Information About Nurture Groups

What are Nurture Groups?

Sometimes children need extra support to help them with their learning, making friends and growing into confident and successful individuals.  Nurture groups can help provide that support for children and parents to give them the skills they need to do well at school, and deal more confidently and calmly with the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

Nurture groups aim to support incremental learning goals based on the individual development needs of the child.  They offer a safe and secure environment that promotes wellbeing and is conducive to positive relationships through sensitive, consistent, predictable, reliable and responsive adult support.  They are a teacher-led, small-group, effective intervention that can immerse children  in an accepting and warm environment which helps develop positive relationships with both teachers and peers.  The relevance of early childhood experiences on learning, development and wellbeing are linked to the significance of attachment theory and how this underpins nurture practice and principles.  Nurture groups foster achievement and celebrate successes by being emotionally positive and supporting the children to recognise, name, understand and deal with feelings.  Attachment needs affect the ability to relate to others and also for self-care.  Attachment needs to be built by: relating to the emotional age of the child; by taking an interest in the child; by challenging assumptions; by containing behaviour; by regulating behaviour and by soothing behaviour.   Empowering children to be able to make their own decisions and choices, free from negative stressors, with the key focus being ensuring the child’s wellbeing.  Amongst other facilities, Nurture Groups often have: soft furnishings (for closeness eg story time); a dining area, snack time (for sharing and turn taking); a kitchen area (for cooking, hand washing); a tables and chairs (a work area); a bean bag/quiet area (for taking a break/refocus) and a book area (for adult and child choice).

 

Why would my child benefit from attending the Nurture Group?

It has been recognised that children need to feel secure in school to reach their potential in their learning.  Time in the Nurture Group will be spent focussing on building confidence and self-esteem. This will support the child to become a confident learner who can participate well in a team and feel secure to work independently.  By adults providing structure, children build feelings of competence and confidence within an atmosphere of shared warmth, spontaneity, optimism and fun.  Offering engagement activities with supportive adult leadership reassures the child that the adult will provide comfort and security. Finally, by creating a nurturing yet challenging environment, the child feels ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ promoting connection, self-control and organisation.  Communication between mainstream school, The Nurture Group and parents is ongoing via face to face, emails and telephone calls.

 

Nurture Groups have 6 principles:

1. Children’s learning is understood developmentally i.e. just as they are, with positive regard.
2. The classroom is a safe base with a balance of educational and domestic experiences together with structured time/routines and attention to detail led by reliable and consistent adults.
3. Children are encouraged to attribute success to their own efforts rather than external factors i.e. the ability to listen and respond, by noticing and praising small achievements.
4. Language is a vital means of communication; rather than ‘act out feelings’ adults support children to ‘talk and share’ by providing safe and modelled, opportunities to do so.
5. All behaviour is ‘communication’, adults support the children to make links between their external and internal world by responding to behaviour in firm, non-punitive ways.
6. Supporting transitions, for example between classes, between adults and between activities.

 

What do Nurture Groups do?

Adults aim to accept and support children with trauma who can struggle to be able to respond appropriately to other children and adults.

Early life trauma can adversely affect the child’s emotional, cognitive and social development alongside long-term physical and mental health.  Nurture groups help to provide interactions that establish:

• Calm physiology – to enjoy good health.
• Social joy and engagement of play for the capacity to develop fulfilling friendships.
• Conversation – for language development and learning.
• Caring and comforting interactions that build the capacity to feel content.
• Interactions that establish self-esteem to build confidence, resilience and self-compassion.
• Comply with mental health and well-being policies for schools.

 

What is trauma and how can Nurture support?

Early life trauma may produce anger, fear or panic meaning the child needs adult support to meet their emotional intensity (positive or negative) with empathy, to build language skills necessary to convey their emotions i.e. to label feelings.  Containment using clear structures, boundaries and consequences allow the child to learn how to sooth and calm their emotionally dysregulated states over time and develop effective regulation systems to reduce anxiety, depression and/or aggression.  Feelings, empathy and emotional understanding are hard-wired into our brains during early relationship experiences in the first years of life; impulse control, emotional control, planning & prioritising; flexibility; working memory; self-monitoring; task initiation and organisation are all linked to this skill.

Through play and learning interactions, Nurture adults support the child to form safe connections and accept their feelings with empathy.  ‘Attachment Play’ can help to organise brain growth both to regulate the brain and the body systems.  By developing positive relationships and building positive experiences, raw feelings can develop into a secure base by knowing where to go for help; regulating own emotions and have faith in someone else to help them.  By forming trusting relationships with adults who are responsive to their individual needs, together with the adult role modelling of appropriate behaviour/social skills, pupils can recognise triggers of anger and distinguish between helpful and unhelpful responses.

