Our staff team endeavour to build positive relationships with our young people, their families and the professionals working alongside them. By working together, we can create a supportive environment, which provides predictable and consistent responses which will help our young people to feel safe, develop resilience, and achieve positive educational and emotional outcomes.

We understand how historic and ongoing traumatic events and mental health challenges can affect a young person’s behaviour, learning and relationships. As a school we prioritise safety, support and healing to foster both emotional and academic success.

Our trauma-informed approach asks:

 “What has happened, and how can we help?”

At Sheridan our focus is on:

• Building a foundation of safe, supportive relationships which reduce conflict, avoidance and disengagement.

  
  

• Taking time to understand the underlying causes of behaviour.

  
  

• Supporting our young people and adults to make sense of their experiences.

  
  

• Creating environments where everyone can feel safe, supported and able to learn and work.

  
  

• Developing a culture where relationships, compassion and understanding support healing and development.

Our priority with any young person who joins our school community is to ensure safety first, in both their physical and relational environments.

We employ a relational approach to build secure attachments, and as such our young people should feel that:

• People will help me and respond to my needs

• People to be warm and friendly.

• That they are worthy of care and concern.

• For the most part the world is a friendly and interesting place.

• Life even with its ups and downs is an adventure!

Forming meaningful relationships is fundamental to our young people’s feeling of safety, wellbeing and happiness at Sheridan. It is the quality of the connections we make, which will determine how our young people develop a positive view of our school community and themselves.

At Sheridan we aim to build relationships through the principles of PACE: Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy, we promote the experience of safety in our interactions with our young people. When they feel we have connected with the emotional part of their brain they can start to engage with their own thinking and problem-solving. Before we redirect and reflect, we need to first connect with our young people, which helps them return to a more calm and regulated state.

Boundaries, clear structure and consequences remain essential at Sheridan as a trauma-informed school. Because being trauma-informed does not mean having fewer rules or lower expectations. Instead, it means we are creating a safe, predictable, and supportive environment where our young people can learn, regulate their emotions, and build healthy relationships.

It is important that every young person who joins Sheridan is able recognise trusted adults within our school community, who are emotionally available and able to attune to their individual needs. We start to develop these relationships with our young people from the moment they join us, in both the Primary Nest and through tutor groups and 1:1 TIS sessions for our Secondary students.

Affective Attunement We aim to affectively attune to our young people needs, this is meeting their emotional intensity be that positive or negative on their energy level, so that we are showing that you connect in their moment of joy, frustration or pain. It can also mean meeting them where they currently are by reflecting body language and tone of voice, then using our own face, body and voice to ‘co-regulate’ and model how to return to a regulated state.

Empathy (as an emotionally available adult) is our recognition of how a young person is experiencing an event, even if it feels different to how we are experiencing it. We recognise, understand and affirm what they are feeling. Finding the right words, tone of voice and body language to convey our empathy. An empathetic response lets the young person know that they are not alone and the adult is able to imagine into their pain.

Containment is being able to regulate ourselves as adults in the moment. To stay thinking and feeling about the young person’s intense emotions without deflecting, distracting or becoming emotional ourselves.

Soothing (Emotional co-regulation/regulation) We employ a range of strategies to support our young people in bringing down stress levels, to tolerable stress, then to a state of calm. Supporting our young people’s emotionally dysregulated states will over time support them in developing effective tool kit self-regulating strategies which they can employ independently.

Reflecting on their behaviours is an important part of social and emotional development for our young people. When they feel threatened, overwhelmed, or distressed, they may react automatically as their brain is not in a place to make a thoughtful decision.

The process of reflection with a trusted adult helps them to:

• Develop self-awareness.

• Understand links between feelings, thoughts, and behaviour.

• Learn emotional regulation skills.

• Take responsibility for their actions.

• Repair relationships when harm has occurred

At Sheridan staff lead reflection means helping a young person think about and understand their behaviour, emotions, experiences, and choices in a safe and supportive way.

Our process of reflection asks:

·  What happened?

·  What was the child feeling?

·  What triggered the behaviour?

·  What need was the child trying to meet?

·  What was the impact on others?

·  What could be done differently next time?

Reflection is also important for our staff team at Sheridan as it allows an ongoing awareness in developing an understanding of every student’s individual needs.

Our staff team regularly consider:

• What might this behaviour be communicating?

• How did I respond?

• Did my response help the child feel safe?

• What could I do differently next time?

1:1 Support

At Sheridan we are embedding being trauma informed as a whole school approach. Some of our young people may require further support to make sense of their personal circumstances, this support is available through referral to out Trauma and Mental Health informed practitioners for 1:1 sessions.

Our trauma-informed approach does not remove expectations; it provides the support and understanding young people need to meet them successfully. As a result our Young people are more likely to feel safe, understood, connected, and ready to learn.

The ongoing impact of this approach for our young people is:

• An improved sense of safety

  
  

• Improved independent emotional regulation

  
  

• Positive relationships

  
  

• Increased engagement in learning

  
  

• Greater Self Esteem and Resilience

  
  

• Improved mental health and well being