Roisin McEvoy, Head of Schools Training and National Programmes at the Anna Freud Centre, Brenda McHugh MBE, Co-Founder of the Pears Family School and Consultant Family Systemic Psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre
Below, Roisin McEvoy asks Brenda McHugh about her experiences of working together with parents and carers.
At the Anna Freud Centre, we believe that the best way to ensure that schools and colleges can support the mental health and wellbeing of their students is through a whole school or college approach. Mental health and education experts at the Centre have created an evidence-based framework so that schools can plan their own approach to mental health and wellbeing in five simple steps. Working Together is Step 2 of our 5 Steps Framework.
In Step 2, we ask school and college staff to think about how they can bring all parts of the school or college community together to improve everyone’s mental health and wellbeing. This includes thinking about how to actively involve parents and carers in their children’s learning and activities at school, because we believe this makes it more likely that pupils will thrive, both in terms of academic performance and in their general wellbeing.
This matters for all children and young people but, arguably, is even more important for those children and young people experiencing mental health difficulties, and in particular those at risk of exclusion.
Brenda, can you tell us about your journey in engaging with parents, and about the Pears Family School?
After years of working in mainstream, special, alternative provision (AP) schools, and Child and Adolescence Mental Health Services (CAMHS), I wasn’t surprised that a study looking at the societal cost of mental health problems by the London School of Economics showed that the burden of mental disorder is 90% borne by schools. Along with my colleagues, I’d wanted to find evidence of approaches that would make a difference for the children we worked with who were on the brink of exclusion. Our experience over time, and the evidence presented in NICE guidelines for CAMHS, suggested that a family systems approach could result in sustainable change for vulnerable pupils.
In 2014, we gained Department for Education (DfE) permission to open the Pears Family School, an innovative AP for children with emotional and behavioural problems aged 5-14 years. Our aim was to bring together the child’s two most important contexts and systems, home and school, in a true partnership. By creating a shared vision and progress pathway, we found we could make that difference. We were delighted in 2017 that Ofsted judged the school as outstanding.
We are committed to the view that there are no easy answers when dealing with complex and challenging behaviours, but that building relationships at all levels will always be central to good practice. Parents come to the Pears Family School saying they feel confused, excluded, lonely and lost. Working together rebuilds trust and makes that crucial difference. As one parent recently said, ‘I didn’t realise until I came to Pears that I can be the gateway to my child learning’.
So, the parents and carers that you meet have often experienced some kind of break-down in their relationship with their child’s school. Can you tell us about that? Are there some examples you could share, and some thoughts about why you think it happens?
Parents talk about two things – shame and repeating cycles of failure – both of which lead to a feeling of being stuck and a sense that change isn’t possible. As teachers, we have no official training on how to harness the power of parents to bring about change and, like parents, we often experience blame when children fail.
We hear from parents that they feel they have nowhere to turn when things go wrong for their child at school. A common example is dropping their child off at school, then waiting in the local café for the call to take their child home. They describe the anxiety and depression this brings. What we’re seeing here is a mutually reinforcing system where the child’s behaviour raises the anxiety of all adults, limits communication and damages trust, so that no shared understanding of what lies behind behaviour is agreed. Consequently, no plan for effective school and home interventions can be put in place to combat any repeating cycle of failure.
For some schools, and parents, it can be tempting to look for external mental health solutions. Of course, that can be appropriate. But too often, specialist services have long waiting lists and can’t offer sufficient ‘dosage’ (or frequency of intervention), when the stakes are high, to bring about sustainable change. At the Pears Family School, we use a co-parenting model of intervention to start the change process straightaway.
Tell us a bit more about what happens at the Family School to change the relationship the parents and carers have with school? How does this help the children and young people who go there?
Parents and carers experiencing similar difficulties have a weekly group meeting. School staff encourage them to share ideas, learn from research and plan for their child’s progress. We do this by supporting mental health factors and executive function skills at home and at school. In addition, membership of these groups contributes to a de-isolation process that has an impact on the mental state of the parent or carer, which in turn impacts the child. Working with staff and other parents, they construct what we call a shared systemic hypothesis, allowing for a personalised care and learning plan.
Parents and carers are also supported by a series of weekly learning workshops, now an OCN accredited qualification, which improve parent capacity and confidence as well as providing a shared teacher-parent language, which in turn improves the dosage of any intervention. Parents are also encouraged to support pupil’s progress within timetabled lessons. The impact of our approach was recently reviewed by the DfE. In their report, they found that our parents were enabled to be more proactive in dealing with their child’s behaviour at home –resulting in improved behaviour, engagement and attendance at school.
The Pears Family School is an incredibly special place, and in many ways different from the average UK school. What can all schools learn from the work there?
Two things seem true. Firstly, mainstream schools can only be more inclusive if they have access to more expertise and resources to deal with students with complex needs. Secondly, AP schools can only increase reintegration with a greater skill and knowledge base, increased targeted support and improved partnerships with local schools.
We now offer training to staff working in mainstream and alternative provision. The content of our courses is based on a model of family intervention with a 30-year track record, which has been developed and codified at the Pears Family School over the last six years and has been trialled in local AP and mainstream schools. We have also designed a ‘Parent Engagement Scale’ to help schools evidence the important work they do with parents to build trust, more effective communication and partnership working.
Free and funded resources
If you’d like to know more about what school and college leaders can do to implement a whole school or college approach, have a look at the Anna Freud Centre’s 5 Steps Framework. There are lots of free resources and information about the training we offer, including our DfE funded course for Senior Mental Health Leads, and our free e-learning: Engaging Parents and Carers.
CST Conference
This Blog is written in association with our workshop at CST Annual Conference 2022.
The CST Blog welcomes perspectives from a diverse range of guest contributors. The opinions expressed in blogs are the views of the author(s), and should not be read as CST guidance or CST’s position.
