Mary Meredith

Language matters. It’s long concerned me that ‘trauma-informed practice’ (TIP) provokes a dismissive or defensive reaction in some. When those some are educators, strongly influencing the life chances of children impacted by trauma, that’s a problem that can’t be ignored. Should we persist in using a language that hasn’t secured widespread buy-in or deploy different words?

Arguably, the term ‘psychologically informed practice’ is synonymous and more difficult to reject. It doesn’t have the clinical connotations of ‘trauma’ – it merely asks that we look through a lens that is curious about the causes of behavioural presentations. Surely only the most dogged behaviourist would believe that professional curiosity is not a thing to be embraced.

The field also offers up a well established self evaluation tool – the psychologically informed environment (PIE) framework. This is quintessential TI stuff, because “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” We do not necessarily dilute TIP then, by substituting PIE.

PIE is also a reply to the charge levelled against TIP, which is that nobody knows what it means in practice. Of course, purists would argue that TI practice cannot be reduced to a checklist and I do agree. But is that helping those who may be less steeped in the work, but who might be willing to make some changes if presented with a roadmap?

The zeal for centrally endorsed ‘evidence based practice’ has also delayed progress. No breakthrough in practice has an evidence base at the point of breakthrough. The PIE framework only exists because its creator wasn’t constrained by the established evidence base in the same way that school leaders are within today’s policy context.

In a fascinating interview, psychiatric social worker Robin Johnson explains how he developed his framework by observing what was happening within homelessness services that were clearly helping people with complex emotional needs stabilise & heal. He categorised his observations to arrive at the key components of PIE.

I like Johnson’s use of the term ‘evidence generating’ (7.10 mins into the linked video) which is what those most transformative homelessness services were being, subsequently providing the evidence base for PIE. There was no EEF style research study guiding staff in these settings, just a culture of reflective practice, empathy and intuition.

It’s not easy within a climate of high stakes accountability & top down dictats for school leaders to commit to evidence gathering practice. However, I think it is widely recognised that in relation to behaviour, established practice is falling short. Behaviourism cannot meet today’s complexity without inclusion carnage, which is what we are seeing across the country.

TIP is what our most vulnerable, marginalised and educationally dispossessed children need, of that I’m certain. Evidence gathering on behalf of vulnerable cohorts is courageous, so those leaders who are taking steps to implement the practice, following their intuition, being truly needs-led, they are to be celebrated.

The October 2023 update of the Inspection Handbook includes some changes within Behaviour and Attitudes relating to the use of suspension and exclusion. It also extends the definition of off-rolling to cover pupils who may be still on-roll but who are not allowed to attend school. There are caveats around the extended definition, for example reduced timetables and off-site direction do not fall into the category of off-rolling when used appropriately (i.e. kept under review). Finally, there is explicit acknowledgement that both behaviour and attendance have been impacted by the pandemic. Where either is of concern, inspectors will look favourably on leaders who have plans in place to improve, both at the individual pupil and strategic, whole-school level.

Updates to the Handbook now align it with statutory guidance on exclusions and suspensions, also updated in the recent past. Relevant sections from both documents are copied below.

Suspensions and exclusions

Repeat suspensions – Handbook: If a school uses suspensions, inspectors will evaluate their effectiveness, including the rates, patterns and reasons for suspensions and whether any pupils are repeatedly suspended…..Inspectors will consider how well the school is recognising and acting to address any patterns that exist. This is because disruptive behaviour or sudden changes in behaviour can be an indication of unmet needs or a change in another aspect of a young person’s life.

Repeat suspensions – statutory guidance: Where suspensions are becoming a regular occurrence for a pupil, headteachers and schools should consider whether suspension alone is an effective sanction for the pupil and whether additional strategies need to be put in place to address behaviour.

Reintegration – Handbook: Schools should have a strategy for reintegrating a pupil who returns to school following a suspension and for managing their future behaviour. 

Reintegration – statutory guidance: Schools should support pupils to reintegrate successfully into school life and full-time education following a suspension (this may also be after a cancelled exclusion) or period of off-site direction. They should design a reintegration strategy that offers the pupil a fresh start; helps them understand the effect of their behaviour on themselves and others; teaches them to how meet the high expectations of behaviour in line with the school culture; fosters a renewed sense of belonging within the school community; and builds engagement with learning.The reintegration strategy should be clearly communicated at a reintegration meeting
before or at the beginning of the pupil’s return to school. During a reintegration meeting, the school should communicate to the pupil that they are valued, and their previous behaviour should not be seen as an obstacle to future success. Where possible this meeting should include the pupil’s parents. It is important to note that a pupil should not be prevented from returning to a mainstream classroom if parents are unable or unwilling to attend a reintegration meeting. To ensure ongoing progress, the strategy should be regularly reviewed and adapted where necessary throughout the reintegration process in collaboration with the pupil, parents, and other relevant parties.

Safeguarding risks / last resort – Handbook: Inspectors will consider whether the school is developing the use of alternative strategies to exclusion and taking account of any safeguarding risks to pupils who may be excluded. Inspectors will recognise when schools are doing all that they can to support pupils at risk of exclusion, including through tenacious attempts to engage local support services.

Safeguarding risks / last resort – statutory guidance: When children are not in school, they miss the protection and opportunities it can provide, and become more vulnerable to harm. Headteachers should balance this important reality with the need to ensure calm and safe environments for all pupils and staff, so should devise strategies that take both of these aspects into account. Where a pupil has a social worker, e.g. because they are the subject of a Child in Need Plan or a Child Protection Plan, and they are at risk of suspension or permanent exclusion, the headteacher should inform their social worker, the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) and the pupil’s parents to involve them all as early as possible in relevant conversations.

Vulnerable groups – Handbook: Inspectors will evaluate the experience of particular individuals and groups, such as pupils for whom referrals have been made to the local authority (and check, for a small sample of these pupils, how the referral was made and the thoroughness of the follow-up), pupils with SEND, looked-after children, those with medical needs and those with mental health needs. In order to do this, inspectors will look at the experience of a small sample of these pupils and consider the way the school is working with the multi-agency group to ensure that the child receives the support they need. For pupils with SEND, this will include ensuring that appropriate reasonable adjustments are made in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 and the SEND code of practice.

Vulnerable groups – statutory guidance: Schools must also ensure that any provision, criterion, or practice does not discriminate against pupils by unfairly increasing their risk of exclusion. For example, if reasonable adjustments have not been made for a pupil with a disability that can manifest itself in breaches of school rules if needs are not met, a decision to exclude may be discriminatory.

