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Intervening on NEET��Tackling NEET Toolkit�

Dr Ceri Brown

University of Bath,

Department of Education

Dr Alison Douthwaite

University of Bath,

Department of

Education

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Objectives

Share research findings about effective interventions for young people NEET/ at risk of NEET

Build on training session 1

Introduce you to Tackling NEET toolkit resources to support effective interventions

Provide opportunity for reflection on how these findings and resources could support your professional practice

The session introduces you to our research findings on effective interventions. This includes insights into the mechanisms underpinning effective interventions and key supports strategies.

It builds on training session 1 and further develops an activity started in the first session. We recommend doing the first session on Understanding NEET before you do this one because you need the holistic understanding of risks and the partially completed risk review tool in the activities here.

This session will introduce you to the toolkit resources available through activities in which you use them in order to get familiar with them and to apply the findings to a case young person. The intervention resources today include a handbook of 13 intervention strategies, a brief guide to these, a model explaining the mechanisms underpinning effective interventions and intervention case studies.

Finally, the session gives you an opportunity to reflect on your practice and how these findings, insights and tools might impact your work to support young people. It is therefore best done in collaboration with others where possible, though you can do the session independently using the activity tasks to reflect rather than discuss.

Pause the presentation when its time to do an activity. You will need your partially completed Risk Review Tool from session 1, the Intervention Handbook, the Brief Guide to the Interventions and the Action planning tool so make sure you can access these on screen. You may find it easiest to print out the Action planning tool so that you can write on it.

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Research Project Overview and Outputs

Phase 1

Understanding NEET

11 Settings
78 participants
Literature Review

Comprehensive model of risks to NEET

Phase 2

Developing Interventions

Variety of education settings
Across 5 nations

Handbook of 13 intervention strategies

Phase 3

Trialling & evaluating Interventions

11 Settings
110 participants
Tailor interventions for each setting

Identified a ‘Pathway to Change’ – 5 mechanisms

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Activity

Use your partially completed Risk Review Tool from Session 1 to think about your case young person

Column 3: Add details of existing support for any of these risks

Column 4: Identify gaps in support – areas of risk which are not addressed. Add notes about what supports or provisions might address the needs arising from these risks

5 minutes

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Pathway to Change

5 mechanism underpinning

effective

interventions

After evaluating the interventions with our educators as part of the research, we looked across the data set to explore why these interventions were effective. We identified these 5 mechanisms as underpinning effective interventions. These were applicable across a diverse range of interventions, even though they involved very different activities, in different types of educational setting with different groups of young people. We worked with the educators to explore how these mechanisms were working together and identified what we term a Pathway to Change. This is a set of actions that lead to meaningful change for young people, supporting them to engage, or re-engage with education and work goals.

Through analysis with the Educators involved, we pinpointed 3 different levels among these mechanisms. First of all, there are foundational mechanisms – supporting emotional wellbeing and general welfare and generating a sense of feeling cared for and supported – These were important to initiate at the outset of work with young people, forming a foundation on which the other mechanisms can build. Secondly there is the facilitating mechanism of building confidence and self esteem. This facilitates engagement with the higher level mechanisms. Finally come what we call outcome generating mechanisms. These lead directly to engagement with education and work goals. Facilitating autonomy and ownership and supporting young people to build a positive learner identity are the mechanisms which lead on to improved outcomes for young people.

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Activity

Think about your case young person as you watch the video on the next slide
Think about where they sit on the Pathway to Change
You can also access it at: https://vimeo.com/734272477

10 minutes

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‘Bobby’

Year 12 learner – college drama course
Only physically disabled learner on her course personal care, powered wheelchair user.
Adopted - some attachment issues
Self-harm, body image and mental health challenges exacerbated by lockdown
Mum’s painful back condition from supporting B over the years means home support with personal care is challenging
B feels guilty about physical toll she puts on her Mum
Father has little involvement in supporting B. He feels unable to cope with B’s emotional outbursts and meltdowns and finds emotional behaviour embarrassing
Transport challenges: limited bus service from village. Family has no wheelchair accessible vehicle. B is entitled to transport but LA unable to source accessible taxi
Care agency staff cannot offer support before 7am
Bus to access college leaves village at 7.20am
To travel in carer’s car B must use manual chair, losing independence at college
Rehearsals for performance are in evenings –no bus service back to village
Accessible toilets on campus are far way from learning space.
Support staff at college encourage B to use manual chair permanently because it is ‘easier’ for personal care – the fit in the cubicle of the nearby toilet.
B struggles to fit in with peers on her course and cannot hang out after college because must rush to bus
Upset that the selected dance element of the course focused on tap-dance (as opposed to modern/ ballet/ others with more scope for upper body work)
B feels unwanted, misunderstood, lonely and unhappy at college. She has emotional outbursts each Sunday and at the end of holidays, straining relationships at home.

