Organisational Research & Development

Whether it's reacting to a difficult systemic situation across your setting (e.g. punitive behavioural systems, high levels of distressed behaviours in pupils, high exclusion rates, poor staff wellbeing, retention and burnout and so on) or being proactive and building capacity now to respond to greater needs in the future Daniel Cumber Psychology can help.

Bespoke support is negotiated with you as equal change partners to match SEND support needs. Systemic or organisational development work will always be contracted mutually with you and co-created to pursue jointly set meaningful outcomes.

Cycles of organisational or whole school development may necessarily include elements of action research to elicit data from stakeholders and to analyse this to provide key information to inform your positive change. Research services are also provided by Daniel Cumber Psychology.

Action research works in cycles of gathering information, analysing this information together to inform decision making and then taking informed and reasoned action. This is followed by a plan, do, review process where further cycles of action research may take place to further embed positive change over time. Eventually, the goal is to empower the organisational system and those working within it to have to tools to change themselves and to maintain this positive change with less and less external professional support, aka autonomous systems, or as I like to view it, taking your power back. get in touch for more information and to start planning a project today.

Here are some of the ones I have worked on in the past:

• Working with primary schools, secondary schools and special schools to improve staff wellbeing and reduce staff burnout and improve self-confidence through Collaborative Action Research.
• Working with the Department of Education to develop and deliver wellbeing and positive psychology for children and young people returning to school during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdowns.
• Working together with parents and sencos/pastoral leads in secondary and primary schools to co-develop and deliver improved community links and support for children with SEND through grassroots involvement, advice and consultation via coffee mornings and walk and talks in the local parks.
• Use of Lego Therapy as a means of building school belonging, executive functioning and self-regulation skills with children at risk of exclusion.
• Training and Supervision (Group and intensive individual support) of Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSA) working with children with social, emotional and mental health needs.
• Working together with local authority services and parental advocacy groups to develop the use of person-centred practice and help to improve pupil participation and voice in a local authority’s special schools.
• Supervision (Emotional, Psychological) of a Child Protection and Safeguarding Team in a residential specialist college for children with complex SEND needs and social care backgrounds.
• Bespoke training on Anger, Attachment and Trauma, Lego Therapy, Grief and Loss, and Personal Construct Psychology.
• Support with Critical Incidents and policy and planning reflecting the advice to be ‘wise before the event’.
• Working with schools to understand and develop their anti-oppressive practice and promote social justice values and processes (equity, fairness and dignity for all, voice and choice, human rights/child rights) when working with children with SEND and their families.
• Working with two primary schools to provide advice, consultation, supervision and training/coaching to develop specialist early years provision in mainstream schools to help cope with the rising demands on staff to meet the needs of children with increasingly complex SEND needs.
• Working with staff, children and young people in the aftermath of a critical incident to provide psychological first aid and grief support in education settings.
• Use of non-verbal personal construct psychology approaches to help children with Selective Mutism to communicate their wishes with the LA and schools.
• Staff consultation and themed drop-ins regarding how best to support various needs including but not limited to Autism, Attachment and Trauma, Executive Functioning, Attention and Learning, Working Memory, Social Skills and Understanding, Play, Communication, Self-Harm, Emotional-Based School Non-attendance, Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Anger, Anxiety, including support with distressed behaviours and emotional regulation.
• Parent drop-ins and coffee mornings to discuss similar themes.