Off-rolling

Extended definition – Handbook:

‘Off-rolling’ is a form of gaming where a school:

• removes a pupil from the school roll without a formal, permanent exclusion or
• encourages a parent to remove their child from the school roll or
• encourages a sixth form student not to continue with their course of study or
• retains a pupil on the school roll but does not allow them to attend school normally, without a formal permanent exclusion or suspension
• and that decision is made primarily in the interests of the school and not the pupil.

Extended definition – Statutory guidance: Any exclusion of a pupil, even for short periods, must be formally recorded. It would also be unlawful to exclude a pupil simply because they have SEN or a disability that the school feels it is unable to meet, or for a reason such as, academic attainment/ability; or the failure of a pupil to meet specific conditions before they are reinstated, such as to attend a reintegration meeting.

If any of these unlawful exclusions are carried out and lead to the deletion of a pupil’s name from the register, this is known as ‘off-rolling’. An informal or unofficial exclusion, such as sending a pupil home ‘to cool off’, is unlawful when it does not follow the formal school exclusion process and regardless of whether it
occurs with the agreement of parents.

A further example of off-rolling would be exercising undue influence over a parent to
remove their child from the school under the threat of a permanent exclusion and
encouraging them to choose Elective Home Education or to find another school place.

Post-pandemic challenges understood

Handbook Only – Behaviour: Inspectors will also recognise that the context in which schools operate with respect to behaviour has changed as a result of the pandemic. Where inspectors see evidence of poor behaviour but leaders are aware of the issues and have a clear, strategic plan of action, inspectors will judge this favourably, as long as there is a track record of improvement that demonstrates leaders’ capacity to continue to improve behaviour.

Attendance: Inspectors will expect schools to do all they reasonably can to achieve the highest possible attendance, while recognising that the context in which schools operate has changed.

There should be a strong understanding of the causes of absence (particularly for persistent and severe absence) and a clear strategy in place that takes account of those causes to improve attendance for all pupils. In some cases of persistent and all cases of severe absence, schools should make efforts to engage in multi-agency work with the local authority and other partners.

Where leaders are aware of the issues affecting attendance and have a clear, strategic plan of action in place but attendance for all pupils is not yet consistently very high, inspectors should judge this favourably, as long as there is a track record of improvement that demonstrates leaders’ capacity to continue to improve attendance. 

………

This series of extracts is not presented as any kind of substitute for a full read of both documents, but I hope that it has been helpful to consider the texts alongside each other. Generally, the high level references in the Handbook are treated in more depth in the statutory guidance, which in no way removes the Head’s power to exclude. It rather introduces greater protections for those children whose disadvantage increases risk. Inclusive schools will simply carry on as before.

As ever, there has been no shortage of advice for teachers on managing behaviour when pupils return next week. I like these ‘micro tips’ from Jon Hutchinson, Director of Curriculum and Teacher Development at the Reach Foundation. Referencing short, playful moments of interaction with the whole class, the power of the teacher apology, setting extra time aside to text home with positives during the first couple of weeks, targeting the families who are used to receiving negative comms, Jon’s advice does much to illustrate the warm part of what he describes ‘warm strict’.

Ok five years ago I sent out a load of micro tips for new teachers getting ready for September.

By popular demand (literally nobody) here they are again!

— Jon Hutchinson (@jon_hutchinson_) August 29, 2023

This blog aims to supplement that with some additional micro-tips which will help teachers settle the most vulnerable pupils to learn. You could call it ‘adaptive behaviour management’, though I prefer ‘stress management’, and it acknowledges that when children are marinated in toxic stress, when they arrive at school cortisol-flooded because of their lived-experiences out of school, or perhaps when their neurodiversity makes the sensory onslaught that is school overwhelming, then teachers will need more than clear rules and consistent consequences. Those things have done some very heavy lifting in recent years and we are now seeing the true consequences of that in the numbers of mainly disadvantaged children who are no longer attending their community schools.

Trauma-informed practitioners would reframe Jon’s ‘warm strict’ as being about understanding that the discipline of vulnerable pupils requires two hands: one provides structure, supervision and boundaries, the other correction, warmth and nurture (Ref Kim Golding, Correction before Connection).

Strong leadership and a shared vision for inclusion is required here; there are staff in every school who would prefer the emphasis to be placed on corridor-patrols, sanctions and an early ‘crackdown’ in September. So far as vulnerable learners are concerned, this is guaranteed to fail on its own terms because one hand cannot hold distress.

Whilst this post will extend Jon’s micro-tips to focus explicitly on supporting the most vulnerable pupils with behaviour, to create the calm classrooms we all seek, just bear with me here while I segue for a couple of paragraphs into suspension, typically the byproduct of any crackdown.

The use of this sanction has skyrocketed over the past 12 months, during the same period that schools are reporting unprecedented issues with behaviour. Apart from doing nothing for the attendance crisis, or it would seem behaviour, there is a real need for us to think more critically about the utility of the sanction. Whilst it may illustrate a school’s red lines, its impact on the disadvantaged learner and their social and emotional progress cannot be discounted.

Try to imagine for a second being sent home from work. How would that feel? How would you feel about returning? Is your workplace still safe? Can you be happy there now? Through brain-scanning technology, Kip Williams has demonstrated that ostracism activates the same part of the brain as physical pain. Being sent away hurts. It sounds an alarm bell that says, stop this – find a group! And that is of course because for 99.9% of the time that we have walked this planet as Homo sapiens, we have relied on the social group for survival. A separated human was quickly a dead one and weaker members were separated out to strengthen the tribe. Subsequently, we remain as humans acutely sensitive to detecting ostracism.

The belief that suspension is necessary to maintain safety therefore needs re-examining. Suspension only makes schools safer if the pupil returns with greater capacity for self-regulation. That belief is confounded by the neuro-biological evidence available to us; separation from the tribe is not regulating but activating. It pushes the human into survival mode, reducing access to the prefrontal cortex where impulses are controlled and we think before we act.

The importance of co-regulation cannot be overestimated. We co-regulate vulnerable children by investing in their psychological safety, which is rooted in feelings of belonging and connection. Boundaries must be maintained, but this can be done in a psychologically informed way that doesn’t undermine felt safety. I outline Dr. Bruce Perry’s ‘3Rs’ here.

Prevention is always better than cure. The micro-tips below are taken in large part from a Thrive webinar I attended recently on how to create a sense of felt safety, quickly. I was struck by the overlap with Jon’s advice and I think that is because, fundamentally, both centre the importance of building relationships and social capital within the classroom.