To help you think about the Pathway to Change in Relation to your young person, we will talk about Bobby.

Bobby is in Year 12. She loves Drama and got a place on a Drama course at her nearest FE college. She is the only physically disabled learner on her course. She needs support with personal care, uses a powered wheelchair and has some mild learning disabilities as a result of her Cerebral Palsy. Bobby is adopted and has some attachment issues as a result of this. She has challenges around a negative body image and self harms, her mental health challenges were exacerbated by lockdown. Her Mum has only recently been awarded care support for Bobby and has a painful back condition from supporting Bobby over the years with personal care and transfers. Home support with personal care is challenging as a result and she is entitled to care support to get up in the morning and to shower and go to bed. Bobby feels guilty about the physical toll she puts on her mother. Her father is not very involved in supporting Bobby. He feels unable to cope with Bobby’s emotional outbursts and meltdowns and finds this behaviour in public embarrassing. There are transport challenges as they live in village with limited bus service and the family have no wheelchair accessible vehicle. As a result Bobby is entitled to transport but the local authority have been unable to source an accessible taxi, or vehicle to provide this to getto college. Her care agency staff cannot offer morning support before 7am. However the bus to college leaves the village at 7.20am. To travel in a carer’s car, Bobby must use a manual chair, losing independence at college. This means her Mum often supports Bobby in the morning to get up and accompany her on the local bus as she doesn’t want her to miss out, this is exacerbating her back condition. Rehearsals for performances are in the evenings but there is no bus service back to the village. Accessible toilets on the campus are far away from the learning space. Support staff at the college encourage Bobby to use her manual chair permanently because it is ‘easier’ for personal care in terms of fitting in the nearby toilet. However, without her powerchair, she cannot move around independently as she cannot self propel. Bobby struggles to fit in with peers on her course. She cannot hang out after college because she must get to the bus. She was upset that the selected dance element of the course focused on tap dance – as opposed to modern ballet or other dance with more scope for upper body work. The course leader declined to change the dance type as this was what had been planned and she felt that Bobby could ‘clap’ the rhythm and be included that way. Bobby feels unwanted, misunderstood and lonely at college. She has emotional outbursts each Sunday at the end of the holiday, straining relationships at home. She wants to do drama but finds it increasingly difficult to go in. Her Mum pushes her to attend, as she feels that her mental health will be worse if she ends up at home with nothing to do, but understands Bobby’s anxiety and worries about college.

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‘Bobby’

Bobby needs support to feel cared for and supported. Although a care package is in place, it is not meeting her needs in terms of the specific structural barriers around transport and family situation in terms of the lack of transport and her Mum’s back pain. She also needs support to feel cared for and supported at college. Her use of a powered wheelchair is not appropriately supported with staff suggesting she use her manual to ease the logistics, and aspects of the curriculum – such as the tap dancing – and the timetabling – with rehearsals when she cannot make it, mean she isn’t properly included, compounding the sense that she doesn’t fit in, or isn’t wanted. There is also work to do around supporting her emotional well being and general welfare. Her self-harm and meltdowns need addressing. So in this way she is sitting at the foundational stage of the Pathway to change. She does feel some autonomy over learning – in so far as she wants to do drama and is clear that this is what she wants to engage with – however there are barriers to her feeling confident in doing this and she cannot access a positive learner identity and feel truly part of the college and course as things stand.

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Activity : Your ‘Case’

Where does your case sit on the model?

What are the key challenges

they face at each stage?

10 minutes

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Targeting Intervention and the Pathway to Change

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Intervention Levels and Intensity

Depending on the severity of the disengagement/ trauma, young people may need longer at the foundational steps on the pathway.

Set backs can return young people who had made progress to the foundational mechanisms again, requiring further support here.

There are a couple of important points to highlight about this model. Firstly, progress though the pathway is very much at the young person’s pace and cannot be rushed. Depending on how severe the trauma or disengagement is for an individual, they may need a long time getting support with the foundation mechanisms. One of the interventions supported young people who were neurodivergent and no longer attended their mainstream school placements – either because they no longer wished to attend, because they were on EOTAS packages or because they had been permanently excluded. They were traumatised an in burnout from not having their needs met for a very long time. This meant that they needed a very long time on the green and blue levels, before confidence building could begin and before engagement in ‘learning or work goals could start. Also sense of feeling cared for and supported isn’t ‘transferable’ to another person. A young person who has built up trust and confidence with, for instance, a particular social worker or tutor, may well experience a total set back if that trusted adult leaves.

