PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICE
Standards and Quality Report
2015 - 2016
25 2016 09 13 Standards And Quality Report 2015 To 2016
Table of Contents
Psychological Service Profile 2
How well do we meet the needs of our stakeholders? 5
What has the Psychological Service achieved during 2015-2016 and how do we know? 7
Appendix
Record of Training Delivered
SECTION 1
Psychological Service Profile
The Psychological Service sits within the Educational Services department. It is a statutory provision for children and young people aged 0-24 years including those with additional support needs. The Strategic purpose of the Psychological Service is to apply psychological knowledge skills and expertise to contribute to the Council’s strategic objectives and to ensure that the needs of children and young people in relation to their learning, emotional health and wellbeing are met. The Psychological service work with partners to seek solutions to challenges faced by children, young people and their families that build on strengths and enable them to be successful and included in their community. The Service has a key role to play in building staff capacity within children’s services and in utilising the psychological knowledge and expertise of the Service to make a strong strategic contribution to national policy, including the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
The Psychological Service consists of 5.6 FTE Educational Psychologists and is managed by a Principal Educational Psychologist supported by one Depute Principal Educational Psychologist.
The service has some temporarily funded staff time to support the Scottish Raising Attainment Challenge, suicide prevention and the settlement of the Syrian Refugee young people in school. This enables the Service to provide some dedicated time to promote improvements in these areas.
The Psychological Service provides a service to all the children and families in West Dunbartonshire Council predominantly by allocating time to the 5 secondary schools, 33 primary schools, 4 specialist establishments and the 21 Council managed Early Education & Child Care Centres. The service also supports the 10 private nurseries where children are identified as having additional support needs. The time allocation to educational establishments is guided by school roll, level of deprivation as measured by numbers of free school meals and the support needs arising in each school.
Requests for involvement of Psychological Service come not only from schools but also directly from parents and from our partner agencies in West Dunbartonshire Council. The Service contributes to the assessment of neuro-developmental disorders and contributes to the multi-agency assessment and support of children and young people with Attention Deficit & Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
West Dunbartonshire Council Psychological Service continues to deliver the five core functions of a Psychological Service – consultation and advice, assessment, intervention, training and research to inform strategic development across the three levels of children and families, educational establishments and the wider authority.
SECTION 2
Self-Evaluation
The policy and practice of self -evaluation in the Psychological Service has changed to be more closely aligned to the performance monitoring of the Quality Improvement team. Individual Educational Psychologist’s practice is governed by the standards of proficiency for practitioner psychologists as outlined by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
The approach taken to self-evaluation has been refined and adapted in the light of the above and has moved away from an over-reliance on one-off feedback gathered through questionnaire surveys towards a system where implementation science informs and guides the practice and direction of the Service. Key to this is building in time for collegiate discussion and reflection on practice. Feedback continues to be sought from stakeholders with an emphasis on how our work has impacted on the key national priorities and in turn on the Educational Services objectives on improving health and well-being and closing the poverty related attainment gap. Thus feedback on impact is sought at the point of annual service delivery with schools often through a reflective discussion with Head Teachers. The managers within Psychological Service timetable case evaluations with EPs with an emphasis on evidence of impact and the development of a reflective approach to case and systemic work. Annual reports are generated on the impact of parenting, nurture and literacy. Training is planned taking account of Council priorities with coaching, mentoring and staff support groups utilised as follow-up. The regular review and reporting on objectives contained within the Service improvement plan helps to ensure that a continuous process of self-evaluation is maintained.
Service self-evaluation summary
What key outcomes have we achieved?
? Delivered our Service Level Agreement plan to the 5 Secondary schools, 34 Primary schools and 20 Early Learning & Childcare Centres.
? Rolled out Reciprocal Teaching in all Primary Schools across West Dunbartonshire Council.
? Demonstrated impact in closing the attainment gap.
? Built capacity of Education Service staff to deliver the duties outlined in the Children and Young People’s Act 2014 through training.
