BEST School Completion Programme
Hello I`m Linda Conway and I am a support worker with the BEST School Completion Programme in Virgin Mary School. My main area of responsibility is to work with children who are in need of extra support during the school day. The Support Worker is very much a pastoral role, and we work at building good relationships with the children which then allows us to work effectively with them on the issues causing them difficulties. We focus on positive behaviour and initiatives, address behavioural, emotional and social difficulties and promote school attendance. One example of my work is facilitating a Lunchtime Club which caters for children who are experiencing difficulties in yard at playtime. The children meet in my room and play games with an emphasis on turn taking, waiting, winning, losing, and hopefully learning skills that will enable them to be better able to cope when they are taking part in group activities with other children, like playing in the yard.
The Incredible Years Programme marries well with the support worker role and the way that BEST our organisation works. We evaluate our work and the programmes we run based on how much the children are gaining from the work that we do. The Incredible Year groups have been very much worth the effort we have put into facilitating them.
A fairly unique feature of the programme is the emphasis on fidelity to the programme content and the emphasis on training and mentoring for the facilitators. As part of the ongoing training process, facilitators are encouraged to video themselves running sessions with the class group. This is actually very challenging and as you can imagine we were reluctant to do this initially as its difficult to watch yourself working on video and have your practice evaluated with your peers. However, the mentoring has proved to be a very important aspect of the work as even in sessions which, at the time we felt could have gone better, we could see the children were picking up the concepts we were trying to share with them that day. The children show subtle changes in behaviour, it can be very easy to miss the small steps they are taking in the right direction and the video helped us to see and to celebrate their improvements.
For me personally one of the main gains from the Incredible Years Programme is that teachers, support workers, and SNA’s - the whole classroom team - are consciously using the same approach that they have each been formally trained in. This provides the children with a consistency from the key adults working with them that is so vital to their progress and development.
