Educational Psychology Service W E S T L O T H I A N C O U N C I L Standards and Quality Newsletter 2014-2015 Introduction This Standards and Quality Newsletter reports on the work of the Educational Psychology Service (EPS) during the academic session 2014-2015. The EPS has focused on continuing to provide high quality consultation and intervention for individual children and families through our work in schools whilst working to ensure that our wider involvements in the key strategic priorities of Raising Attainment, Early Intervention and Continuing Life-Long Professional Learning (CLPL) have also had the opportunity to develop. We have also been undertaking some significant work in relation to our self-evaluation processes this year to bring them into line with the West Lothian Assessment Model (WLAM) process as part of the wider Education Service. In addition to this internal self-evaluation work, in June, the EPS successfully completed an external Validated Self-Evaluation (VSE) process with Education Scotland. We would like to thank all of our multi-agency partners for their support to us in this. The process has given us clear direction and focus for taking the EPS forward and the formal report on this work will be issued by Education Scotland at the start of the new academic session. As a result of our VSE experience, we will be significantly changing our Improvement Plan in the coming year. We will be focusing and targeting our priorities in those areas of practice where we know there is evidence of high impact and with those people whom we know will benefit the most. Inside this issue: Introduction 1 Team Action Plan 2014-2015 2 Early Intervention: Early Years (Baby Brains, PoPP, 2 year olds) 2 Early Intervention: Give us a Break (Loss and Bereavement Groups) 3 Early Intervention: MHMWB Screening Group Early Intervention: Self-harm Development work Raising Attainment: Selfevaluation (EPS) Raising Attainment: Philosophy with Children Looked After Children 5 Future Service Delivery : Secondary School Working Future Service Delivery: Assessment (CAP) CLPL Primary HT Pilot 7 3 4 4 5 6 6 In line with the Education Service priority, our main focus will continue to be Raising Attainment and we will be working with key partners to ensure that collectively, we continue to promote and support best practice in relation to this agenda. We hope you enjoy reading about the work of the service. If you have any questions about the content of this newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact the Principal Educational Psychologist using the contact details provided. Electronic File Management 7 Research and Development 8 Education Scotland VSE 8 New Developments 2015-2017 9 Service Statistics at a glance 100% of schools who responded to our questionnaire rated the overall quality of customer service delivered by the EPS as either good or excellent 88% of parents surveyed rated the overall involvement of the EPS as good/ excellent 93% of the 332 people for whom we provided training / development work last session rated our input as good/excellent Focus group feedback from partner agencies revealed that the range and quality of work we provide is valued.
Page 2 Educational Psychology Service Team Action Plan 2014-2015 This year s Team Action Plan was constructed using the local and national priorities for Education Services and the Council as a whole as outlined in the Education Services Management Plan and the Single Outcome Agreement. In addition, our planning was informed by the recommendations for self-evaluation arising from the Education Scotland Aspect Report for Educational Psychology Services in Scotland (March 2011) and by the West Lothian Assessment Model process. In order to ensure leadership opportunities for the whole team, members of the team have been responsible for specific elements of the Team Action Plan. This newsletter is therefore written by the team and reports on the overall work of the EPS, providing evidence of the impact of our work. Our 2014-2015Team Action Plan can be found at: http://www.westlothian.gov.uk/educationpsychologyservice Section 1: Raising Attainment through Early Years and Early Intervention 1(a) Psychology of Parenting Programme (PoPP) / Baby Brains / Vulnerable 2 year olds There were three main strands to our Early Years project area this year. 1- Psychology of Parenting Project The plan this session was for the EPS to continue to support the authority wide implementation of PoPP through an ongoing commitment of staff to the delivery of PoPP groups for referred families. Despite significant efforts to engage with this process, the identification of relevant families was challenging. As a result, it was decided, in consultation with social policy colleagues, that the input from the EPS would be better targeted in developing early years nurture and attachment work. 2- Baby Brains The plan for this work this year was to test and roll out the delivery of this programme developed by the EPS as part of the Early Years Collaborative approach. The Baby Brains programme provides an overview of early infant development and the importance of early attachment relationships. This year, it has been provided to a wide range of groups including parents-to-be through ante-natal class contacts, groups of carers and groups of early years staff. Overall, evaluation of the Baby Brain sessions has been very positive, both from the perspective of parents and staff working with babies and young children, and from the perspective of partner agencies who saw us as being very supportive of them achieving their own aims and objectives, within the Early Years and Early Intervention agendas. Through our own self-evaluation process, it has been identified that we need to focus now on longer term impact evaluation of this work. Follow-up sessions, and consideration of a universal and/or targeted approach to ensure best use of EPS resources will now take place. 3 Vulnerable 2 Year olds The plan this year was to explore ways in which the EPS can support vulnerable 2 year-olds coming into early childcare and education settings as part of the national agenda. The Authority has provided central support for this work. As a result, this work was combined with the Baby Brain work and the programme was provided as part of the training and support for staff. This will be developed and embedded as part of the ongoing work of the EPS going forwards.
