A project funded by Bridgend and Vale of Glamorgan Councils

This project -- part of an initiative launched by the Welsh Assembly Government -- was designed to help the Local Authorities in Bridgend and Vale of Glamorgan to develop a comprehensive approach to the behavioural, social, and emotional development of children and young people. This includes identification, assessment, and intervention approaches to ensure early and effective strategies for identifying and meeting the needs of children and young people.

Robin Banerjee and Deb Michel (Centre for Wise Education) worked with colleagues in the two Local Authorities to develop a way of working that involves: a) helping schools to establish their own framework of social and emotional learning skills; b) developing an approach to assessing the social and emotional profile of individual pupils, groups/classes of pupils, and the overall school climate; c) collating and considering the range of approaches and programmes that are currently used within the schools in relation to the social and emotional learning framework; d) using assessment data to inform the choice of intervention/prevention strategies at whole-school, group, and individual levels; and e) evaluating changes over time and adapting school pratices accordingly.

This work has been successfully implemented in an initial cluster of 10 primary and secondary schools, and we are now in the process of extending the work into other clusters within (and possibly beyond) the Bridgend and Vale of Glamorgan areas.