With the recent launch of MacIntyre’s Great Interactions book it seemed like an opportune time at the school to do some reflection of our own and to look back and review our own Great Interactions work.
The residential provision at the school has been fortunate enough to be involved in recruiting frontline staff through the use of the MacIntyre profile and competency framework since its outset. For us this means that for the past three years all Support Workers have been recruited this way and with the development last year of a Senior Support Worker profile positions to this role have also been recruited via this practice. Consequently over this time a real focus on the individual’s quality of interactions and the demonstration of core positive behaviours have been the focus of recruitment into the school.
Administratively the school requires a large number of frontline staff (over the last three years 80 Support Worker’s and Senior Support Worker’s have been recruited through the profile). Throughout this time we have been able to track and monitor the impact and influence that these staff are having on the provision. This has proved extremely interesting and has shown several areas of clear progress.
Firstly has been the improved retention of staff. Prior to the use of the profile the provision had problems in retaining staff, in particular staff leaving within their probation period. In the six months prior to implementing the profile six staff left in their probation period. In the past three years since using the profile the same amount of staff (six) have left in their probation period.
Another notable area over this period has been the increase in this group of staff’s willingness to engage in learning. This is reflected particularly well in the improvements made in staff attaining their NVQ level 3 in Children and Young People. Before using the profile a culture of NVQ learning was not in place which was indicated by only nine staff having attained the award across the provision. Three years on we were recently able to celebrate exceeding Ofsteds regulatory compliance to NVQ and now have 46 frontline staff that have achieved the award.
Finally one of the key focuses of the profile is to identify and recruit staff who can demonstrate the core behaviours integral to those of a natural Support Worker. We also wanted to know if indeed the principle that past behaviour is often a predicator of future behaviour has been borne out. In looking for evidence that illustrates this, over the past three years none of the profile recruited staff have been involved in any formal disciplinary process whether related to poor practice with students or poor attitude towards MacIntyre or their colleagues.
I hope this shows that for us using the profile has only helped us make good recruitment decisions and the positive influence that these staff are having at the school. We are also now seeing several profile recruited staff progress through internal promotion or other roles within the school and it will be of continuing interest to see the wider influence these staff may have within the organisation as they progress their career. With all this said it’s now been some time since I have wished I could turn back time to undo a staff selection I’ve made.
You also can not have failed to notice that over the last weekend the country celebrated a royal wedding. Jenkins Court was no exception and held its own street party and even the non monarchists had a great time. Apart from it being a fantastic and fun day for everyone, what was so obviously on display was all the time trouble, detail and thought that the staff went to in order to ensure that the students were involved, included and of course enjoying this national celebration in the way they wanted to, with many, many excellent interactions, even if unfortunately I didn’t get to do a balcony scene!
Maria Tole
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