1(b) Early Intervention: Give us a Break (Loss and Bereavement groupwork support) Give us a Break! (GUAB) is an 8-week programme developed by South Lanarkshire Educational Psychology Service, Macmillan Cancer Support and NHS Lanarkshire for young people who have experienced any kind of change or loss in their lives (eg. family break up or bereavement). It is appropriate for both primary and secondary aged pupils. The EPS has been working with South Lanarkshire EPS over the last couple of years to develop our use of this programme in West Lothian. Over this academic session, 10 GUAB groups involving 45 children and young people have taken place across West Lothian. Initial evaluation data from groups has been used to evidence positive outcomes in terms of social skills, emotional literacy, behaviour at school and home and also goal setting for the pupils since attending the group. Some feedback from children and young people involved in GUAB Groups include: Page 3 It is still hard (discussing feelings with others) but better than before the group I have become more focussed in class. The group helped to give me space to get things off my chest. I m more focussed in school. I m going to classes more and not getting as angry with people. I feel like the course has helped and teachers and my sisters have noticed. At the start of the course I didn t know if I d be able to go to uni but I now have more confidence to believe in myself Training and Development A further 5 members of the Children and Young People s Team were trained in March which will allow a larger number of groups to run over the next school session. This year we have offered two support and development sessions to facilitators to allow them the opportunity to share good practice and discuss the challenges involved in running the groups. Feedback from the facilitators suggests they found these sessions helpful and have learned from more experienced practitioners. The EPS is now able to train our own facilitators and, alongside a colleague from LAC outreach, we have offered 3 training sessions next session in September, February and June to West Lothian colleagues. The intention is that this will allow us to be self-sufficient as an authority in training facilitators and running groups. Referrals for children to take part in GUAB continue to come in through the Mental Health and Wellbeing Screening group or by contacting school Educational Psychologists. If you would like any further information about the GUAB programme, running a group in your school or getting staff trained to become facilitators please contact Lesley Nelson, Educational Psychologist lesley.nelson@westlothian.gov.uk. Early Intervention in Mental Health support 1 (c )Mental Health and Mental Wellbeing Screening Group In response to feedback from our partners last year, the EPS took a deliberate decision to become more involved in activities with partners for specific purposes. As a result, the EPS became core members of the multi-agency MHMWB Screening Group from August 2014. Between 3 EPs, we have attended fortnightly meetings of the group throughout the academic session. Mid-way through the year following an evaluation meeting with the chair of the group, we altered our attendance pattern to allow more continuity across meetings with each EP attending for a term at a time. Our involvement in this work was discussed as part of our Service VSE with Education Scotland in June 2015. It was noted that it had been a positive aspect of our service delivery and partners reported being clearer about our role as a result of our being involved in the group and that our contribution to the process was valued. As a result, our involvement in this work will continue next year and will become part of our core service delivery work. We will review our involvement regularly to ensure that the ongoing needs of the group continue to be met.
