We have all read information about children that only focuses on the negative things in their lives, creating barriers for young people to access important services such as education.
Placements often reject children when they read this information, leaving social care under pressure to find adequate support for young people, whilst we share stories about young people that they didn’t author and don’t see. Schools are frustrated at the lack of information; placements feel guilty they can’t help; social workers are overwhelmed and all the while young people are unheard of and misrepresented. Every child deserves to be represented authentically and to access the support they need and deserve.
We know what it’s like to receive information about a child that is negative, with phrases like ‘high risk’, ‘challenging’ and ‘attachment issues’. It can seem impossible for services to work out how to best support the child, creating unnecessary anxiety and false expectation about what this child is like.
We understand the pressure on services, with placements being refused, school not taking young people in and mental health services saying that children don’t meet ‘thresholds’. How we communicate young people to these crucial services will define whether they can access them or not.
We recognise that young people deserve to receive services that see who they truly are and are equipped with adequate information. We know a child’s voice should be central to what we write about them. It is our duty to ensure this happens.
The information we write about a child is either a passport or a barrier to their access to services they need and deserve.
This training session will help you develop the skills to record better information for young people and look beyond negative recording.
We will develop understanding about how information is shared, how it is written and the pressures on practitioners who are responsible for children.
Through developing your skills and raising awareness of the impact of recording information, we are able to overcome barriers that young people face when accessing information and the stigma that is unintentionally caused by negative recording.
Learning Outcomes:
- How to record information that authentically represents children
- Understand how statutory recording influences young people’s access to services
- Learn how stigma is created and influences our decision making
- Recognise how unconscious bias comes to affect behaviour
- Communicating with children who have experienced trauma
- Engaging young people in recording
- How to reframe and rephrase information
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