Make a plan

Make a plan

It is important to develop and maintain a plan when supporting the child or young person and ensure that they feel at the centre of this. 

“It’s important that the student feels that that we have listened to them and that we are also actioning what they say... we are changing how they come into school” (school staff).

Use of the Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle is important to monitor changes, involve the child or young person and ensure a shared approach between home, school and supporting professionals.

Adherence to Gloucestershire's Graduated Pathway throughout this process can be beneficial to ensure a targeted and shared approach.

Developing a plan can include:

• Ensuring the views of the child or young person have been considered and are central to considerations of methods and approaches to supporting them;
• Considering with the child or young person where they feel comfortable meeting, who they feel comfortable with and methods of communication which enable them to ensure that their voice is heard, for example, writing a letter, communicating verbally to one key adult, communicating verbally to more than one adult within a meeting etc.
• Ensuring that the child and young person, their parent/carers and supporting adults agree expectations regarding how often they will meet and for how long as well as who will be able to action any approaches, strategies or considerations;
• Trusted adults to arrange home visits where appropriate to consider how the child or young person is, sensitively consider their barriers to attendance together and provide a contact link with school;
• The child or young person and supporting adults considering significant biggest barriers and resiliency factors which push to school and pull from home;
• Ensuring that factors associated with transition are considered;
• Any actions agreed at meetings to be carried out and reviewed at future meetings.

"I think that is why it is important to have meetings like this to improve the support for young people. So definitely my advice to young people is to keep sharing, keep pushing for your support that you need. Because if you need it, someone else is going to need it. So push for it, because you may help someone else as well as yourself. And that's definitely a big motive to push back" (young person).

"We need to be taking a much more holistic approach to supporting children who are struggling" (parent).

“Importance of providing the young person with that opportunity to express their views; to feel that those views are heard and are validated” (multiagency professional).

“It's important that the young person is involved in their timetable, so that we're not telling them. They feel a bit of autonomy around when they can come in” (school staff).

“Very often the students aren't at meetings but maybe we should ask ourselves the question, do we make it approachable for them in the first place? If we really want to understand what that young person needs, they need to feel comfortable being in that room” (multiagency professional).

“Referrals to agencies can take a long time so providing support to parents in the interim and strategies that they can try is important. I think that would be really useful” (school staff).