This is every teacher’s responsibility. A headteacher I worked with once began his September inset with the simple message: “Don’t be a trigger.” Whilst that message resonated powerfully all year and gave some staff pause for thought, I think ‘Be a co-regulator’ and supplementary’ micro tips such as those below would have been a more positive and practical framing. Ultimately, managing relationships is the teacher’s responsibility and CPD should aim to strengthen the relational toolkit when behaviour is a concern.

The power of the welcome

This is the teacher’s opportunity to communicate to individual pupils that they matter. (How many young people will say that they didn’t really feel they were known and valued as individuals at secondary school, until they arrived in the sixth form?) It could be those fun, oxytocin-releasing personalised greetings at the door that became popular on YouTube for a while, but the teacher needs to hold the core purpose front and centre.

The aim of the individual greeting is to create a personal connection, over time a bond. It means being fully present, eyes lighting up, noticing, using a child’s name. These things all create an internal narrative that generates self worth and a profoundly regulating sense that ‘I belong here’.

Returning to the notion of adaptive behaviour management, teachers need to deliberately counteract an unconscious bias which results in the relationally rich get richer and the poor, poorer. If there is no targeted and strategic approach to relationship building, this will inevitably be the outcome. The children who need us the most do not have ready access to the social engagement system which draws others to them – but deliberately create the conditions, and this will change.

Getting to know you

Show the vulnerable pupil that you are genuinely interested in who they are, not just what they know. Set some time aside for the whole class to do this; time invested in creating the small, cohesive community is time invested in minimising incidents later. There are plenty of game-like activities which involve sharing fun nuggets of information about ourselves, the teacher included. Thrive suggest the use of class lists. Identify who has a dog – who plays football.

Prioritise relationships within the structure

Many school leaders have introduced routines for tutor time, but not all of these prioritise relationships. Perhaps there does need to be an equipment and uniform check, but to create a calm and nurturing school environment, it’s the emotional check-in that will make the difference. Circle time is common in primary schools. I introduced it as deputy head (Behaviour) within a secondary school and pupils valued it, but there are approaches that don’t involve moving furniture if time is short. Again, the strategic approach is critical.

Pastoral leads need to communicate with their teams which tutees might be most in need of the kind enquiry; it is worth reflecting on how important to us these are, even as adults. I will never forget standing in a lunch queue behind a former boss on my first day back after compassionate leave. She said nothing at all and I honestly felt that I could not have mattered less as a human.

Make time for fun

Do this as part of the routine, not simply as a start of term icebreaker. Bring in a grapefruit. Class, what could you do with this, apart from eat it? The silliness of the game, the no wrong answer, the playfulness – all of these things will promote the social bonding that stems from having fun as a group. Pupils should be able to predict within the day the time for their golden moment of fun.

There may well be no formal knowledge being imparted here (although there is creative thinking) but tell Ofsted about the intent – you are building social capital as the only sure foundation for the creation of cultural capital when learners are vulnerable. Playfulness is about much more than play. Thrive developed this idea with suggestions around the class anthem, or playlist – perhaps used to signify the beginning or end of a session.

Many hours spent in assemblies over the years suggest to me that secondary pupils are reluctant to sing, but the oxytocin boosting impact of choral singing is well known. Let’s not reject this body of research in favour of silent corridors without an evidence base that goes beyond positive Ofsted judgement secured through exclusionary practices.

Felt safety through the environment

Label everything! That was the advice from Thrive. Label what’s in the box, where the toilets are, display instructions and routines. Use pictures wherever possible and translate into the languages your pupils speak. There is nothing more stressful than not knowing your way around. For the anxious pupil, any element of uncertainty will be activating. My youngest daughter, who is neurodiverse, had an exit pass but never used it because the fear of pushing a door that needed to be pulled paralysed her. We really do need to be as explicit as we can be about the physical environment and signage, especially when visual, helps enormously.

Visual timetables are relatively well established in practice and also help children locate themselves within the temporal structure of the day, especially if regularly referred to by the teacher – what we have just done and what we now move onto. The containment created by that is regulating.

If pupils are to feel a sense of belonging and all of the safety that comes with that, Thrive recommend they have their own space. This may be as simple as a coat hanger with their name. Or a locker. The pre-prepared name signals, ‘We expected you and you belong here now.’

These are small things but, cumulatively, they make a difference. Trauma informed practitioners will be familiar with Dr. Bruce Perry’s notion of ‘therapeutic dosing’ and Treisman’s ‘every interaction is an intervention’. Schools are places for learning, not healing, but, sadly and increasingly, children need help to heal before they can settle to learn. The great promise of trauma informed practice is that the resources required to bring this about are all around us, they just need harnessing. Relationships really matter.

People might wonder why trauma informed practice is such a passion for me, and why I can’t help but react when it’s dismissed as somehow anti-discipline or dangerous by those who are too entrenched in their behaviourist positions to even find out about it. (I refer here to England’s expert advisor on behaviour & his tribe, given away by their hot takes.)

I could cite lived experience. Like many, I have made poor, impulsive decisions rooted in traumatic stress at times in my life, but they haven’t been life-defining. Compassionate leave (which pupils don’t get), & a chance to decompress & process with loving family & friends got me through.

But it’s not that direct experience of what we need as humans to avoid long term traumatisation which drew me to the field. It was rather the introduction of an Alternative Provision referral panel in my last post as Head of Inclusion in Lincolnshire which focused my mind.

Anyone who sat on that panel will tell you that the reading was grim, jolting. Loss, relational rupture, chronic hardship, parental ill health, domestic violence – these were the chronologies. Middle class children living in secure and comfortable homes were not coming to panel and these are not the pupils who make up the ranks of England’s vast & growing AP sector.

Our behaviour expert regularly mocks the notion of ‘unmet needs’ (only virtue signallers who have not taught in tough schools are sidetracked by these). But visit any AP and you will see how devastating their impact and how urgent the need to fill social and emotional gaps.

One of our APs in Hull begins intervention by asking newly admitted young people to complete ‘My Story’. Staff know that there is always a story, which is not an excuse but a reason. They see the importance of inviting young people to tell it and of empathic listening. Minimising the destructive shame that comes with feeling mad or bad is where the work begins. Many APs do incredible work of this sort, opening young people back up to the possibility of learning in the process.

It’s not easy to regulate so much distress in one place, and I am humbled every day by the emotional labour involved. However, APs, for all of their daily magic, remain segregated settings and a level of stigma is unavoidable. Neither should the pain of ostracism ever be under-estimated. Futher, from the perspective of public purse, the use of AP to contain distress is unsustainable, because distress is spreading and for as long as economic hardship continues to bite, that will remain the case.