Page 4 Early Intervention in Mental Health Support 1 (c ) Self-Harm Multi-agency development work Through feedback from our links with partners in the Children and Young People Team (MHMWB Screening Group) and the Health Improvement Team, it became clear last year that there was a potential gap in support for colleagues working with children and young people engaging in self-harm behaviour. As a result, the EPS facilitated the establishment of a multi-agency working group for the purpose of developing more detailed guidance for staff across a range of agencies. As a result of this working group, draft guidance has been produced that will be issued in conjunction with existing Health Improvement Team training for multi-agency staff on self-harm. It is anticipated that this guidance will receive council approval over the summer months and that a formalised West Lothian guidance document will be available for use from September 2015. Ongoing development of the training programme to accompany the guidance will take place next session across multi-agency groups. Section 2: Raising Attainment through Self-Evaluation In response to feedback from the Executive Management Team through the WLAM process, the EPS has been working on developing our self-evaluation processes this year. Feedback indicated that we required to establish mechanisms for gathering more regular views from our stakeholders who include parents / young people, schools and partner agencies. As a result, we have altered our self-evaluation cycle this year and have gathered sampled feedback from a range of stakeholders. This feedback is now stored in COVALENT and is assisting us in measuring performance more effectively. Our Team Action Plan activity centred around developing methods for gathering stakeholder information from parents/carers and children/young people. We also took time to develop mechanisms for us as Educational Psychologists to reflect on the impact of our casework. As a result of the requirement to fully embrace the WLAM process, the timescale for implementation of our selfevaluation tools has been delayed. The tools themselves have however been successfully developed and the intention is to begin to embed these in practice from August 2015. This work will become part of the EPS core approach to self-evaluation next year and will therefore no longer be a specific focus in the Improvement Plan. Some quotes from Parental feedback Our Educational Psychologist did everything possible, was very friendly, and our child will be going to a mainstream school. We are delighted with that. We wouldn t be where we are now without our Educational Psychologist. I am now helping him (my child) much better. Our Educational Psychologist has helped us tremendously and has really been there for all of us. Our Educational Psychologist helped to normalise our experience and reassure us that things would work out all right. Behaviour radically improved in between our Educational Psychologist s two visits. Our Educational Psychologist has been brilliant. She has been a great help to us this year. I can t praise her highly enough. Our Educational Psychologist helped to explain things really clearly and to reassure me. We trust our Educational Psychologist. I feel that our Educational Psychologist has gone beyond what I would have expected of the service. She accompanied me to a meeting that I wasn t confident about and was really supportive. She has also provided reports and has talked them through to make them easy to understand, it has been helpful to get a bit more insight into my son.
Section 3: Raising Attainment through Philosophy with Children As a follow up to our production of the six Information Leaflets summarising the factors that are key to raising attainment, we were interested to explore mechanisms related to how teachers can be empowered to raise attainment in the classroom. We established an experimental project with the University of Strathclyde and two partner schools. This project was based on evolving research into the positive effects Philosophy with Children has on outcomes for children in all aspects of school life. Our focus was on the development of pedagogical skills for teachers. This course included participants having six sessions involving participation in philosophical inquiry which was reported to have been challenging but provided useful insights into children s learning. VSE feedback both in the participating primary school and from our own process, was encouraging, though the course only concluded in May. Most recently a BBC report has indicted a two month gain in Literacy and Numeracy skills in the course of a year using philosophy as a vehicle. We are hoping it will be possible to build on this experiment and expand the potential of philosophy in teaching and learning through the Moving Forward in Learning agenda. To understand more about how philosophical approaches can impact on teaching and learning see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb4myginrl4 Section 4: Raising the Attainment of Looked After Children 4 (a) Families Included Service The service has been a key partner in the social policy led Families Included Service (FIS) over the past session. We have identified a FIS Delivery Lead within the team to keep EPs informed of which families the project was supporting and the Principal Educational Psychologist has been the Education Service representative on the Steering Group. This work has been independently evaluated with findings showing significant positive gains for families and for the authority in relation to overall service costs. The FIS is undergoing review and reshaping as part of council wide planning for vulnerable families. The EPS will continue to link with the FIS during this reshaping process and will continue to offer support to the FIS through advice and consultation. This work will no longer have a focus on the Improvement Plan and will become part of our core service delivery. 4 (b) Looked After Children in Outwith Authority Placements The Service continues to support children and young people who are looked after (LAC) who live within West Lothian as well as those who are placed in schools outwith the Authority. This year, we linked with the Development Officers for Education in order to identify how best to meet the needs of LAC pupils who attend mainstream schools outwith the Authority. The roles of the EPS and the Development Officers in relation to supporting these children and young people have been clarified and the links between our service area have been strengthened. This year, the profession also received guidance from the Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists (ASPEP) on working in partnership with other Educational Psychology Services to meet the needs of LAC pupils who are hosted in other local authorities. Using the GIRFEC principles, it has been agreed that Educational Psychology Services will work together to meet the needs of pupils in cross-authority placements and the EPS has adopted this approach as part of the national pilot process.