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Pathway to Change

Model of 5 mechanisms which can help with

Considering the intensity and duration of intervention needed
(Risk overview from session 1 also informs this)
Supports intervention planning
Offers an approach to evaluating progress

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Strategy/ Intervention	Who
Personalised plans	Careers staff, SENDCos for Annual Review
Blended media mentoring	Staff responsible for maintaining contact with YPs educated off-site/ part-time timetable
Personal development activities	Form Tutor, PSHE, TAs, Contracted Mentors, Mental Health Support Teams
Peer to peer learning & support	SENDCo’s, Wellbeing leads
Family support & engagement	PFSAs, Family Support Workers, Attendance Officers, Pastoral Leads,
Support for learning outside the formal curriculum	Staff responsible for extra-curricular provision/ Tas/ Contracted Mentors
Establishing local community links	Pastoral and PSHE/Wellbeing Leads
Learning Pathway & Careers Guidance	Careers staff, SENDCos for AR, Senior Leaders for Curriculum
Responsive crisis resolution	Behaviour and Pastoral Leads, Leadership Team, Mental Health Support Teams
Inclusive and participatory pedagogy	Teaching Staff, Subject and Curriculum Leads, Raising Achievement Leads
Support with transitions	Transition Co-ordinators, careers staff, contracted mentors/ SENCO and TAs
Promoting inclusive learning environments	SENDco, Teaching Staff, Subject and Curriculum Leads, Raising Achievement Leads
Support in building/navigating healthy peer relationships	Mental Health Support Teams, Wellbeing Leads, PSHE staff, school counsellor

Intervention

Handbook

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Toolkit :

Intervention Case Studies

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Family Support and Engagement

Teacher in SEMH special school in South West
Positive communication with home

“I didn’t probably anticipate that the parents would respond so quickly in such a short period of time towards the positive. I think after three positive phone calls they are more like I’m going to pick up the phone because I didn’t know what it was going to be today and I think for them that was more of actually, I might need this because I’ve had a really bad day today and I know I’ve had a really tricky morning with say for instance Bobby but actually, I really need something positive because that might actually help me build my relationship back up when they got home.”

“I think they felt like they weren’t alone and I think that’s massive because I know a lot of parents feel like their kids are the only one that’s like that, all the kids are unique and individual and yeah, they’ve got some crossed paths with other children, but parents do feel isolated because there aren’t those massive support groups for people, especially good preparation for adulthood. There aren’t enough support groups for those adults and I think giving them that opportunity to have that voice.”

How do/could you engage parents within your work with young people?

One effective intervention example comes from a Teacher in an SEMH specialist school in South West England, She decided to target family support and engagement because she was finding it very difficult to contact and engage with parents. Many of the young people travelled to school by bus, meaning parents did not often come on site. In addition, most young people had behavioural challenges which meant their experiences of schooling prior to arriving at this setting tended to be negative. The teacher found that parents would not answer the phone if she rang, or answer emails, or return letters. She decided to focus on a simple, manageable action – to develop positive communication with home. On reflecting on her pupils’ experiences and the risk domains, she felt that parents would be used to being contacted from school when there was a problem. She thought that perhaps, trying to communicate positive feedback might help improve relationships and communication. Her pupils did not like home being contacted – largely she suspected because of the negative connotations of this. She made time each week to send home positive news about the students – either via email or phone message, letting home know when they had been really helpful, tried hard etc. She did the over the course of a term and was surprised and pleased at the response. She found parents started answering their phones, and replying to emails. She found the students started asking her if she would let home know when they had done something they were proud of. And because of this increased communication, she found parents started to speak about the challenges they were experiencing with the students at home. It gave the parents something positive to talk to their child about, and it helped to start to build the sense that she and the parents were a team – opening up an avenue for advice and support both ways. A critical change she noticed was in the language she used. When children were absent, she found that saying ‘ We really want X in school’ had a much greater impact that ‘X must come to school.’ Shifting language to be more positive and welcoming was a key learning point for her from her intervention.

Take a moment to read through two of the teachers’ quotes from the data to give further detail.

Now take time to think about or discuss how you or your service engage with families or home, and whether there is scope to change how this is done.

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Personalised Plans

EAL Tutor
1 term of Weekly 1hour sessions with refugee pupils
Using sessions to focus on ‘careers’ language and discuss personal dreams and ambitions

“Sometimes they have to go on a really round-about route because they might have a lot more steps that they have to go through to get to that point on the road. So it made me think….obviously we need like more roads, a different road A, road B, road C.”

