. How to share resources to school as equally as possible?

Acts taken in practise:

1. Etappi-support group - one way to support children with mental disabilities or other challenges. Etappi support group has its own multidisciplinary team (a special educational needs teacher, a psychiatric nurse and an assistant teacher) which has deep cooperation with social work. A student can apply to Etappi support. Etappi is a short time support from 6 weeks to 6 months.

Cooperation with the national agency of education: organize together a platform for multidisciplinary cooperation.

Deepening the co operation between preschools and schools. All the special education needs kindergarten teachers have been invited to to planning day.

2. Money won't solve all problems. We need to develop new approaches to the students' well being and to the school cultures. One tool is OK model which is developed by the school psychologists in Vaasa. The main targets for the OK model is unify the different schools’ school cultures in order provide a positive guidance for behavioral issues. As well the model wants to clarify how to deal with challenging students and classes.

Encourage teachers to use co teaching as a teaching method . Ideas for co teaching have presented in schooling days.

3. We have developed a system how to share resource to all schools. The headmasters type a certain information about their students to a system which calculates the resource to schools. We would like to develop the system further in order to take account even better the socioeconomic background of the students and use "positive discrimination" in sharing our resources.