The following guidance aims to provide support to school staff in completing the sections within the Child’s plan (education).
Core record
The core record should be used to collect important personal and biographical information about children and their families, including a summary of assessed strengths and needs.
Chronology
A chronology is an important record of significant events in a child’s life. The purpose of a chronology is to identify and record positive and negative patterns, changes or events that may impact significantly on a child and/or their family. It should be historical covering the entirety of the child’s life, be factually based, and indicate the source of the information.
A chronology serves the following functions: –
- Allows practitioners to see at a glance any concerning pattern of events
- Identifies key services/agencies involved with the child
- Allows families to see a summarised account of key events and help them make sense of a range of information
- Helps the child understand their own life experiences
The chronology should document achievements, developments, and changes in a child’s life so that the pattern and impact of the events on the child over time may be observed and responded to.
If a child has a multi-agency chronology and a CMAP, the named person within schools is required to keep their single agency chronology updated in order to inform the ongoing support to the child and family.
The following areas were identified in the Scottish Government’s document “Getting It Right for Every Child” as worthy of recording:
- Significant changes to a child or young person’s life
- Contact with services/agencies
- Changes to legal status (where appropriate)
- Family and social relationships
Completing an outcome focused plan
Planning to meet the needs of a child or young person should always be outcome focused.
What are outcomes?
- Outcomes are the changes, difference or benefits that occur for a child, a parent or a family as a result of activities or interventions.
- Outcomes should reflect the impact/effect the actions of a single agency or a number of agencies plan to make with the child or young person.
- Outcomes help us to measure the effectiveness of our actions in improving the life of the child or young person.
- Outcomes are different from outputs. Outputs are the services or supports (actions/strategies/interventions) that have been delivered to the child or young person and/or their family.
Planning outcomes with a child or young person
When planning outcomes:
- Think about what you are trying to achieve – what needs to be different for the child or young person to further support their development
- As well as considering needs/pressures focus on strengths and protective factors and how these can be further developed
- Explore exceptions or times when the identified need/pressure is less evident in order to support the identification of actions and strategies.
- It can be useful to use scaling (e.g. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5) where 1 is unmet, 2-3-4 are partially met and 5 is met) to determine an outcome baseline, identify actions/interventions and to evaluate progress.
- For example, where an outcome has a scaling baseline of 1 it may be useful to ask what needs to happen to achieve a score of 2 or 3. This can then be evaluated during the review of the plan – where are we now?
- Prioritise outcomes for the most vulnerable children and young people where many concerns/needs/pressures have been identified. What needs to change first?
- Once outcomes, have been identified think about and clearly identify: what needs to be done? Who is the best person to do that (including the child/young person and parents)?
Outcomes should be:
- SMART: Specific, Measurable , Achievable , Realistic and Time-specific
- ALWAYS planned in partnership with children, young people and parents as well as ALL involved services.
- Informed by robust assessment, including detailed analysis of strengths and pressures. It is not necessary to plan outcomes within each wellbeing indicator if no outcome has been identified through assessment.
- Planned and agreed BEFORE considering what actions are required to take place (to support the achievement of the outcome)
- Planned within the SHANNARRI framework and therefore each identified outcome should be located within the MOST RELEVANT indicator as it is acknowledged that there can be considerable overlap.
- Outcomes can be achieved through one action or a number of actions by one person/service or by a number of actions by more than one person/service.
- Positive changes in the child’s development/experiences even when outputs (services/interventions/actions) are delivered to others (e.g. parents).
- Written positively using ‘I’ outcome statements (e.g. I can, I know, I have, I am able to…) as it is the child’s plan.
- Progressive and measurable – the following phrases may be useful:
- With full adult support, with some adult support, independently
- On some occasions, on most occasions, on all occasions
- One hour/period per day, three hours/periods per day, five hours/periods per day…
- Achievable within an agreed and specific timescale taking account of the child or young person’s review schedule (which should reflect the significance of their needs). Therefore outcomes should be achievable within 6 weeks to 6 months. It is entirely possible for different outcomes to have different timescales but all should be achievable between 6 weeks and 6 months.