“You have to navigate the different cultural things going on as well, like you’re navigating parental expectations alongside their expectations and then what the actual curriculum offer is and what they can do at school.”

How could careers support address individual needs more specifically?

A second intervention involved an EAL tutor working with a cohort of Syrian refugees. She already had a set provision of hours to support this cohort, so decided to tweak her approach to trail the intervention called ‘personalised plans.’ In her weekly hours support session, she decided to focus on using ‘careers’ language and discussing their personal ambitions, rather than the general language work she traditionally did. Together they thought about the types of jobs they were interested in, and made word maps – visual supports for the language to talk about the courses and careers they identified. They would spend time researching together and use images and vocabulary to create the kinds of word map you can see at the top of the screen. What she found was that, initially , all the young people spoke about very traditional careers – being a doctor, a dentist or a lawyer. Over the course of a few sessions however, it became clear that this reflected their parents’ dreams for them, rather than the young people’s personal dreams. She started to ask them what they enjoyed doing and what they loved, to try to tap into their own ambitions. One young person who had previously not engaged very enthusiastically in sessions, started talking about design and fashion design and this conversation was transformative. They used this to research routes into fashion design together. Another key thing she found was that, because English was not their first language, their language skills meant they were unlikely to be able to go the most straightforward route onto their chosen courses. But the advice through their teachers didn’t help them unpick this. For instance, some of them needed to get particular grades to access a course, but were being entered for foundation tier by their teachers, which meant it wasn’t possible for them to get these grades. She was able to help them think about how they might have this conversation with their teacher, to explain what this meant and why it was happening to them. They made visual roadmaps together – theses were documents they made together, of a highly visual nature, which gave each young person access to information to take away about possible pathways into their careers of interest, or courses. As well as making them very visual, to support the lanague and understanding, they also planned routes A, B, and c. The young people did not realise there were other ways forward other than getting high GCSE grades to access a particular course. This made them feel stressed, hopeless or under a lot of pressure. With the added component of worrying about disappointing families if they didn’t get the grades and paths to the careers envisaged for them by their families, this was quite a burden for these young people. The students were interviewed spoke passionately about the pathways they had created, about how it helped them have confidence they could get to where they were aspiring to, even if their language meant they couldn’t get the GCSE grades. Take a moment to read the quotes from this educator and then think about how careers support might address individual needs more specifically – perhaps for your case young person, or in your work with young people generally?

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Blended Media Mentoring/Short Courses

Virtual School Officer in South West
Employing different modes of engagement for young people with different needs and communication preferences

“One of the key points I’ve learned actually is if you set a time per week with a young person and they for some reason won’t be in at that time because they’ve got up and gone out, even though they said it was a good time and then you try and change it to another time, a really good option for delivering the learning is actually sending them It by email and then either discussing it over the phone when it’s convenient to them and asking for the work back by email. So, I’ve got two that actually work best with just yeah, being delivered the work via online methods. So, that was something I didn’t expect from those two young people either. I thought they’d really engage face-to-face better, but I think it’s whether or not that young person’s social, if they’re really active in their social life, they’re much less more likely to meet me for the session”

“the lockdown was helpful because it safeguarded me from him and it actually enabled us to talk online or on the phone and it took away that anxiety of being next to somebody in a room, which he finds really difficult. […] it came at the right time because he, it was being red flagged about what he was saying and I was thinking there’s not really any staff around here and it was becoming apparent my safety, safeguarding me was an issue. But anyway, the fact we were moved online really helped because it helped us be apart, so I was safe, could continue the support, but actually get to those deeper conversations about why he was thinking that and yeah, using, I used all of the psychologists or psychiatrist reports from his diagnosis and was able to use the support from the Emotional Health and Wellbeing Team to actually unpick why this was all happening and actually, it was raised by the Autism Team that he’s made three years progress in one term through the tutoring.”

What are you preferred modes in working with young people?

How do you know whether these reflect young people’s preferences?

The third and final intervention we will talk through here was undertaken by a virtual school tutor in the South West. She too focused on personal plans, but here we are pulling out aspects of her work which also speak to the intervention entitled Blended Media Mentoring.

With the data collection taking place partly during the lockdowns and school closures, she used various types of contact to support her young people. With face to face meeting not possible, she did whatever she could to keep in contact with the young people in whatever way worked best for them. For some young people that meant sending them the work by email and they would send it back when it was done. For others it worked better doing it online, via Teams. For others, regular phone calls worked best. As well as flexibly adapting the learning to each individual, by choosing short courses to give them a sense of success and enable them to gain a qualification or certificate for work over a shorter time frame, adapting the mode of engagement to the young person was a key learning point. In addition, being persistent, not giving up and staying in contact even when they didn’t turn up when they said they would or do what they had agreed to do, was a key reason her work with her cohort was successful. The young people we spoke to flagged this persistence as of key importance to them, knowing that she wouldn’t give up on them. Take time to read through her statements and then think about your modes of working with young people. How do you prefer to engage with young people? How do you know whether these reflect the young persons’ preference?