? Supported schools in developing the 4 capacities of Curriculum for Excellence by training and supporting implementation of PATHs, Seasons for Growth, Nurture, Roots of Empathy, Cool Kids.
? Supported Integrated Children’s Services in the delivery of the Parenting Strategy to ensure that our most vulnerable parents are provided with opportunities to give their children the best start in life.
? Provided assessment and support to schools, parents and young people affected by neurodevelopmental difficulties.
Overarching strengths
? Psychological Services is embedded within Educational Services and work collaboratively with Educational Services colleagues to deliver the department’s key objectives particularly in raising attainment and implementing curriculum for excellence
? We work closely with partner agencies to develop and support the delivery of outcomes through the GIRFEC Child’s Planning process.
? We support the health and well-being of children, young people and their families in collaboration with schools and multi-agency partners.
Key Challenges
? Economic climate has resulted in reductions in core staffing which has impacted on the capacity of the Psychological Service team to meet the demands arising from all our stakeholders.
? Supporting consistency of practice across partners and across the different areas in the delivery of the duties of the Children & Young People’s Act.
? Increasing impact of the economic situation on the lives of young people and their families in West Dunbartonshire Council which means that many more young people have additional support needs particularly, emotional and mental health needs.
? Demonstrating impact on wellbeing of young people who receive a service from the Psychological Service, in particular where this is part of a multi –agency approach.
Areas of strong practice
? Bringing psychological knowledge, skills and research perspective to the gathering of impact data in literacy and health and well-being.
? Strength of the partner relationships at strategic and management level which facilitates the development of joint work.
Education Scotland have embarked upon a programme of scrutiny of Education Psychology Services across Scotland to support, extend and challenge Services’ self-evaluation and to affirm, or otherwise, their evaluation of strengths and areas for improvement, thereby strengthening outcomes for learners and other stakeholders. The VSE model of scrutiny aims to allow Educational Scotland to provide information to Scottish Ministers, the national Shared Risk Assessment process and the public on the quality of provision in EPS. The Validation process involves a partnership between the Education authority, EPS and HM Inspectors, Educational Scotland to focus on two key themes.
? Learning and Teaching
? Partnership Working
The themes reflect the Scottish Government’s national priorities and relate to the contribution made by EPS to raising attainment, addressing disadvantage and supporting and implementing, Getting it Right for every Child (GIRFEC).
In September 2015 Education Scotland engaged with West Dunbartonshire Educational Psychology Service, to validate our self-evaluation processes: The themes selected for evaluating were:
? The impact and outcomes on learners of reciprocal teaching approaches in relation to higher order skill improvements in literacy and
? The effectiveness of specific partnership approaches including nurture, multi-agency working and parental engagement on the lives of children and families.
Education Scotland validated the self –evaluation processes of West Dunbartonshire’s Educational Psychology Service and the HM Inspectors reported that:
? There is a strong culture of self-reflection embedded across the EPS which has been well developed by the Principal Educational Psychologist (PEP) and supported by the distributive leadership across the service team.
? The EPS were adding significant value to the Education Authority’s work in literacy and partnership working.
? EPS demonstrated rigorous and objective analysis of the evidence gathered during the VSE activities.
The high quality participation of partners from education, health, social work, community learning and development and the third sector was recognised as a strength of this VSE process. The Educational Scotland team found strong evidence of the EPS’s impact on improving children and young people’s literacy. They also reported that the EPS demonstrated a significant impact in working in multi-agency teams to improve planning, decision making and outcomes for vulnerable children and their families.
Education Scotland concluded that they were confident the WDC EPS has a strong capacity for improvement and that there is a close synergy between the EPS and the educational priorities of the council, with a shared vision for improvement.
SECTION 3
How well do we meet the needs of our stakeholders?
3 .1 Delivery of our Core Functions of Consultation , Assessment and Intervention
· The Service has negotiated a service level agreement with the 5 secondary schools, 33 primary schools and 21 early education and childcare establishments where new cases are accepted for assessment, consultation and/or intervention.
