Solutions Focused Coaching in Schools – structured kindness for fast and effective Early Help for all children with challenging or withdrawn behaviour

Children and young people who struggle to meet the demands of school are facing the additional stresses and changes brought about by the pandemic. Many of them who were struggling before the virus appeared will have suffered loss, bereavement and the effects of social isolation and ruptured relationships.

We now have clear scientific evidence on the links between stress and behaviour; learning is only possible when children are in a state of manageable stress. Stress is only manageable when children have the safety of kind relationships to rely on. When stresses emerge as challenging or withdrawn behaviour, ordinary routines of reward and punishment in school are not the most effective or efficient responses. Children’s mental health is put at risk, and their ability to learn is compromised. Without effective support, as can be provided by SFCiS problems escalate, with exclusion at the end of the road.

SFCiS, a straightforward, practical way for school staff to work with these children and young people to get to safer ground, to re-engage them in forging their own futures through their own strengths and resources. Better still it’s rapid and integrates smoothly with a schools’ existing systems of behaviour management.

Solutions Focused Coaching is the answer to a long-standing problem; what do you do when children and young people don’t respond to rewards and punishments? SFCIS is not driven by diagnosis, it is centred on the whole child, a future-focused way of working which places the student as the active agent in their own growth and development, working in a self-directed way towards their own preferred future.

SF Coaching has a simple structure of 7 practical elements, which you can learn through my 6-session online course. Follow-up supervision and policy guidance is built-in. On completion of the course SF Coaches can get into action in school immediately, making a difference.

Solutions Focused Coaching is form of Solution Focused Brief Therapy, a talking therapy. SFCiS specially designed for schools. SFC and SFBT are in use all over the world, wherever people are distressed and in need of rapid and effective structured support – structured kindness in action.