Behaviour For Life & Learning
Pens Meadow School staff and governors are committed to all aspects of positive behaviour support as we believe it is one of the essential foundations needed to create an effective learning and teaching environment, whilst ensuring a culture of respect, safety and security.
This includes a commitment to assist our pupils:
- To develop independence skills for use beyond school life
- To develop skills necessary to make informed choices, which others will respect, and to
communicate these choices to others
- To make and maintain social relationships and friendships
- To continue in the ongoing process of self-discovery
- To reduce incidences of behaviour which adversely impact on one’s own physical or emotional
- wellbeing, or on the emotional or physical wellbeing of others
We believe that challenging behaviour is most often the result of an unmet need, or a difficulty in communicating that need to others. We are aware that many of our pupils’ experience sensory issues and may find particular environments and experiences overstimulating, frightening or uncomfortable. Adults and peers can be sources of unpredictable actions and sensory sensations; transitions and demands which interrupt routines and repetitive activities (which a pupil may rely on to give a sense of order and predictability to their day) can provoke anxieties which may be communicated to others through behaviour which is challenging in its nature.
We believe that, in order to be active and valued participants in society as adults, our pupils need to be empowered to respond to, and cope with a range of potential situations and demands. These include:
- Coping with waiting (for an activity, person, event etc)
- Coping with being told “no” (when something wanted cannot be given or is not available at all, regardless of how long you might wait)
- Coping with doing a non-preferred activity (doing something/going somewhere, even though you would rather not do it at all eg as an adult: doing housework, going to the dentist etc)
- Coping with criticism (when somebody passes judgment on your performance, justly or unjustly, and responding appropriately to this)
- Taking action when the activity/environment you are in becomes too unpleasant to stay
We recognise that pupils who attend Pens Meadow School present with a range of severe, profound, multiple or complex learning needs and consequently need support through skilled teaching, to learn the coping, tolerance and communication skills listed above.
By identifying unwanted behaviour, considering physical and sensory issues, addressing mismatches in the environment and focusing on a person’s highly individualised strengths and needs, we aim to design programmes to teach more effective means of communication, more socially appropriate interactions with others, and greater tolerance of the different environments and demands which will be encountered in everyday life.
Further information can be found in Behaviour for Life and Learning policy here.