APs across the country are full, new ones are opening, but they will fill too…. Unless, unless, policy makers commit to reform underpinned by trauma-informed principles of the kind we are seeing in all three devolved nations.

With behaviourist ideology (do this, get that) deeply embedded here, change will meet with strident resistance and dire warnings of just the kind we heard when England very belatedly banned corporal punishment. However, it is coming.

Nurture rooms, safe spaces to decompress and be heard, these are opening up (though the short supply of support staff is a problem that must be addressed). School leaders are personalising the curriculum when demand is greater than the individual’s capacity to meet it, and before positive stress becomes negative becomes toxic. Stress management is replacing behaviour management in a growing number of settings.

My hope lies in these grass roots and with the growing consensus, which is that we have reached a tipping point. A different demographic – heightened complexity and need from the Early Years and upwards – demands a different way.

Whilst the plight of Ukraine children has inspired a groundswell of compassion and school leaders are absolutely committed to welcoming refugees into the sanctuary of their schools, many are expressing concern about whether they will have the resources required to adequately meet the needs of those traumatised by their experiences. With CAMHS waiting times an issue in many areas, thresholds high, a language barrier in the mix too, this apprehension is understandable.

I wanted to highlight a chapter from Dr. Bruce Perry’s ‘The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog’ by way of what I hope is a reassuring perspective on this. It describes the experience of twenty-one child survivors of the infamous Waco Seige, which saw most members of a religious cult perish in flames upon the arrest of their leader. There are clear parallels with the refugee crisis: released by negotiators before the catastrophic final raid, the children of the ‘Davidian’ cult had no idea whether family members left behind would live or die; everything that had been familiar was now gone; they had witnessed a deadly assault on their home; their futures were profoundly uncertain.

Originally, Texan child protection services had planned to place the children in foster homes, indiviudally, but these were not available quickly enough so they were instead taken to a children’s home where they were cared for by two rotating live-in couples, the ‘house mothers’ and ‘house fathers’. This proved to be by far the better option: “Keeping them together turned out to be one of the most therapeutic decisions made…these children would need each other.”

Perry observed and then encouraged the development of a therapeutic web of relationships around each child within the home, the impact of which led to a paradigm shift in his thinking about how to heal traumatised children. “At this point in my work, I’d only just started to discover how important relationships are to the healing process.” A mantra well established in the trauma field, that “People, not programs, change people” is in fact a quotation from this chapter.

Throughout Boy Raised, Perry reminds us that we are a deeply social species. Individual humans are incapable of surviving for long in nature without the support of others: a lone human being in the world of our ancestors would soon be a dead one. The presence of people we trust is associated with safety and comfort and there’s a soothing biological reaction to warmly relational experiences; “our heart rates and blood pressure are lower, our stress response systems are quiet.”

However, it is equally true that the major predators of human beings are other human beings, as any refugee will be all too painfully aware. Our survival therefore also depended upon being highly sensitive to the mood, gestures and expressions of others, interpreting threat and working out, albeit mostly at a sub-awareness level, whether we were confronting friend or foe. Hyper-vigilance intensifies and distorts this process such that a harmless nudge might trigger a brainstem reaction.

It is interesting to note how often Perry describes approaching highly traumatised children on his knees in the book, minimising any physical threat represented by the bigger and stronger adult. Whilst this is not a strategy that would translate easily into the average mainstream classroom, staff do need to understand the importance of relational safety cues – a warm tone of voice, welcoming body language, perhaps a playful attitude and certainly smiles.

Perry’s ‘therapy’ for the Davidian children foregrounded the power of proximal relationships to move them out of their frightened hyper-vigilant (or dissociative) survival brain states to psychological safety. He made no use of any kind of formal counselling, which the state did arrange but which proved counter-productive since it only meant the introduction of strangers. The work was child-led:

I thought these children needed the opportunity to process what had happened at their own pace and in their own ways. If they wanted to talk, they could come to a staff member that they felt comfortable with: if not, they could play safely and develop new childhood memories and experiences to begin off-setting their earlier, fearful ones. We wanted to offer structure, but not rigidity; nurturance but not forced affection.

It is not difficult to imagine how a nurturing school community would enable what is known in the trauma field as relational repair of just this kind. Indeed, we can be sure that relational repair is happening daily in our schools, probably in most cases without staff even recognising the brain-changing difference they make through their moments of connection with distressed children. Think Mr. Pigden.

However, whether relationship building is prioritised strategically is another matter. The single most powerful thing a school leader can do, to meet the needs of a refugee or indeed any vulnerable child, is invest in relational practice. The principle of holding on, not referring on, is critical. Workforce development needs to ensure that all staff understand that they have a part to play, regardless of their role, and permission to be human first and teacher second. Therapeutic dosing, the cumulative impact of the kind word and the personal connection, has infinitely more to offer troubled children than any intervention that is confined to Student Support or the ELSA room.

Each night after the children went to bed our team would meet to review the day and discuss each child. This ‘staffing’ process began to reveal patterns that suggested therapeutic experiences were taking place in short, minutes-long interactions. As we charted these contacts, we found that despite having no formal therapy sessions, each child was actually getting hours of intimate, nurturing, therapeutic connections each day. The child controlled when, with whom, and how she interacted with the child-sensitive adults around her. Because our staff had a variety of strengths – some were very touchy-feely and nurturing, others were humorous, still others good listeners or sources of information – the children could seek out what they needed, when they needed it. This created a powerful therapeutic web.

The sense of control that children gain when their access to relational support is not prescribed so much as facilitated through the creation of a relational milieu matters greatly. Trauma is at root the experience of utter powerlessness and victims may well reject formal counselling because it is not respectful of the sometimes acute need for control. There can be a kind of self-defeating independence that dooms any such formalised arrangement to failure, even if it begins.

In a trauma-informed setting, everyday interactions enable healing and staff trust in the process, contributing to it whenever opportunities arise. As Dr. Karen Treisman puts it so well, every interaction is an intervention, or can be.

Reflecting on his experience with the Davidian children, Perry concludes, “The seeds of a new way of working with traumatised children were sown in the ashes of Waco.” We must hope that they take root in every school, regardless of a policy context which does not provide the most fertile soil. When social capital enjoys parity of esteem with cultural capital in the way that education is conceived, the life chances of our most vulnerable children will be greatly enhanced. Many schools are demonstrating that now, and they will be places of belonging and recovery for refugee children.

