As a residential school for children with social, emotional and mental health difficulties, it’s vitally important that a multi-disciplinary approach is taken to maximise the positive outcomes for young people at Wings Cumbria. 

Many of the young people have experienced significant trauma and the clinical input from a team of specialists – supporting both staff and young people – has a significant positive impact.

The school offers wrap-around care with full-time education and care staff joined by the clinical team of a School Nurse, Educational and Clinical Psychologists and Speech and Language Therapist. It is this sheer breadth of the skills of all members of the team, and how they are deployed to the benefit of the children, which has had an outstanding impact.

The clinical team offers an eclectic skill mix informed by attachment, behavioural, psychodynamic, cognitive behavioural and third wave cognitive behavioural therapy approaches.

All of the team work side-by-side and offer a relational, behavioural and systemic approach towards supporting all of the school’s young people. This systemic approach is important, because not all young people benefit from, or require, individual therapy. In fact some young people can feel blamed, if they receive a message they need to be ‘fixed’.

All staff across the school are involved in positively supporting the mental health of young people, with those staff who the children interact with every day developing those vital positive relationships and understanding, and managing risk with support from the Clinical Psychologist where it is needed.

Working together, they get to know the needs of all of the children and young people and to support them appropriately.

Relationships are of prime importance and this is the key tool they use in supporting children and young people, building trust, using conversations to offer regular guidance and to encourage and support positive coping. This helps the young people develop those essential skills for resilience and explore positive coping strategies for good emotional regulation.

There is, of course, a place for individual therapy. However, not all therapy happens in “official” therapy sessions. Because staff are onsite and know the children, often support can be engaged in a natural way in break and lunchtimes, even those who may have previously been ‘difficult to reach’ children and young people.

Because the clinical team are fully integrated into the team, they can also be drawn in at a moment of crisis for children and young people, which has helped relationships to develop and prevented young people from undergoing further traumatic events, such as the need for a hospital admission (if this is safe to do so).

This has also enabled the clinical team to develop good relationships with staff by being accessible for advice and available to support any issues if required. This means that trust has developed enabling more honest conversations around the challenges that exist. Staff are supervised in groups every week, they also join therapy sessions to support young people they are close with, and can access individual support as required.

Interested in finding out how our residential schools support children and young people towards more successful futures? Why not speak to the team on 0800 024 6985 or [email protected].