Page 6 Section 5: Future Service Delivery Planning Our focus on Future Service delivery work in last year s Action Plan highlighted the need for further investigation of our work in Secondary Schools and also on our general assessment work. As a result, we undertook the following areas of work this year to explore these in more detail. 5 (a) Secondary School Working At the start of the year, we set 4 project targets for ourselves in the area of Secondary School working: 1. To share secondary school practice more widely within the team 2. To increase efficacy of service delivery to secondary sector 3. To increase joint working between EPs 4. To complement the development of secondary school learning Hubs Through self-evaluation of our targets, we feel that we have made good progress in relation to sharing the way we work in secondary schools more widely across the team. We plan to use casework self-reflection tools next session to further develop our evaluation of how effective service delivery is in this sector. We also feel that we have made significant development in the area of joint working and we will continue to seek opportunities to work together. The Hub system continues to develop within schools and we feel that, as the next academic year progresses, there will be further opportunities to make use of these networks to support EPS service delivery in Secondary Schools. Secondary school working will have lower priority for the EPS in session 2015-16. In line with feedback from our VSE process we will focus on adopting a more targeted approach to delivering CLPL which will complement Hub priorities. 5 (b) EPS Assessment practice: Cognitive Abilities Profile Consistency of assessment approach was highlighted as an area for development as a result of last year s Future Service Delivery Team Action Plan discussions. As a result, the whole EPS received input on the use of the Cognitive Abilities Profile (CAP) in September 2014. The CAP is an assessment tool designed to facilitate a Dynamic Assessment approach to informing the learning and teaching process. The majority of the team engaged in using the Cognitive Abilities Profile in their work in schools throughout the year and 2 members of the team attended additional in-depth training in Dynamic Assessment mid-way through the year. This input was shared with the team through team discussion in March 2015. Plans to review this work within the team in conjunction with the original training provider have been scheduled for the start of the new academic session. Informal feedback so far has indicated that the those team members using the approach widely feel that it is providing assessment information that is more directly linked to learning and teaching, thus making it an effective assessment tool to support intervention. Section 6: Raising Attainment through research: Primary Head Teacher Pilot The aim of this pilot group was to create an opportunity for Career-Long Professional Learning (CLPL) for Primary School Head Teachers through discussion of educational research, models of school leadership, and developing action research skills. Head Teachers were asked to volunteer for the pilot group and were surveyed before the start of the group to get an idea of the topics they might like to cover over the year.
Page 7 Eight Head Teachers and one Depute Head Teacher joined the group initially. As a result of competing demands on time, five Head Teachers and the Depute Head completed the group. Ongoing feedback was collected after key group sessions in order to gauge the pacing and content of the individual sessions. An end of year focus group was held with 3 HTs who had taken part in the pilot to gather their views on what they had gained from being part of the group, whether the group had met their expectations, what challenges had been encountered along the way, and suggestions for moving forward. This focus group activity was included in the wider EPS VSE process with Education Scotland. Head Teachers valued both the opportunities to engage in professional dialogue based on educational research (on leadership and other topics) as well as the opportunity to develop their action enquiry skills and apply these in school (or to coach staff in action research project development). This project was aimed at having a positive impact on the raising attainment agenda through supporting the professional development of HTs. Many of the HTs who took part in the project were able to take their own professional development from the group and translate it to their staff (e.g. engaging them in dialogue about action research and developing research projects within their schools) and a few of them were able to take their action research projects further and were able to report some early evidence of positive gains for pupils as a result of the research projects carried out in their schools. Overall, this work is considered to have been successful in providing a CLPL tool for Primary Head Teachers. Going forwards, the EPS plans to use a similar model to deliver a range of CLPL opportunities for staff in professional learning groups across the Authority in joint discussion with the Professional development Co-Ordinator and other key strategic partners in order to ensure a joined up approach. Section 7: General Service Improvements Electronic File Management A range of possible solutions to the identified need for a replacement Psychological Service data-base and enhanced electronic case-file management system, was explored with the help of IT Services and Council Procurement. Attempts were made to see whether a suitable SEEMIS-based solution might become available to us. A tendering process was also undertaken to explore what other systems within and outwith the Council - may be suitable alternatives. Currently, the SEEMIS system appears unlikely to materialise for the foreseeable future. Also, despite an existing in-house solution having been identified, there were problems around its datasecurity that prevented implementation. Our current data-base ( One ) has however had its Council licence extended until March 2016, with the likelihood of continued accessing beyond that date. Preparatory work into developing the Council s Meridio system for electronic case-file document storage has also taken place, as a possible interim measure. A decision will be made shortly on whether to proceed along these lines, taking into account the likely benefits - and practical implications - involved.
