Behavioural, Emotional and Social Skills

Children and Young People may have many different emotional experiences for a period of time in their school life, for a whole range of different reasons. These emotions will inevitably have an impact on their wellbeing and their ability to participate in their learning.

Children and young people will be supported in different ways according to their needs within the school environment. Supporting children and young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties in the classroom is achieved through a relational approach. This is based around creating an understanding of how a child’s experiences will impact on how they view the world and how this will affect their behavioural responses on a day-to-day basis.

Positive Behaviour Support is most effective and successful when it is implemented across a whole service or organisation, rather than for an individual. It is also holistic and will often involve adapting the individual’s whole environment to meet their needs better as well as making sure they are able to develop new skills and have more opportunities. Its primary focus is to improve quality of life though an understanding of the reasons why an individual may use their behaviour to communicate and get their needs met; and then to use this understanding to build better support, to support positive outcomes, and to improve the services that the individual receives.

Schools should have:

• A whole school behaviour management policy which is used consistently by all staff.
• A whole school anti-bullying policy which is used consistently by all staff.

Good practice at schools should include:

• Using the GL Emotional Literacy Checklist and/or Boxall Profile
• A safe space to help regulate emotions
• Regulation techniques to help manage emotions, e.g. breathing exercises, a box of calming activities
• Thinking detectives
• Positive Play
• Trauma Informed Approaches
• Pet therapy
• Mindfulness
• Outdoor learning
• Restorative approaches
• Lego Therapy
• Buddy system, e.g. Circle of Friends
• Emotional coaching
• ChATT
• Talkabout
• PawsB

If a school is very concerned about a child/young person’s emotional and behavioural wellbeing, the Additional Learning Needs Coordinator might ask for advice and support from the Behaviour Support Community Team via the Carmarthenshire Four Phase Model Approach to supporting learners.