Nurture, or using a nurturing approach, is about providing opportunities for children and young people to develop their social and emotional skills and understanding, in order to prepare them with the foundations that will help them build positive healthy relationships as they grow up. It can help to increase their skills, coping strategies and their overall resilience and wellbeing.

A nurture group is a small class of eight to ten children and acts as a kind of bridge between home and school for those students who are having a hard time in their mainstream class.

All sorts of children join nurture groups, for all sorts of reasons. The point of the nurture group is to encourage the child to want to go to school, to take pride in his or her learning, and to learn and grow at a pace that is right for them. The nurture group also offers children a fantastic opportunity to learn broader life lessons in addition to their school work – from learning to how to listen well, to making new friends, to discovering their own talents, to picking strawberries!

The amount of time each child spends in a nurture group varies, depending on the school and the needs of the individual child, although the child will spend at least some time in his or her mainstream class and will join them in planned activities.

Parents want the best for their children and having a child who has difficulties at school can be worrying and upsetting. Many parents have reported on the remarkable changes they have seen in their child during their time in a nurture group and not just at school but also at home. Nurture groups were first set up over thirty years ago to help children who were having difficulty in responding to the new demands of daily life in a classroom with other children. There have been a number of studies into the effectiveness of nurture groups over the years. These have all shown positive results in attendance, attainment, behaviour and self-confidence amongst the children.

Download our quick word about Nurture in East Ayrshire to find out more.

As a service we are also working on supporting establishments to use nurture-informed practice across their schools and centres, complementing nurture groups with a whole-establishment approach and ethos.