Online tools

Using an integrative model drawn from child development, neuroscience and attachment research, the programme will identify the emotional learning the children need.

The online tools provide:

• Whole class or group screening

• Individual assessment based on observed behaviours or age appropriate skills

• Action planning

• Reassessment and progress monitoring

If you are licensed to use Thrive-Online you can login here

Whole Group/Class Screening

Thrive-Online can be used to screen groups of children and young people against age-related expectations of their emotional and social skills. It will quickly identify which children need additional support so that you can organise the children, match their needs to your existing provision and put simple activities in place very quickly.

If you are working in an Early Years setting, it will advise you about what is absolutely needed to support children's 'right time' emotional development. If you are working in a school, you will be helped with suggestions for classroom organisation and curriculum strategies.It will help you to prioritise your resources to meet the most vulnerable and /or challenging children.

If you work in a school, Primary or Secondary,you can use the Whole Class / group screening tool described above to help you to organise your classes, match staff to different groups, plan your curriculum to include Learning targets that will develop your children emotional health and well-being and re-screen twice or three times a year to monitor and report on progress. This process will give you the evidence you need to show impact, outcomes and improvements, both in behaviour and attainment for OFSTED inspections, Church inspections or visits from your local Advisory Team.

You will build up a record of progress made over time by the group as a whole. The individual skills that are shown to be underdeveloped can be included in topic and class planning. Themes for PSHE or curriculum subject work can be identified so that a whole school approach to emotional literacy can be developed. The effectiveness of interventions can be closely monitored by the managers in settings so that funding and personnel issues can be addressed in an informed way.

Such a powerful tool - it not only assesses and provides an overview of the emotional literacy of a class but it also highlights individual children in need of one-to-one intervention.

Checking emotional and social skills

If you are a parent, adoptive parent or long-term foster carer you may have some concerns about your child's behaviour or be keen to check their emotional and social skills against age-related expectations.

By observing your child closely and then completing a short checklist of behaviours, you will be helped to understand what is going on for your child and maybe where they have some gaps in their emotional learning. You can check this initial assessment to make sure you are going to address the earliest place that might need attention.

Using the simple Thrive model of Building Blocks or Developmental Strands you will be able to understand better when your child 'wobbles' or why they deal with situations in ways that are unhelpful to you and to them. A quick review of their emotional and social skills will tell you exactly where to focus your attention to help them to fill any learning gaps.

You select from relevant lists of suggestions(about things to do and ways to be) choosing the things that you can fit into your schedule safe in the knowledge that everything you choose to try has been carefully matched to your child's identified learning need. The Action Plan you decide on can then be printed and shared with other family members and/or your child's school. You can review how it is going and print of graphs and charts that show pictorially any successes. Then you can all celebrate together.

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Routes through the program

If you want a simple yet effective way to improve children's behaviour, increase children's readiness to learn or progress in learning you can use the individual assessment pathway through the program. There are three routes:

i. Whole Class/Group Screening: by screening all of the children in a group or class to check their emotional and social skills against age related expectations

ii. Screen Baseline Skills: screening an individual child's emotional and social skills

iii. Full Assessment: considering the behaviours that may be causing concern or interrupting a child's learning.

The first route

The first route helps you to screen a whole class or group of children to check their emotional and social skills against age-related expectations. It helps you identify those children that are working age appropriately; those that are in need of some support; those that would benefit from one-to-one attention; and those that are urgently in need of individual support.

The second route

The second route gets you to check their current emotional and social skills. It becomes very clear quite quickly where the gaps in learning are. You will be guided to work in the developmental area that is most needed.

For many of our children and young people, this will involve going back to relational basics to reshape their emotional circuitry in their brains: to build a positive relationship with them so that we can rebuild their physiological, relational and cognitive capacity to regulate their own emotions.

The programme provides useful, targeted strategies for the development of skills that are necessary for children to be ready to access all that schools can offer... and to prepare them for life outside the classroom.

The third route

The third route will teach you to look underneath the behaviours to see what is really going on for the child. It helps to understand more. It makes it easier to remind yourself that you like the child and want them to learn. It builds empathy where there might have been irritation or impatience. And let's face it, sometimes children and young people can behave in ways that really get us down. So it really helps to know what is going on in their brains and bodies - and even more important, what to do about it.

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Individual plans

The program gives you step-by-step things to do and ways to be (1:1, in small groups, in class, within the school provision and ,where necessary, involving other outside agencies). All this is captured in an individual plan of personalised learning which can be put in place by the small team of people who most regularly have contact with the child, including of course, the parent(s).

The success of the plan can be monitored, any progress can be noted and reports can be printed off that can be shared (if parental permissions are in place) The progress of the child, in terms of improvements in behaviour and improvements in emotional and social skills, can be captured and reported, providing the very useful data school managers require to show their school's effectiveness and quality. The assessments and action plans and review reports can be saved, printed and/or sent by email to other named involved users.

This facilitates the sharing of information in meetings of the Team around the Child and/or CAF (Common Assessment Framework) meetings. Assessments and plans can inform Child Protection and Safeguarding meetings. The common language that is developed across and between professionals who work in different disciplines helps make multi-agency working more efficient and time and cost effective.

You will need to operate within the established confidentiality policy and data protection procedures of your school or setting.