Support for Schools
PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAINING, TEACHING AND CONSULTANCY FOR SCHOOLS
The Foundations Consultancy (TFC) Psychology service offers a range of training days, workshops and consultancy services for schools, colleges, nurseries, pre-schools and education services.
Our specialist training days support teaching staff and schools to gain a better understanding of children and young people's mental health needs, as well as more complex emotional, social and psychological needs in the classroom.
We recognise the important role teachers and education staff play in offering children and young people's lives.
We are passionate about ensuring that education staff are supported to understand children and young people's needs and adopting a relationship based approach to successful engagement with the curriculum.
Our work is informed by authors such as Dr Bruce Perry's neuro-sequential model, Louise Bombier and Kim Golding's attachment informed approach to supporting pupils with complex attachment and trauma needs.
Our workshops support teachers to understand pupils using an attachment and trauma informed understanding and enable them to look at all behaviour as a form of communication.
Teachers are often faced with supporting pupils with complex emotional and mental health difficulties some of which can impact on their engagement with their school work, concentration and their social and relational style.
- We support staff to understand mental health difficulties, neuro-diversity and to think about how to support anxious students/pupils through the school day.
- We support schools to ensure they support their staff teams in delivering a relational approach to learning,
- It is vital to ensure that education staff have time to take care of their own mental health and well being so they can offer their pupils supportive and nurturing relationships which is the bridge to help children and young people to belive in themselves and to engage in their school work.
We can also help teachers to understand and support pupils with relational trauma who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's) to experience safety and trust in the classroom and recognise the important influence teachers can have in offering pupils a relationship based approach to learning.
See our list of workshops below. We also offer Bespoke workshops so please contact us if you would like to discuss other workshops options.
Children who are emotionally regulated through trusting relationships will be more open to learning and engaging with the curriculum.
Learn More
Please see details below on our various courses and workshops for schools. We can also design and deliver other team building and bespoke training days to meet your schools needs.
You can also download our brochure at the bottom of this page.
Feel free to contact us to find out more.
Course information
Attachment and Developmental/Relational Trauma
- This one day course is designed to support staff to understand and identify ACE's (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and relational trauma.
- The day provides a comprehensive understanding of the importance of secure attachment in early childhood on the development of a fully functioning integrated brain.
- We look at the impact of relational trauma on the development of emotional regulation skills, cognition, concentration and other factors influencing a pupil's ability to learn eg: concentration, attention, psychological well-being, social development and skills.
- Inspired by the findings of the latest trauma research and clinical experience.
- Supports delegates to re-frame their understanding of the behaviour of troubled children so that we can understand their needs through a Developmental Trauma lens: "What happened to you" rather than "What's wrong with you".
- Understanding Developmental Trauma in the context of it's impact on a child’s sensory system, their higher executive functions, their dissociative or activated responses, attachment styles and their capacity for regulation, as well as considering the impact on their cognitive and social development.
- We consider how an understanding of Developmental Trauma can help staff to develop a "trauma-informed" support plan/IEP.
- This will enable pupil's sensory and regulation needs to be identified and understood.
We also consider how staff can ensure that they support, connect and engage with emotionally dys-regulated children.
This teaching day enables delegates to experience a renewed sense of hopefulness and effectiveness in creating change for traumatised children..
Becoming Trauma Informed - Developing a resilient and therapeutically informed school
A day for the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) in the school to think about how to develop a whole School "trauma informed" approach.
This day supports the growth of a trauma informed school ethos which enables the school to function more effectively and efficiently helping to prevent staff burnout, sickness and also to ensure improved engagement.
We explore:
- the impact of working with and teaching traumatised and complex children and young people. This workshop enables the SLT to consider the emotional impact on teaching and support staff of working with children with complex emotional and psychological needs.
- the impact of working with pupils with complex needs on staff morale and well being.
- how schools can support their staff to engage in reflective practice/supervision/staff support to support the adoption of a trauma informed approach.
