What do teachers, school lunchtime staff, reception, SENCO’s, school nurses all have in common? Yes you have guessed it, working with children. Yet so often only teachers and teaching assistants are offered additional training like trauma awareness. This is a shame as all school staff have contact with children and can benefit from extra support to understand complex child behaviours. Children in the care system or on the edge of care can display very challenging behaviour. These behaviours are often interpreted as naughty and the result of this means that children end up being placed in a pupil referral unit or be permanently excluded. This can severely impact on a child’s future outcomes and for those children who have already experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) it could be devastating.
To ensure that a school has a shared knowledge of trauma and neglect and how this impacts on children’s behaviour in the school setting Cornerstone and Southend Local Authority visited Greenway Primary School last week and ran a 2 day training session on trauma awareness using Cornerstone VR.
There was an evaluation survey conducted before experiencing the VR content and then we will survey the cohort again one month after the VR Trauma Awareness Training to see if there has been a attitudinal shift or any behavioural change at the school. Giving the school staff time to talk, reflect and experience and then have constructive discussion on what they would like to achieve as a school has been a great way to embed the knowledge within the school.
We will follow up this post with some analysis on the data collected by the evaluation in a months time so check in with us then to see what changes have happened in Greenways School. If you are interested in creating more trauma awareness in your organisation get in touch with us on info@thecornerstonepartnership.com