Meeting and Workshop Facilitation

Customer

One of Scotland's largest special schools, working with severely autistic children.

The Task

The task was to help the school's management team develop a strategy that put the child at the centre of everything the school did. This was made difficult because the school was historically split into several staff teams that had different remits and approaches they used. This was complicated by the fact that the school also had to consult with trade unions.

Our Approach

We held a series of workshops to identify how the staff team at a special school could best work together to focus the school's service provision on the individual child's needs. We did this by asking what people understood the phrase "child centered" to mean and how they would know they were succeeding. These were translated into critical success factors, which all staff teams bought into. Having achieved this, we then developed specific objectives that would need to be in place to meet these. During this process the management team participated as peers to the other staff. A further workshop comprised of volunteers from each staff group then shaped these objectives into a priorities action plan, agreed to by the management team and trade unions, members of which participated in the whole process.

The Result

The school implemented the action plan and have restructured into multidisciplinary teams with educators, carers and support staff working together with small groups of children, allowing the school to focus on the children much easier, as all the teams understand their childrens' needs more fully.  

Please also see our other Case Studies.