Communication, and the skill to take ‘Conversational Turns’ can be encouraged to stimulate attachment play and therefore increasing cognitive function, building emotional regulation and understanding social skills.  By working in small groups, self-esteem can be encouraged together with building confidence and happiness in interactions.  By using ‘Emotion Coaching’ i.e. empathising verbally and spending time talking and discussing feelings and emotions (language and vocabulary) this then can build engagement in the world around us together with the ability to self-reflect and be rational thinkers rather than emotional thinkers.  This, in turn, leads to the self-regulatory skills of being able to deal with ‘set-backs’, ‘boundaries’ and ‘social rules’.

Nurture Groups offer opportunities to replace missing early experiences by developing positive pupil relationships with both teachers and peers in a supportive environment, with staff modelling good relationships and providing experiences in which to build self-esteem and supporting learning goals incrementally based on the development needs of the child.  Adults accept and value all children resulting in increased learning based on self-efficacy (the belief in one’s abilities to meet challenge and complete a task) and self-esteem (a general feeling of value and self-worth).

 

What is the curriculum in Nurture Groups

• The curriculum is thematic, well-planned, engaging and effective.
• There is emphasis on developing personal, social and emotional skills to effectively engage in the classroom activities.
• To build foundational skills that all children need for healthy development and learning to accomplish their goals
• To teach and develop the skills to manage stressful conditions and regulate their emotions.
• Using the Boxall Profile, Nurture Groups measure both social and emotional skills (Developmental Strands allowing for good use of educational and social opportunities) and challenging behaviours (Diagnostic Strands describing those that inhibit or interfere with engagement of learning). The Boxall Profile is a teacher-led assessment of the social & emotional, and behavioural difficulties of the child; allowing teachers to identify missing skills so that targeted and individualised support can be put in place to help develop these skills.
• A typical day in the Nurture Provision begins at 9.00am and ends at 3.00pm. Meet & Greet.  Carpet Chat.  Group Sofa Story.  Circle Game (Education based). Maths. Outside play with KS1. Group Table Snack. Literacy (Phonics, Handwriting, EGPS). Lunch (In the Hall) and Outside Play with KS1. KS1 Assembly on a Tuesday and a Friday.  Carpet Chat. Group Carpet Story.  Circle Game.  Afternoon Activities: Art, PE, Cooking, Golden Time (Geography, History, Science). Carpet Time. Home time.

 

Nurture Group Referral Process

• Support put in place in mainstream school with Maplefields Outreach, usually 6-12 weeks in time.
• Referral completed by Maplefields Outreach; Assessment included.
• Referral approved by Rachel Clews and the child is put on the waiting list.
• Parents/Carers invited into the Nurture provision.
• A Nurture Group place becomes available.
• The child is invited to the Nurture Group.
• The child begins the Nurture Group, 4 days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday – mainstream class all day on a Thursday).
• Monitor and review after 4 weeks with mainstream school.
• Monitor and review termly with mainstream school.
• Transition plan arranged when appropriate.

 

What is Behaviour?

The brain drives behaviour, it is shaped by brain development, emotional experiences and stress responses.  When the brain senses danger, real or imagined, it triggers an automatic stress response to keep us safe.  In these moments, children may struggle to explain or control their behaviour as their brains and bodies are focused on survival.  Logical thinking is reduced and impulse control and decision making become harder.  The brain has predominantly four functions: attention (whether positive or negative); escape (eg run away to avoid a task); access (eg wanting a biscuit)  and sensory needs (eg tapping, rocking to replace discomfort).  Behaviours can be split into ABC: Antecedents (eg internal – being hungry, external – being asked to write); Behaviours (eg internal – thoughts, external – flipping a chair); Consequences – what occurs following behaviour.

 

Barnardo’s (Workplace Approach)

• A whole system approach to a trauma-informed practice.
• Trauma results from an event, a series of events, or a set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as harmful or life threatening. This experience can cause lasting adverse effects, limiting the ability to function and achieve mental, physical, social, emotional or spiritual well-being.
• When we feel ‘unsafe’ we may: flock, fight, flight, freeze, friend or flop.
• Behaviour as communication: quick to anger; poor self-esteem; difficulty controlling emotion; not opening up; feelings of guilt or shame; anxious; forgetful; unable to concentrate’ distrusting; a snappy email; frequent aches and pains; minimising challenges; hypervigilant; impulsive, withdrawn.

 

Returning to mainstream

The length of time spent within the Nurture Group provision is different for each child.  When the time is right for the child to return to their mainstream class, their mainstream days will be increased gradually at a pace determined by the Class Teacher, Nurture Group and the child’s success.  Once their time within the Nurture provision comes to an end, the child then continues with support and advice from Maplefields Outreach within their mainstream school and access to Nurture Group cannot recommence.