Expertly and compassionately handled, the managed move can transform the life-chances of vulnerable young people but, as in all things, there is a spectrum of practice and safe transition onto the roll of the new school is far from guaranteed. With every school move, every social and educational disruption, the pupil’s odds of positive outcomes reduce, so it is important that leaders proactively invest in the process, rather than merely opening their doors and reaching a decision at the end of the agreed trial period as to whether or not the required behavioural standard has been met.

In many ways, it is those young people with the least resilience who are required to navigate the most moves. A harmful cycle of failure can result from this, unless it is interrupted. Ella, who agreed to my recording and sharing the interview below, is no exception. She ‘failed’ two placements before finding her educational home at the third, a mainstream school which wrapped support around her for as long as she needed it.

Her reflections on what made the difference form the basis of the five recommendations outlined within this post, alongside findings from the Education Endowment Foundation’s Improving Behaviour in Schools and insights from the trauma-informed practice field.

1. Ask what happened to you?

Without wishing to prompt a futile debate about whether or not all misbehaviour communicates an unmet need, it is reasonable to suggest that chronic behavioural difficulties should always invite professional curiosity. Because of the proven impact of childhood adversity and trauma on the nervous system and subsequently emotional regulation, we need to ask “What happened to you?”

Ella talks about her experiences of relational trauma: the separation of her parents and subsequent loss of ‘my main person at home’, conflict, multiple losses from an early age, moving to a different country and feeling the outsider. With some distance, and now balanced, she recognises how sensitised she was when struggling in school, unable to tolerate mild stressors, such as a teacher’s reprimand. Any one of us who has experienced high levels of stress at certain points in our lives can relate to this. We know from our own experience – even as adults with the frontal lobe fully matured – that judgement is impaired when we are cortisol-flooded.

Knowing ‘What happened to you?’ enables staff to interpret misbehaviour through a trauma-informed lens so that the response can be moderated, which will in turn alleviate the issues. All staff have a vital role to play as stress managers rather than merely behaviour managers, breaking the insidious classroom trauma cycle through their compassionate understanding. Sharing information – a pupil’s trauma history – is therefore important, so far as confidentiality allows.

2. Prioritise relationships

The teacher who spotted Ella standing on her own that cold morning must be given enormous credit for the part she played in changing her life. Offering the sanctuary of her classroom and unstinting kindness, she was the place of safety during those challenging early weeks when Ella would otherwise have felt, once again, the outsider.

The fact that she had no formal responsibility for Ella is worth considering in relation to the critical role of trusted adult: “Mrs. Brown will be your trusted adult and you can find her if you have any problems in R6” is not that. When school leaders invest in and promote social capital, these roles form in an organic way, as authentic human relationships. For a pupil who has experienced relational trauma and therefore struggles to trust, they should be viewed as key interventions.

Ella observes that “they listen to us here” – which tells us everything we need to know about the quality of that nurturing school community. Any pupil undergoing a managed move should be encouraged to talk about their challenges because it is through talking that we habituate stressful experiences which might otherwise overwhelm. This is what is meant in the trauma-field as the ‘social buffer’ against toxic stress.

It is no stretch to suggest that the success of any managed move will depend upon the quality of the relationships that a pupil forms, even if these develop accidentally rather than by design. The EEF recommends a strategic approach: “Is it possible to structure your school such that everyone knows each pupil, their strengths and interests? Can this be managed for some pupils, if not all?

3. Create the conditions for psychological safety

Even for adults, major transitions are stress inducing. That’s because of an unconscious process called neuroception which keeps us safe by constantly scanning the environment for threats. From birth, we categorise incoming sensory data as safe or unsafe, our emotional triggers resulting from subsequent encounters with the latter. In addition to triggers, or evocative cues, novelty is activating in that, as Perry explains, new experiences are classified as potential threats until proven otherwise.

“Anything new will activate our stress response systems. Our default response to novelty is ‘Uh oh. What is this?’ And until the new thing is proven safe and positive, it will be categorised as a potential threat. For most people, the unknown is one of the major causes of feeling anxious and overwhelmed.”

Here we arrive at the key concept of psychological safety. This is enhanced by predictability, so a calm and orderly school climate is essential. In the full version of the interview, Ella explains that she researched the school before she started there, so that it was at least a little familiar. The fact that her initial visit was during lockdown will also have helped; there were fewer new faces to categorise as friend or foe. She was able to focus on getting to know just a handful of key people.

It is worth thinking about how these conditions might be replicated under more normal circumstances; how a carefully phased induction period might allow gradual exposure to novelty such that the nervous system is able to maintain balance.

4. Differentiate the behaviour policy

The crude concept of ‘consistency’ does our most vulnerable learners a grave disservice. Here is the fifth of six key recommendations within the EEF report:

Ella’s previous encounter with an inflexible behaviour policy increased her isolation and loneliness, and with that her risk. Any incidents must be addressed, of course, and boundaries must be maintained, but the ‘how’ matters. Kim Golding’s ‘Connection before Correction’ is the best tool we have for empathic boundary setting and staff will need to avoid any behaviourist short-cuts if psychological safety, which takes time to establish, is not to be compromised. If removal from class is necessary, that should not be to isolation and exclusions can fatally undermine that greatest of all protective factors, a sense of belonging.

Perry is clear about the risk of social thinning, which any pupil undergoing a managed move will experience. A behaviour policy which aggravates that will fail on its own terms, separation from the group being interpreted by the survival brain as a threat to life. Vulnerable pupils need attuned others, access to co-regulating adults – not solitary reflection or undifferentiated consequences. As part of the managed move plan, it is important to agree how setbacks will be managed so that there is learning from them.

5. Aim for intrinsic motivation

There is a risk that the incoming student, not yet one of us, may be held to a higher standard of behaviour than the rest of the school community. There may be closer scrutiny, perhaps a report card measuring progress towards externally imposed targets, such as “Follow all instructions, first time”. We can be reasonably sure that this approach will not work because it will have been tested over a prolonged period in the previous setting already, without success. Any student on a managed move will benefit from not just a fresh start, but a fresh approach – aimed at promoting intrinsic motivation.

Teachers can use tangible techniques such as rewards and sanctions, or less tangible strategies such as praise and criticism, to improve motivation, behaviour, and learning. However, it is intrinsic motivation, or self-motivation, that is crucial to improving resilience, achieving goals, and ultimately is the key determiner to success. Children who are intrinsically motivated achieve better and are less likely to misbehave. (EEF)

Coercive tactics can rarely meet the needs of young people who have experienced trauma. Trauma is very often, after all, the experience of utter powerlessness and the need for control when that is the case is acute. Extrinsic motivators – pressures applied from without to illicit desired behaviours – should therefore be avoided, counter-intuitive as that may feel.