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Top 10 Support Strategies

This table shows the top 10 support strategies,. These are the strategies most discussed as being important to supporting young people to engage or re-engage with education or work. On the right hand side is the risk domain this particular factor relates to.

As you can see Educator Factors come top. These are features of the educator themselves, identified by young people and educators as being of crucial importance. So going the extra mile, being flexible, having good communication with the young person, keeping their promises, having personal experience of the young persons’ particular culture, or of the particular challenge they face, being reliable, knowing puipls well, being able to intuitively respond to the young person being responsive, apologising when wrong, being organised and having high but realistic expectation – these are the key qualities needed.

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Qualities of the educator

“she never gave up on me, even when I was hard to get hold of.”

“she proper gets me.”

Persistence – going the extra mile
Flexibility
Good communication
Keeping promises
Personal experience of YP’s culture or challenge
Reliability
Knowing pupils well
Intuition and responsiveness
Apologising when wrong
Organised
High but realistic expectations

“we have a chat if I’m having a bad day”

What opportunities are there to demonstrate these qualities with young people?

How can leaders support the development of these qualities in educators?

It is helpful to remember this, that one of the most important supports to young people is the Educator themselves. So on the one hand, it isn’t about just doing an intervention – it is how it is done. The intervention should be undertaken by a skilled educator with these qualities. On the other hand, it can be reassuring to know what an impact a supportive educator can have. These quotes from young people who were speaking about why the intervention was effective for them really highlight this. ‘She never gave up on me, even when I was hard to get hold of’ – that reliability has really help in terms of feeling cared for and supported. Another young person pointed to the fact that his tutor ‘proper gets me’ – flagging again that importance of trust and relationships. And the final quote ‘we have a chat if I’m having a bad day’ brings home that making time and space for young people, for what they need and want to talk about, not focusing on going through your procedures for instance, but taking time for a chat when theyneed it, can be profoundly important for the young people themselves. The data has many examples like this, of young people referencing small scale actions that educators have taken that made a big difference for themin feeling noticed, cared for, heard and supported. A student talking about a senior leader who would discretely check in with them whether their conflict with another student had been resolved, in passing as he went through a classroom on other business, for instance. Take time to think about or discuss what opportunities there are in your role to demonstrate these qualities with young people? Or how these qualities can be encouraged and developed in educators?

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Activity: Plan an intervention for your case

Use

The Action Planning Tool
Your case young person
The pathway to change
The Brief guide to the interventions

Choose up to 3 actions from the Brief Guide

10 minutes

You’re now going to use the toolkit resources to plan an intervention for your case young person. If you’re working with others, it is a good idea to choose one case to focus on and to complete the Action Planning Tool for them together. Alternatively you can do this independently for your case young person.

The Action Planning tool details the different mechanisms on the pathway to change down the left hand side. Start by noting together in there what the young person needs support with to think about where it is important to start.

The next 3 columns give you space to add details about up to 3 actions from the Brief Guide to the Inteventions.

Look through the Brief guide to the interventions, choose up to 3. Write the numbers and names of the actions you choose at the top of each column

Below this give details of what you would do within the intervention to target your young person and where they are.

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Activity: Reflection

How might the tools presented today help improve outcomes for young people through your work with them?

Mindset/ attitudes Processes Priorities

How useful might the resources be for your setting?

Pathway to Change
Intervention Handbook
Action Planning Tool?

What might make these tools more useful or effective?

10 minutes

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Thank you�

Please contact us with any comments or questions about this session. We would be pleased to hear about how this session has been useful, or impacted your work, and for all constructive feedback on the toolkit. Do contact us regarding potential opportunities for collaboration or development around these resources.

Dr Ceri Brown, C.L.Brown@bath.ac.uk

Department of Education, University of Bath

Dr Alison Douthwaite, ad879@bath.ac.uk

Department of Education, University of Bath

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References and Links�

Mechanisms for Tackling Early School Leaving and NEEThood Video, available at https://vimeo.com/734272477

Five mechanisms for tackling the risks to NEEThood: introducing a pathway to change to guide educator’s support strategies ( 2022), C Brown, A Douthwaite, N Savvides and I Costas Batlle, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 27:1. Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2022.2130082