Page 8 Research and Development Overview Session 2014-2015 has proved to be a busy year for the Service in the key area of research and development work. In September, we welcomed a new Research Assistant, Laura Clark, to the team. Laura has brought her skills and enthusiasm to the EPS and has taken a leading role in several key areas of research over the year, including: developing and delivering sessions for the Head Teacher Professional Development Group research in St Anthony s RC Primary looking at the impact of homework supporting the schools who had successfully bid for the Grounds for Learning Project to look at using action research to evaluate the project developments within their schools providing research support for the 1+2 Languages initiative in West Lothian and gathering information and attending Building Learning Power training in order support the Hub 1 schools who are taking on this approach to teaching and learning. Research work as also focused on adopting the WLAM model of self-evaluation and on preparing for our Validated Self-Evaluation with Education Scotland this year. We will be producing our annual Research Newsletter in September 2015 which will provide more detail of the range of projects in which we have been involved over the last 12 months. This will be shared widely with schools and partner agencies and will be available on our service web-site. Validated Self-evaluation Process (VSE) - Education Scotland The EPS completed our Validated Self-Evaluation process with Education Scotland in June. We would like to thank all of our partners from schools, CYPT, Health Improvement Team, outreach services, Speech and Language Therapy and Education Central colleagues who helped to make this a success. The VSE focused on 2 National themes: Learning & Teaching and Partnership Working. The formal report will be published by Education Scotland at the start of the new academic session but some of the highlights include strengths for the service in: Impacting positively on learning and teaching through the application of research and evidence based interventions Strong contribution to the Career Long Professional Learning of education and multi-agency staff Strong partnership working to support key council and national priorities such as raising attainment and early intervention Involvement in key strategic planning groups which enables the EPS to inform key developments The process also suggested a number of areas of consideration for improvement including: Targeting the work of the EPS in those areas where we know there is high impact Reviewing our current service delivery model to enable greater flexibility in the delivery of high impact work Involving the wider team in strategic developments Linking more closely with Education central colleagues to more effectively target staff development priorities and quality improvement. We will be incorporating this feedback into our Team Action Plan for the new session and working with partners to develop the service going forwards.
Page 9 New Developments for session 2015-2017 We will be working on developing a new 2 year Improvement Plan going forwards. A copy of the service Improvement Plan for 2015-2017 will be available on the service web-site from August 2015. Priorities for the Service next session will include: 1. Nurture: Early Years (Closing the Gap / early intervention) 2. Transformational Change for ASN 3. Raising Attainment through Learning and Teaching In addition to this we will be re-aligning our CLPL framework with these priorities and will be targeting our resources at more clearly identified groups. We will also be working on embedding our self-evaluation processes into our annual cycle of service delivery. 1. Nurture: Early Years focus The EPS will be supporting 45 of our primary schools with the implementation of Nurture approaches as part of an authority wide initiative over the next 2 years. We will be working with partners to support the implementation and evaluation of Nurture within our schools. We are also pleased to welcome Leisel Harvey as a seconded teacher to the EPS to work with us on this initiative. Leisel will take up her 0.5 post from August. 3. Learning and Teaching: Research We will be taking a fresh focus on the research in relation to best practice in raising attainment in relation to teaching pedagogy. We will be consolidating learning from the John Hattie research and will be building on growing interest in Building Learning Power and Growth Mindsets to further support the work of the Moving Forward in Learning agenda. Implementation of the Children and Young People s Act (2014) 2. Additional Support Needs Working jointly with the wider ASN and EO Team, we will be working to define and establish new planning processes for children with additional support needs. This will result in changes to the ways in which we currently work with our schools and partner agencies and we will look forward to developing this work jointly with partners as this year unfolds. CLPL: Building Capacity We will refocus our CLPL activity around these new priorities and will be working jointly with EO and CLPL colleagues to ensure a more cohesive approach. Self-Evaluation: We will be building on the self-evaluation data that has been gathered this year through our Team Action Plan project, WLAM and our VSE to further embed self-evaluation into practice. As key partners in the Education Service, we will be working together with schools and multiagency partners to facilitate the implementation of the Children and Young People s Act (2014) in line with the government timescale of August 2016. A copy of our new look Improvement Plan will be available on the EPS website from August 2015. If you have any questions about the content of this Newsletter, please contact the Principal Educational Psychologist www.westlothian.gov.uk/educationpsychologyservice Jennyfer McNiven Principal Educational Psychologist Educational Psychology Service West Lothian Civic Centre Howden South Road Livingston, EH54 6FF Tel 01506 283130