Relationship Policy

Vision and Ethos

Lansdown Park Academy is a Pupil Referral Unit / Early Intervention Base based in Stockwood in South Bristol. We are part of the Cabot Learning Federation Trust having joined in the Summer of 2023.

We provide education for pupils from KS1-3 who require additional support around their behaviour. Pupils receive a tailored curriculum that supports them to re-engage with education and to help prepare and plan for their next steps.

This Relationships policy aims to provide an overview of our approach to how we support the growth and maintenance of positive relationships, to support positive engagement and behaviours. Our approaches ensure that we meet the SEND needs of our students and make provision for their different learning needs. The policy supports our Vision and Mission Statement.

Our Vision and Mission allow pupils to Belong, Grow and Succeed

Our Vision 

Lansdown Park Academy wants to see a world where every child is valued for who they are, inspired to realise their potential and empowered to achieve their dreams.  

Our Mission 

Is to provide a safe, inclusive and aspirational learning environment, where all pupils are prepared for their next steps and leave us with the skills to become well-rounded members of the community

These statements form the backbone to everything that happens at Lansdown Park Academy. From the curriculum to the environment and to the experiences that pupils receive while with us.

At Lansdown Park Academy we know that developing and sustaining positive relationships is central to the success of our school. We believe that trusting, honest and caring relationships must exist between all members of the school community and most importantly between adults and children.

Our school is invested in supporting the best possible relationship health between:

• School staff
• Child and school staff
• Child and child
• Parent/carer and school staff
• School staff and senior leads
• School staff and external agencies

Everyone at Lansdown Park Academy (LPA) understands that they have a responsibility to support the growth of positive relationships, that constant maintenance is required to maintain them and that there will be times when relationships rupture but that we all have a duty to help repair these.

Lansdown Park’s relationship policy provides the foundations for the behaviour policy. Adults all know that behaviour is understood as communication and that poor behaviour is as a result of an unmet need. All staff have been trained in ways to be in relationship with children, and each other, that helps everyone work together in a positive and productive way to support the emotional needs of our children and nurture positive behaviour.

Our approach to relationships is based on the teachings of Trauma Informed Schools UK (TISUK) and Bruce Perry’s teaching on the Neuro Sequential Model of Education. It is underpinned by educational practices which ‘Protect, Relate, Regulate and Reflect’.

Protect

Our priority is to ensure that children are safe. In this context that means not only physical safety but also within the relational environment. We reduce the stress for the child by creating a warm and calm environment that is consistent, accepting and optimises social engagement. We do not place children in situations that they cannot manage and focus on creating both physical and psychological safety.

We do this by:

• Emotionally available adults…
• Staff presenting as open, warm and engaged at all times
• Adults consistent and ensure that their interactions are socially engaging nd not socially defensive
• PACE
• Interventions that help staff to get to know children better
• Increased ‘safety cues’ in all aspects of the school day
• Use of PACE: staff being warm, empathic, playful and curious (proven to shift children out of flight/fight/freeze positions
• There is a no shouting, no shaming policy in school. Raised or hostile voices in any conversations is not tolerated. Conversations with individuals about behaviour take place in private, away from other children.
• Daily opportunity for adults to have space to reflect.
• Staff to request and offer change of face when needed

Relate

At LPA, our understanding of Relate is underpinned by the knowledge that the ability to form meaningful relationships is fundamental to mental health and happiness. We understand that relationships are crucial in promoting the optimal development of the frontal lobes of the brain associated with the executive functions key to emotional regulation, emotional intelligence, planning, problem solving and ultimately learning. There will be children in our schools who, for many reasons, have not benefitted from these positive relational experiences. Research  indicates that the brain retains plasticity and repeated, positive , relational experiences can repair and reverse this cycle.

We do this by:

• Ensuring all staff are attachment aware and have received TISUK training
• All adults interact with each other, with children and with parents and carers warmly and openly.
• All adults know about the key relational skills (Affect Attunement, Empathy, Containment and Calming and Soothing) and use these when supporting all children.
• Adults ensure that children have daily positive relational experiences to help them to become trusting, help-seeking individuals. PACE is embedded in all interactions
• Children and adults are helped to express their emotions and are not shamed or undermined when acknowledging their anxieties.
• Adults have daily opportunities to engage with each other in environments that are supportive and pleasant.

Regulate

We know that leaving children (and adults) in a state of toxic stress can result in physical ill health as well as making it impossible to engage productively in the activities taking place around them. We have a duty to support children and adults in school to ensure that they are not left in toxic stress. We know that one of the most powerful ways to do this is to talk to children and help them to talk about what is bothering them. At LPA, we are committed to doing this through the relationships we have with children and each other.

We do this by:

• Relational interventions designed to bring down stress hormone levels. This is to enable them to feel calm and safe and support their engagement with learning as well as protecting against stress induced physical and mental illness.
• Evidence based interventions to support social, emotional and mental health needs.
• Teaching children strategies to support them in self-regulation
• All staff being aware of successful regulation strategies for each child, through sharing of information in briefings and pupil passports
• Providing children with 1:1 time with an adult who they trust to help them calm and get ready to reflect
• Ensuring that interactions are emotionally regulating, playful and enriched
• Consistency of approach and scripts from all staff in the academy.
• Supporting the well-being of staff to prevent stress related illness by having daily briefings, a supportive staff team, and active listening from SLT.

Reflect

At LPA, we believe that children and adults need to be able to reflect on their feelings in order to fully understand them and their behaviour. Without the opportunity to do this we are far more likely to act out our feelings. Reflection enables us to make sense of our life, develop language for emotions and have a coherent narrative that makes sense of what we are feeling and what has happened to us. There are times following troubling incidents that children and adults need to be helped to reflect in order to make sense of them and if necessary, to repair ruptures in relationships that may have resulted. Such reflection takes place only once the child is calm and regulated, with a trusted and emotionally available adult who is able to offer non- judgemental support.   We recognise this as being ‘connection before correction’  (Dan Hughes 2017).

We do this by:

• Staff are trained in the active listening with a particular focus on empathy and acceptance of the feeling if not the behaviour.
• Behaviour is understood to be a form of communication and adults respond to poor behaviour by asking not what did you do but what has happened?
• Using social stories (pictures) to help children reflect on events
• Using other visuals and strategies such as big empathy drawings to help children reflect on events

• Staff use ‘WINE’ to help students reflect:

• Children have opportunities to work with trusted adults to make sense of painful experiences through creative, therapeutic approaches.
• Restorative conversations take place when children are ready and able to think about what has happened and are supported to repair.
• PSHE is informed by current research and teaches children about mental health, emotions, relationships and how to live life well.

Roles and Responsibilities

Every adult that works within LPA, whether employed or voluntary is required to conduct themselves in keeping with this policy. It is the responsibility of all adults in the school to model the behaviours described and ensure that they are supporting the promotion of positive behaviour. New staff will be expected to read the policy, and training will be given to enable them to understand the principles upon which the practice is based.