· The Service has supported developments in 3 special schools and 2 specialists units within West Dunbartonshire.
· The Service visited the 26 different schools outwith West Dunbartonshire which provide education for WDC pupils.
· Educational Psychologists managed the preparation and review of CSPs for children and young people in schools outwith West Dunbartonshire.
· Children and young people were assessed and application made for specialist provision through the Joint Review Panel or through the Social Work and Education Liaison Group.
· Multi-agency and single agency assessments following GIRFEC principles were undertaken by Psychologists with the Psychologist being a key contributor to the support planning meeting where a GIRFEC Child’s plan is drawn up.
· Educational Psychologists have continued to contribute to the assessment of children and young people with neuro-developmental disorders as part of multi agency teams and contributed the support planning meeting which draws up a GIRFEC Child’s plan.
3 .2 Delivery of our Core Functions of Training, Evaluation and R esearch
Educational psychologists have:
· Provided training to education staff, health staff and social work staff across a variety of areas to develop skill and build capacity; (see appendix 1);
· Worked in partnership to deliver both single agency and multi-agency training on the expectations of The Named Person/ Lead Professional as outlined in the Children and young Peoples (Scotland) Act 2014;
· Continued to lead the implementation of Reciprocal Teaching across 5 learning communities to improve to improve higher order thinking and literacy skills;
· Gathered data to look at the impact of reciprocal teaching on closing the attainment gap;
· Gathered longitudinal data on outcomes for children supported in nurture groups;
· Provided additional training and support to secondary staff in dealing with pupils on the autistic spectrum;
· Taken a lead roll in embedding the Seasons for Growth programme, the transitions project of the Scottish Attainment challenge, piloting mindfulness and in introducing the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management
3 .3 Contribution of the Psychological Service at Authority Level
Educational Psychologists take a lead role in the following groups convened to manage Educational services statutory functions and to drive forward Educational Services and the Integrated Children’s Services strategic objectives:
· The Co-ordinated Support Plan Review Group (Chaired by the Principal Psychologist);
· The Parenting Review and Improvement Group (Chaired by the Principal Psychologist);
· The Nurture Group business meetings (Chaired by the Depute Principal Psychologist);
· Paths business Meetings (Chaired by the Depute Principal Psychologist);
The service contributes to the work of a number of the multi-agency strategic and operational groups across the Council:
· The Delivery and Improvement Group
· The Mental Health and Well-being Review and Improvement Group;
· The Children with Disabilities Review and Improvement Group;
· The GIRFEC Implementation Group;
· The ADHD steering group;
· The Seasons for Growth steering group.
The Psychological Service also contributes to/leads many of the authority panels and processes set up to allocate resources to children and young people with Additional Support Needs:
· The Multi-agency Consultation Group (MAC);
· The Social Work/Education Liaison Group;
· The Joint Review Panel (JRP);
· The Transitions Resource Allocation Group (TRAG);
· Up to Us Steering Group.
· Action for Children Steering Group
SECTION 4
What has the Psychological Service achieved during 2015-2016 and how do we know ?
Psychological Service’s plan has been organised and developed so that our actions align directly with the Educational Services Strategic Objectives and the Integrated Children Services plan.
Educational Services objective 1 : Raising Attainment and Improving Learning
4 .1 We contributed to the Scottish Raising Attainment Challenge by leading on the Transitions 1 project.
Closing the poverty related attainment gap is a key policy objective at National and Local Government level. As one of 7 challenge authorities who have been given additional funding to work on this priority, the Psychological Service has been contributing to the WDC approach at strategic and operational level. At strategic level the Principal Educational Psychologist sits on the Project Board which oversees all initiatives in place within WDC with her key role being to provide a psychological and developmental perspective to the authorities approach. At operational level the Depute Principal Educational Psychologist leads on one strand – creating a family learning hub at the transition from pre-school to primary. In this first year of the family learning hub the work has focused on four key strands:
? the gathering of baseline data on pre-school children due to commence in primary 1 in August 2016 within 2 target primary schools;