Collaborative professional development

Collaborative professional development for staff working with pupils with developmental disorders

In March 2001 the National SEN Training Project hosted a national seminar at Heriot-Watt University entitled 'Joined-up Working'. The seminar featured good practice in joined-up working between teachers and speech and language therapists from the length and breadth of Scotland. It was very well received but there was justifiable criticism of the fact that it was limited solely to collaboration between teachers and speech and language therapists instead of encompassing the full range of therapy professionals. With this criticism in mind, a multi-agency development group investigated the possibility of developing a course to promote good joined-up working practice across professional boundaries and with Scottish Executive funding wrote the course featured here. Following a very successful pilot run of the course, the pack was launched at a seminar in Strathclyde University in March 2003.

Why was this course developed?

It was developed to assist education authorities, health trusts and social services to meet the challenges of the ‘joined-up working’ legislation in order to make better use of existing resources and ensure more effective communication among key agencies.

It should assist the various services to work more closely together so that the needs of pupils with developmental difficulties will be met more effectively in the future.

The development was funded by the Scottish Executive Education Department through an SEN Innovation Grant.

The development consortium was led by Professor Gilbert MacKay and Mrs Sylvia Russell at the University of Strathclyde, working in collaboration with Afasic, Moray Council, North Lanarkshire Council, West Lothian Council and NHS Scotland. Many other people and schools gave significant help in the course development, especially the video case studies

The importance of collaborative practice

Current thinking increasingly suggests that collaborative working practices are the most effective way of meeting the needs and raising the attainment of children with a wide variety of additional support needs. It is widely recognised that high quality educational provision for pupils with developmental difficulties in language and communication, dyspraxia / motor development, and perception can be greatly enhanced by effective collaboration between teachers, therapists and support staff in the development and delivery of the curriculum. True collaboration is not easy to achieve and many professionals from different disciplines often only pay lip service to it. What it often actually boils down to is a 'specialist' telling a class teacher what to do. This is not collaboration - hence the need for this course.

Are you a good collaborator?

Do you actively look for ways in which you can work with others?

Do you understand the remits and responsibilities of other professionals who may be involved with the young person you are working with?

Have you discussed with them how you can share targets and join up your practice to give better support to the young person?

Are you happy to share decision making with professionals from another discipline?

If you have not answered 'Yes' to all these questions then you will find the course helpful.

Who is the course for?

• All teachers (early years, primary, secondary, special) who work with pupils with developmental difficulties
• Health trust therapists (occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists)
• Social work staff
• Learning support assistants/auxiliaries/instructors

What is this course about?

The three-day course fosters the highest levels of collaboration in which teachers, therapists, social workers and support staff not only share their skills and expertise to enhance children’s educational attainment, but also alter their practice to take into account the perspective of the other practitioners. It meets the needs of professionals with different levels of knowledge and expertise in developmental difficulties. This, coupled with changes in government policy that allow health services, social services and education authorities to work more closely together, will enable the needs of pupils with developmental difficulties to be met more effectively in the future.

Throughout the course there is a good balance between taught elements, multi-disciplinary workshops and discussion groups using video case studies.

Day one looks at:

• the additional support needs context
• the issues involved in collaborative working, clarifying roles and understanding the work of other professionals
• how to develop good practice in collaborative working.

Day two looks at:

• typical child development
• developmental delay
• language and communication development
• problem-solving video case studies for multi-professional discussion.

Day three, a very practical day, concentrates on:

• problem-solving video case studies
• examples of good practice video case studies.

It is also suggested that there should be a practical outcome to the course with each group of professionals who participate producing evidence of working together on a collaborative project at a recall day.

What is in the pack?

The pack contains all the materials necessary to run the course although the programme organisers will be required to make multiple copies of participants’ materials and ensure that the overhead transparency masters have been transferred onto acetate if PowerPoint presentations are not being used. Consumables (pens, flipcharts etc) will also be required - the details of such requirements are included in the tutor notes for each day.

The pack comprises:

• tutor notes
• overhead transparency masters
• participants' handouts
• course video
• CD-ROM files for PowerPoint presentation.

There is also a 'Participant's Pack' which contains the course programme, a bibliography, and an evaluation sheet.

All paper materials are also available on the CD-ROM in Acrobat PDF format. Both Mac and PC users will need to ensure that they have Acrobat Reader installed (free download from Adobe website) to allow them to read/print the material. However, if users wish to personalise the resources for their own use - for example an authority may wish to add in additional overhead transparencies/handouts which highlight procedures and practices within their authority - the material can only be edited by PC/Mac users if they have the full Adobe Acrobat package installed and have dragged the relevant files from the CD onto the hard disk.

The course video is a compilation of case studies from various schools across Scotland and covers a range of developmental disorders.

How is the course delivered?

This is not a course to dip into and do an odd workshop here and there. Nor should it be used by individuals or groups from the same profession as it has been devised to provide a coherent learning experience for multi-disciplinary groups. Ideally, the course should be delivered over three consecutive days although a satisfactory learning experience will still be achieved if it is delivered one day a week over a three-week period.

It is envisaged that education authorities and health trusts will jointly run their own delivery of the course with an education or health professional delivering the unit/s of the course relevant to their own professional expertise. It is also possible that the pack could be used within individual establishments such as special schools with different professional groups participating.

All of Scotland's education authorities and NHS trusts were assigned packs at the project launch in April 2004, and your local authority or trust should be approached if you are interested in participating.