Ella’s initial meeting with the headteacher clearly inspired feelings of intrinsic motivation which got her trial placement (not emphasised as such) off to the best possible start. There was no report card, no monitoring arrangements – at least not that she was made aware of – but instead the offer a prefect’s tie. Conditions were not attached, this was not a bribe; the headteacher merely recognised a need – to be trusted, heard, valued – and found a way of meeting it. The impact of this simple gesture was profound and lasting.

Ella turned out to be a gifted mathematician and secured top grades despite her fractured journey through secondary education. Once she had access to buffering relationships, unconditional positive regard, when she was trusted, heard and valued, she flew. Her story perfectly illustrates Alexander den Heijer’s truth – that “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

The managed move can heal, but equally it can harm, and everything in between. Ella experienced the full spectrum of practice and this for me is what makes her testimony so important. Her transformation was rapid; the young brain is a sponge for learning – highly malleable; shaped and sculpted through interaction with the environment. There is hope in that. We should always be optimistic about the prospect of a managed move to change lives and of course never write young people off.

The short answer to this is with Dr. Bruce Perry’s reversed triangle diagram of the brain, the implications of which need to be understood by all staff, if schools are to meet the greatest challenge of the day: securing the wellbeing of our children. Perry summarises the model in ‘The Boy who was Raised as a Dog’ as follows: 

The human brain develops sequentially in roughly the same order in which its regions evolved. The most primitive, central areas, starting with the brainstem, develop first. As a child grows, each successive brain region (moving out towards the cortex), in turn, undergoes important changes and growth. But in order to develop properly each area requires appropriate timed, patterned, repetitive experiences. The neurosequential approach to helping traumatised and maltreated children first examines which regions and functions are underdeveloped or poorly functioning and then works to provide the missing stimulation to help the brain resume a more normal development.

These interconnected regions of the brain are wired so as to ensure survival. All incoming sensory signals from the outside world and from the body (the inside world) are first processed in the brainstem. This lower region then passes that information up to higher areas for sorting, integration and interpretation. 

If the incoming sensory material is familiar or felt from prior experience to be ‘safe’, the brainstem does not activate a stress response. However, if the incoming information is unfamiliar or previously associated with threat, pain, or fear, a stress response is activated – before the information can reach the higher, thinking part of the brain. This stress response interferes with accurate cortical processing by shutting down certain areas of the cortex, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the height of arousal. 

Highly sensitised, traumatised children are frequently activated by apparently inconsequential stimuli and this is the root of their manifest difficulties in school.

Eye contact for too long may be perceived as a life-threatening signal. A friendly touch on the shoulder may remind one child of sexual abuse by a stepfather. A well-intentioned gentle tease to one may be a humiliating cut to another, similar to the endless sarcastic and degrading abuse he experiences at home. A request to solve a problem on the board may terrify the girl living in a home where she can never do well enough. A slightly raised voice may feel like a shout to the boy living in a violent home. (Perry, The Boy who was Raised as a Dog)

These children will at times be quite literally unable to consider the potential consequences of their actions because of the arousal state of their brains. The goal then is to ‘get to the cortex’….over time, to widen the window of tolerance (the stressors that can be endured) so that pupils can settle, learn and thrive. Put simply, this involves moving from the bottom of the brain to the top through Perry’s 3 Rs of Regulate, Relate and Reason.

Regulate

(Brainstem and midbrain – the sensory motor brain)

Help the child to regulate and calm their stress responses – fight, flight, freeze. Offer soothing comfort and reassurance. (Perry)

Every adult within school, from site-manager to headteacher, should be ready and willing to ground and regulate a fellow human being in distress. It needn’t be difficult, though it does require the adult to be regulated. Perry is clear that, because of the mirroring neurobiology of our brains, one of the best ways to help another become calm and centred is simply to be present for them, calm and centred ourselves. Emotional contagion means that the reverse is also true of course – dysregulated adults dysregulate children. This is why staff wellbeing is such a high priority within the school that priorities high quality pastoral care.

However, we obviously want children to be able to develop strategies that they will be able to draw upon to regulate themselves, ultimately. Self-soothing techniques, if you like. These need to be introduced and practiced when children are calm, and emotionally intelligent school communities will share the learning with all pupils, not least so that they are in the best possible position to support their struggling peers.

This excellent resource suggests a number of grounding and regulating strategies, from deep breathing exercises to muscle relaxation. Every child is different and will benefit from a different approach, so it’s important to practice a range, possibly as brain breaks within lessons. I find it very helpful to watch demonstrations (never personally having been taught this stuff) and in this regard Dr. Karen Treisman’s relaxation and emotional regulation  videos are invaluable. She stresses the importance of repetition, if lasting and therapeutic change is to occur.

Walking is of course rhythmic, repetitive and grounding and it is worth noting here that the practice of requiring dysregulated children to stop walking and to stand still, perhaps against a wall, only succeeds in escalating the threat and shutting down the cortex. Furthermore, trauma is rooted in the experience of utter powerlessness and power-over adult behaviours are therefore dangerously retraumatizing. Many exclusions would have been avoided were this better understood. The adult who walks alongside, calming and connecting before expecting reason, is the adult we need leading behaviour in our schools, modelling the best practice and not the absolute worst.

Thought needs to be given to the school day itself and whether it is biologically respectful. We are not designed to be still for long periods. There’s a strong case for continuing the Daily Mile activity that many schools have introduced as part of their current childcare offer, this summary of the research.  confirming its benefits, both wellbeing and academic related. 

Not to be confused with discredited ‘brain gym’, stress-reducing classroom brain breaks are also strongly supported by the evidence, as proven here. These could also be utilised as the ten-minute distractor breaks that enable spaced learning, another biologically respectful approach. In addition, sensory circuits are now widely used in primary schools, the motor exercises setting children up for the day, or perhaps for next lesson when they are situated along corridors. 

Relate

(Limbic brain – the emotional relational brain)

Connect with the child through attuned, sensitive relationship. Empathise and validate the child’s feelings so that they feel seen, heard and understood. (Perry)

Articulated quite brilliantly by Kim Golding in this ‘journal paper‘, ‘connection before correction’ is another way of framing the ‘Relate’ stage of the bottom up process. Connection with a distressed child creates relational safety such that reason is possible. Here is psychologist Karen Young’s take on the process:

I know you’re a great human. I know that for certain. That decision you made didn’t end so well, but I imagine there was something that might have felt okay about it at the time. What made it feel like a good idea?’ Then, ‘I get that. I’ve felt that way myself. How do you think it went wrong?’ And finally, ‘What might be a better thing to do next time?’ Or, if needed, ‘Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you to do that?’. Or, ‘Things seem pretty upside down right now. What might you be able to do to put things right?’