- supporting staff retention, providing emotional support for staff to develop resilience and the development of a strong ethos of valuing and supporting staff.
This workshop supports the Leadership Team to reflect on the development of a nurturing and values led ethos, the commitment to developing a therapeutically informed organisational approach and supports the development of a caring organisational culture.
Psychological Well being: supporting staff teams to develop resilience and emotional well being
This is a staff development day designed to offer staff who are working with pupils with complex psychological and mental health needs an opportunity to regroup and restore.
Staff in schools are often struggling deliver the curriculum to children with complex needs in very challenging times. All of this can have a significant impact on staff morale and staff burnout leading to high levels of anxiety and exhaustion.
This day supports staff to focus on the importance of understanding their emotional well-being, recognising indicators of stress and anxiety and supporting staff to develop self-care and self-soothing techniques.
The aim of the day is to offer some opportunities to develop good staff team building and the building of resilience skills, recognising the strengths of being part of a team and individual strengths.
This is an extremely positive and energising day and helps staff to relive and reflect on their stresses and focus on their strengths and their goals for the future.
The PACE-ful classroom
A training day supporting staff to think about how to understand and embed a trauma informed "PACE" approach to engaging difficult pupils with complex emotional and mental health needs. Learning about what a PACE-ful teaching approach involves and how to engage and support pupils who find it difficult to learn.
This training day should follow and build on the knowledge learned on the "attachment and trauma" teaching day. It considers how we can support children who are difficult to engage and focuses on the importance of the development of a safe and secure relationship enabling staff to adopt a therapeutically trauma informed approach to their learners.
It supports staff to consider how their relationships with learners can help to promote a sense of safety and connection both of which are key to engaging students in the curriculum and learning.
Using the therapeutic relationship skills of PACE to help staff to understand, regulate and support children with complex needs and to recognise their own emotional responses to supporting pupils with complex needs.
This relationship based workshop can be complimented by ongoing psychological consultation to support embedding of this approach. This also supports a "whole school" trauma informed approach to delivering an attachment and trauma informed therapeutic approach.
Course 5. Developing emotional resilience - supervision and reflective practices
Reflective Practice is the foundation of professional development; it makes meaning from experience and transforms insights into practical strategies for personal growth and organisational impact.
Schools that want to offer a therapeutically informed environment need to echo the principles of safe therapeutic practice.
This training day considers the importance of supervisory and reflective practice in schools. It thinks about concepts such as “Looking after me (teacher) so I can look after and support you” (Child).
It considers why adopting a supervision/reflective practice framework in schools is vital to improved staff service delivery, supports staff retention, improved staff engagement and supporting emotional well being of staff.
This day supports the school to:
- think about the importance of supervision and reflective practice,
- understanding its function, how to adopt a supervision structure in a school environment.
- How to develop a culture of learning from mistakes.
- Developing improved practice avoiding a "blame" culture.
- It explains what supervision and reflective practice is and why it is needed when working with children with complex emotional needs.
- It considers why it is vital to safe practice in the classroom and wider school system.
Course 6. Psychological Consultation Morning/ Day
We can offer a full morning/afternoon to offer supervision, consultation and therapeutic/reflective support to teaching staff. This can help staff to have some time to think about particular pupils with complex needs and to support them to contextualise and make sense of challenging behaviours and emotional difficulties.
Consultation sessions can also be dedicated to offering "drop in" sessions for staff to book into to discuss pupils with complex needs and to help support the development of a therapeutic plan IEP for more complex pupils with mental health needs.
These sessions can also support staff well being and a place for reflection about the emotional impact of their work. Our sessions can be delivered on a regular basis to support staff teams to have much needed space for reflection.
More information
For more information about the Foundations Consultancy's Psychological training and consultancy services for schools please download our leaflet below or drop us a line to discuss your requirements.
We can make bespoke training on Supporting children and young people with Neuro-diveristy, Anxiety, Mental health and many other relevant topics.
We are fully accredited
