Question: how do you help the young people you work with?

Louise Rodgers answered on 5 Mar 2019:

Hi Orange11, this is a great question, because its really the whole point of what I do!

My job is removing barriers to their learning – so, anything that gets in their way. Sometimes this means asking teachers to give them specific support around their learning or timetable, but often it means trying to understand how they see the world and trying to help people around them understand that. For example, I’ve recently worked with a child who had great difficulties with reading and spelling, following instructions and remembering what he has learned. One reason for this is that he has difficulties with working memory https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/executive-functioning-issues/5-ways-kids-use-working-memory-to-learn so (amongst other interventions to do with literacy) I worked with his teachers and parents to help them understand what this means and the ways in which they can talk to him, seat him and give him his work to take pressure off his working memory during the school day. He now has a different seating position, a memory buddy in the class, the teachers know that only 2 or 3 instructions is all he can handle at a time, the same words are used on the board/on worksheets, etc and he is working more independently and more happily now.

This is just one example and I could talk about things like this for hours! One important part of how we work is that we always meet with people after half a term or so to see whether the suggestions we have made have worked and if not, we’ll try others. Feedback is really important to us and so we usually know that we actually have helped children.