Addressing Behaviours Of Concern In Your School

Understand the reason for behaviour

Always keep in mind that behaviour is communication. Our role is to understand what children are trying to tell us through their actions.

Ensure that teachers are aware of vulnerabilities, history, needs, and causes of stress. When we take time to understand what drives a child’s behaviour, this can lead to better understanding, more empathy and effective interventions.

Create a personalised support plan

An effective support plan contains important information about those vulnerabilities and causes of stress, as well as a number of proactive and reactive strategies to support these. It might contain information related to the following:

• Background information such as any medical diagnoses and any relevant history
  
  
• What makes the child happy? What are their likes and interests? What makes them feel anxious?
  
  
• How does the child interact? What is their preferred method of communication? What keeps them engaged?
  
  
• How do we support their routines and keep things predictable and safe?
  
  
• How can we support their friendships and relationships? Their personal care and/or medical needs?
  
  
• Do they have any additional sensory needs that we need to support?
  
  
• What things are likely to trigger behaviours of concern? What do they look like at this point? Do they present differently to when they are happy?
  
  
• What can we do to help reduce stress for the child at this point?
  
  
• What happens when the child is in ‘crisis’? What behaviours might we see? How can we tell they are in crisis – what do they say, do, or look like?
  
  
• What strategies can we use to keep everybody safe?

Supporting recovery from incidents

Debriefing everyone involved in an incident is essential. The first and most important step is to make sure that everyone is safe and well.

Maintaining a positive relationship should always be a priority. Even when a child is in crisis, the language we use when responding can have a significant and lasting effect on our relationship with them. Following any incident, checking in with children to ensure that they are safe and well can also go a long way to repairing any relationship damage that might have occurred. It's normal for a child to feel an element of shame following an incident, especially if they have hurt others or caused damaged to property. It's important that we don't make them feel any worse than they already do.

Learning from incidents

It's important to ensure we reflect and learn something from each incident, whether that be new information about the child that we can use to inform their support plan or ways in which we can improve our own practice and ensure a better outcome next time.

Developing new skills

Finally, it is important to teach children coping strategies and new skills around self-regulation. This will improve the child’s ability to cope in a situation they feel anxious in.