Scripts are not difficult to imagine. Their key features are validation of feelings – a child needs to feel seen, heard and understood (“I see you are angry and frustrated and I can understand why”) and empathy (“It must be awful to feel overwhelmed like that.”)

Of course, within inclusive schools, adults understand the importance of making connections with vulnerable and insecure children throughout the day, not just at times of crisis. This is what we mean by ‘therapeutic dosing’. The regulating impact of small doses of kindness should never be under-estimated. As pastoral leaders, how do you know that the young people who need those interactions the most are receiving them?

Relational work needs to be strategic – not left to chance.

We are a deeply social species, our survival having once depended upon group membership. If we don’t relate to children, create within them a sense of belonging and acceptance, then our efforts to reason with them will always be futile because they will feel threatened and activated within a school environment that isn’t psychologically safe.

Reason

(Cortical brain – the great human thinking brain)

Now that the child is calm and connected they are able to fully engage in learning. Heading straight for the reasoning part of the brain CANNOT work if the child is dysregulated and disconnected from others. (Perry)

It is now possible to set limits on behaviour, which clearly we must do for the safety of both school community and child. The question is not whether but how to do this. Perry observes that ‘If we want our children to behave well, we have to treat them well’ (p273) suggesting that radical change is needed to the approach that is traditionally taken:

Troubled children are in some kind of pain – and pain makes people irritable, anxious and aggressive. Only patient, loving, consistent care works: there are no short-term miracle cures. This is as true of the child of three or four as it is for a teenager. Just because a child is older does not mean a punitive approach is more appropriate or effective. Unfortunately, again, the system doesn’t seem to recognise this. It tends to provide ‘quick fixes’ and when those fail, then there are long punishments. We need programs and resources that acknowledge that punishment, deprivation and force merely re-traumatize these children and exacerbate their difficulties. (The Boy who was Raised as a Dog)

This doesn’t mean that rules do not apply, it’s more a matter of how we teach vulnerable children to work within them and how we respond when they slip us, as they surely will. There will inevitably be occasions when it won’t be possible for them to remain in class, for example, and a reliable 3 R respecting plan is needed for such occasions. This would typically involve reporting to a safe base within school where thought is given to repair. For example, When you’re ready, let’s go and pick up your maths book and repair it with some Selloptape. We can then make a small apology card for Sir. Because Sir is trauma-informed, he will accept the apology graciously and ensure that the child knows that there is no rupture to the relationship.

Conclusion

It is important to emphasise that there is nothing suggested within this post that is not achievable if we are creative in our use of all the human and physical resource available within schools. Safe bases don’t need to be spare classrooms; perhaps it’s the clay-room for one  (thinking now about my youngest daughter) or an office for another (mine was always exactly this). 

What is needed if our schools are to rise to the challenges of this pandemic age is not new resources or new services but a new approach, rooted in the science. However, with the current policy focus on traditional behaviour management in mainstream alongside alternative provision for those who flounder, we do not seem to be grasping this. Segregation is not a solution and the evidence is stacked against it, for reasons that Perry explains in biological terms:

Another important implication of our mirrored biology is that concentrating children with aggressive or impulsive tendencies together is a bad idea, as they will tend to reflect and magnify this, rather than calm each other. (The Boy who was Raised as a Dog)

Trailblazing leaders are already proving that their schools are capable of holding, containing and healing distressed children. We must hope that others follow them as they prepare to meet the huge societal challenges of this pandemic age.

To open a can of worms is to attempt to solve a problem only to inadvertently complicate it and create even more trouble. The metaphor refers to fishing – the tendency of live bait to wriggle loose from any open container, creating a messy issue for the angler. The idiom is used to describe uncontrollable breakout, a situation aggravated, and there’s a link with the directive to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’.

Some school leaders (and a good many teachers) worry that trauma-informed practice (TIP) risks opening that can. These are the leaders who also believe that the teacher’s role is purely to ensure that children acquire knowledge; that the ‘change in long term memory’ occurs. Conditions in school must optimise the transmission of knowledge, which means keeping a tight lid on things.

The role of the educator is not to act like some kind of amateur psychologist, asking children about their private lives, their feelings, any experience of trauma. Delving into such places will only create messy breakouts, contributing nothing to the climate for learning, perhaps even causing psychological damage. School is for learning.

Some young people may benefit from access to a counsellor, that is acknowledged even within the most buttoned-up settings; pressure can build up in cans and they can then explode, which is even more messy than lifting the lid. But this kind of talk isn’t to be encouraged or actively promoted across the general school population, otherwise untrustworthy and attention-seeking adolescents, girls especially, will be queuing at the counsellor’s door as an escape from outside PE….regardless of what’s really going on inside them.

These are widely held views that I have heard versions of many times during my teaching career, notably when I introduced a key-worker scheme for distressed young people (the initiative I am most proud of, looking back – more about it later). Such views are regularly tweeted, often with the phrase ‘well intentioned’ to dismiss the case against whilst at the same time evoking wisdom, experience, sage-like perspective. ‘School is for learning’ – it has a seductive simplicity, a purity, a serious sense of mission, that idea.

When I’m confronted by such views now, I feel a mixture of dismay, frustration and ‘where do I start’ befuddlement. There are so many possible replies, including, I’m afraid, FFS (it’s not as if there isn’t readily available information about TIP that people could read before rejecting it) Perhaps I am writing this so that I can get the clearest, most constructive and (and socially appropriate) response straight in my head.

I think there are two essential points to make when we are defending TIP against the can of worms charge. First, that it’s based on a misconception about what the work actually means; people are inclined to hear the word ‘trauma’ and then go on to make erroneous assumptions about the practice (it must mean talking to children about their experience of trauma.)

Second, that when pupils do choose to open up to staff they trust, which is a privilege, then that can do no harm and a great deal of good. In the emotionally healthy school, there is nothing to be frightened of within the can and young people know that they don’t have to carry their burdens alone; they can open the lid and there is the relational capacity within the school to contain whatever comes out.

Point One: What trauma informed practice really means

There are whole tomes written about this. However, we cannot at once complain about misconceptions and then demand that those less invested in the trauma field read entire volumes to educate themselves. So here goes my shot at a summary, beginning with the neurobiological basics:

The infant’s brain develops from the bottom up. The lower parts that mature first are responsible for survival-related functions and responding to stress. The upper parts that develop throughout childhood, but exponentially in the first fifteen months, are responsible for executive functions….emotional regulation, reflection, memory, empathy, cognitive learning and so on.

Development of the upper regions, the cortical brain, depends upon prior development of lower parts. This means that when the stress response is repeatedly activated in the lower part of the brain (typically in the absence of safe, predictable, accessible relationships and through exposure to frightening experiences) then its sequential development is disturbed. Executive functioning in the upper, cortical brain is compromised by a level of stress that has become toxic.

However, the developing brain is highly malleable and with the right stimulus, for example immersion within a safe, relational, stress-reducing school environment, children and young people recover from what is properly called ‘relational and developmental trauma’, sometimes in miraculous ways.

Whilst this sounds very like attachment theory, and certainly the fields are intimately related, trauma-informed practice has a wider reach in that it acknowledges that the biological disturbance created by toxic stress can be rooted in a range of adverse experiences, not just disrupted attachment. These might include exposure to domestic violence, fractious divorce, complicated grief, a caregiver’s mental illness, addiction, violence, racism, bullying, poverty, war – and clearly the list could go on.

These experiences will have increased exponentially as a direct result of the pandemic, meaning that school cohorts will be containing higher levels of stress, on average.

TIP is about mitigating the impact of toxic stress such that children and young people can lower the guard, move out of their hyper-vigilant states, ‘settle to learn’ (Bomber). A key goal is to help those in survival mode expand over time their window of tolerance. A whole pedagogy is developing around this, much of it underpinned by Dr. Bruce Perry’s 3 Rs of Regulate, Relate, Reason.

Whilst there is an inherent challenge to some traditional approaches in all of this (hence perhaps the resistance), the practice does have a strong sense of common sense about it, as well as that biological evidence-base sketched out above. Think about a mistake you made when you were in an activated state; when you were full-up. A long story, but I messed up enormously and lost a job after my mum died. (There’s a reason why we take compassionate leave.)

The practice is emotional regulation, not encouraging children to tell us about their traumatic experiences. It’s about creating nurturing and relational school environments which are good for all children and young people, but essential for our most vulnerable. It’s about social buffering for young people who lack that and who are floundering as a result. It’s about all staff being regulated themselves and offering moments of simple human connection. It’s about understanding and embracing Dr Karen Treisman’s mantra:

It’s about stress reducing and not inducing school climate. It’s about understanding that for children to learn – and yes, school is for learning – we must first ‘get to the cortex’ (Dr. Bruce Perry) which means eliminating threat and creating a sense of belonging. Given the prevalence of childhood adversity, the deep recession we face and the impact that will have on our most marginalised families, it’s about the public duty.

Point two: Opening up is a good and necessary thing

Several safeguarding referrals resulted directly from my key-worker scheme. In that sense, the team did on occasion ‘open up a can of worms’, but thank goodness they did. Encouraging children to build trusting relationships with key staff and to talk is fundamental to keeping them safe. Ofsted inspectors routinely ask pupils if there is a member of staff they trust enough to talk to, for this very reason.

I was immensely proud of my key-worker team, which comprised TAs, a receptionist, the finance officer – my person specification was empathy and attunement, not a certificate in counselling. The provision was cherished by families, including our most marginalised, who had access to a friendly advocate in school; one who knew what was going on at home, who ‘got it’.

Adolescents in crisis had the opportunity to share their experiences and to make sense of them in the process and time was made for this, even if it meant missing some lessons, form-time or assemblies. It was a priority, a biologically respectful priority:

Dr. Perry talks about the human need to habituate difficult experiences by talking about them, by wrapping them up in language. When shaken by something, we pick up the phone, speak to our partners, a friend; we seek connection. The brain knows what it needs to do to prevent the tolerable stress that life inevitably throws up from becoming toxic.

A lot of the most dysregulated behaviour we see in school is driven by blocked grief, young people either not having access to that attuned and empathic other, or not having the self-awareness or perhaps even the language to articulate their distress and thereby reduce its toxicity. These are the young people who make up the numbers in our APs. Ask any PRU leader.

The school climate that discourages this kind of discourse can therefore never be a healing one for vulnerable children and young people who are relationally poor (Perry) and at greatly increased risk of poor outcomes, health and educational, because of that.

I want to finish with a reflection on Kate Clanchy’s wonderful ‘Some kids I taught and what they taught me’. She describes the journey she went on as an educator, from deep suspicion about the teacher as therapist role (not helped by her participation in a traumatising therapeutic writing workshop) to the most profound and moving realisation that her work is in reality deeply therapeutic, and that is the single most important thing about it. I think she charts the journey many teachers make, as simple ideas like ‘school is for learning’ are confounded by contact with complex young people who need something before that, and more than that.

Working with a poetry group comprising ‘disadvantaged but able’ learners, and studiously avoiding any psychological probing because of her firm beliefs about the English teacher’s role, Kate is struck by what her students choose to share. “Each week I show them a ‘real poem’ and they respond with screeds of their own about the hair-raising traumas of their every day lives: boyfriends in comas, deaths, physical and sexual abuse, abandonment. Then they share the results, and cry, buckets. I often cry too. They look forward to it all week, they say. And so do I…..we seem to have happened on a safe place, and a method of holding each other up. I seem to be getting better at this.”

Then the breakthrough comes, after the group has listened to an interview with performance poet Melissa Lee-Houghton, on the subject of poetry and mental health. Writing is not a cure, the poet explains, but it creates distance and control.

Control. This word has somehow never occurred to me before. My students are gaining control over a torrent of experience that has rendered them powerless. And if they dig deep, and find effective images, and make a good poem out of the truths of their lives, then that is not just control, but power. It’s different from being happy; it isn’t a cure for anything, but it is profoundly worth having.

And with confidence that this is helpful, vital, therapeutic – Kate asks her students about their lives, week in, week out, and they reply through the images they create.

So what does it feel like to lose your father to heroin, Amiee? Like being an out of control car, a broken branch on the ground, like rubbish that seagulls are picking, says Aimee. And when, after that, your sister leaves home? Like the moment the cloud goes over the sun and your room is full of shadow. And what does death look like? Like your mum’s addict boyfriend, coming to call with a can of Stella, like the stairwell you were too young to fling him down. And where is your mother, now? In my room. In the sunset. In her scent. In my poem, Miss, safe.

It seems when we worry less about losing control – opening the can of worms – we allow our most marginalised and vulnerable young people to gain it. We give them power over their experiences.

Pulling the two main points of this post together, though, it’s important to reiterate that TIP is not just ‘talking about trauma’. It is about creating the conditions which make such talk possible. Fundamentally, it’s about creating psychological safety within children who feel profoundly unsafe, such that they can learn, grow and thrive.