Engagement with Others and Story Telling

Engagement with Others and Story Telling

SEMH Intervention materials and organisations
Intervention / Purpose /intended outcome / Supplier
Exploring Feelings: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to Manage Anxiety by Tony Attwood ASD expert / Programme for groups or 1:1 using CBT approach / Available from a range of book sellers
Exploring Feelings: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to Manage Anger by Tony Attwood ASD expert / Programme for groups or 1:1 using CBT approach /
Starving the Anxiety Gremlin / Programme for groups or 1:1. Understanding emotions and physical responses / Available from a range of book sellers
Starving the Anger Gremlin / Programme for groups or 1:1 Understanding emotions and physical responses / Available from a range of book sellers
A quiet place / Once a full A Quiet Place has been implemented, structured timetabled activities can then take place within it.
  • Play in a relaxed environment
  • Engagement with others and story telling
  • Attendance in relaxation sessions
  • Highly creative visualisation
/
Nurture groups / Nurture groups assess learning and social and emotional needs and give whatever help is needed to remove the barriers to learning. There is great emphasis on language development and communication. Nothing is taken for granted and everything is explained, supported by role modelling, demonstration and the use of gesture as appropriate. /
PALS Playing and learning to socialise for 3 – 6 year olds / PALS Social Skills Program teaches children from 3 to 6
years of age about greeting others, listening, sharing, taking
turns, dealing with feelings of fear, sadness and anger, and
solving problems. /
Place2be / Each school has a Place2Be Project Manager, an experienced clinician who oversees service delivery and assessment and works in close partnership with Head teachers and their school teams.
Services include:
For children: individual and group counselling
For parents or carers: dedicated therapeutic support
For Head teachers and school staff: training, individual advice and support /
Pyramid Clubs for shy or withdrawn children who lack confidence / Pyramid is an early intervention for quiet, shy, withdrawn or anxious children aged 7 to 14 that is now managed by the University of West London.
The 3-stage Pyramid model has run in hundreds of schools across the UK and has been extensively evaluated over the past 20 years. /
Some mentoring schemes such as Chance UK / Chance UK is an early intervention organisation that supports children experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties. The children that we work with are at risk of educational exclusion, anti-social and/or criminal behaviour in adolescence and early adult life. We empower children to develop their skills, confidence and life aspirations through a year-long mentoring programme. /
Therapeutic Story writing /

The Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting promotes the use of therapeutic storywriting by educational professionals supporting pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

We do this by delivering training to educational professionals,conducting evaluative research, providing online supportand delivering a Train the Trainer programme.

/

Story links / Story Links is a parent-partnership intervention to support pupils at risk of exclusion. It uses therapeutic story writingto support pupils’ emotional well-being and reading skills and the intervention involves pupils, parents and teachers in the co-creation of stories that address the pupils’ behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESDs). /
Mindfulness / Researchers find that those children who participated in the .b mindfulness programme reported fewer depressive symptoms, lower stress and greater wellbeing than the young people in the control group.Approximately 80% of the young people said they continued using practices taught in MiSP’s mindfulness curriculum after completing the nine week programme. Teachers and schools also rated the curriculum as worthwhile and very enjoyable to learn and teach. /
Prayer spaces / Prayer Spaces in Schools enable children and young people, of all faiths and none, to explore these life questions, spirituality and faith in a safe, creative and interactive way. /
Relaxation training / Relax Kids’ strategies mimic clinically-proven anger management and mitigation treatments such as therapeutic exercise and yoga, breathing exercises, and mindfulness exercises. These can be used as anger management tools, ways to help at moments of meltdown, or methods to make time-outs constructive rather than punitive. /
Lego therapy / LEGO®-based therapy is a structured, group intervention designed to help children learn and practise social skills. It is a collaborative, play based social skills intervention for children with autism and related conditions. /
Play therapy / 1:1 intervention delivered by an outside professional focusing on therapeutic play. /
Various providers
Pets as therapy / Thousands of people of all ages benefit every week from the visits provided by our Volunteer PAT Teams, who visit residential homes, hospitals, hospices, schools, day care centres and prisons /
ELSA Emotional Literacy support assistants / A new intervention to support individual pupils. It has had excellent results in Hampshire. Helps children recognise, understand and manage emotions to increase success.
ELSAs plan and deliver individual (and small group) support programmes. ELSAs receive training and supervision from Educational Psychologists.
/ Oxfordshire Education Psychology team.
Contact your Link EP for further information.
Silver SEAL
SEAL group work / A document containing activities for Key Stage 2 children requiring additional support, related to the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) themes 'New beginnings', 'Getting on and falling out', ‘Good to be me’ and 'Going for goals' which focus on developing children's skills in three key areas: self-awareness, managing feelings and empathy.
/ Primary National Strategy DFES 2006


Behaviour issues are often linked to an underlying issue, the most common being that the learning is not pitched at the right level and is too easy or hard. Refer to the Oxfordshire SEN guidance.

We recommend using an Inclusion Support Plan (ISP) to support the development of provision for learners with challenging behaviour and SEMH needs.

Social Emotional and Mental Health needs may also be linked to language and communication difficulties. If so, you may also find the interventions listed below of use.

Primary language development:

  • BLAST (3/ 4 year olds)
  • Nuffield Early Language programme (
  • SPIRALS (Routledge) Routledge. Various sellers including Amazon.
  • Talking Partners (
  • Talk4Number (
  • Talk Boost KS1 and KS2 – SENSS regularly run training
  • Early Talk boost- SENSS regularly run training
  • Speak Out and Speech Bubble
  • Nursery Narrative (Black Sheep Press)
  • Languageland (Black Sheep Press)
  • Language for thinking (Speechmark)
  • Leicester’s let’s talk

Secondary language development:

•TalkingPartners@Secondary from

•ELCISS (Speechmark)

•Language for thinking (Speechmark)

Possible outcomes to consider from work in interventions:

•xxxx will develop a sense of belonging in school / develop positive attachments to key adults in school

•xxx will develop the ability to make and keep friendships

•xxx will develop the ability to talk about feelings

•xxx will develop the ability to manage strong feelings- anxiety, anger

•xxx will be able to self-regulate anxiety in order to stay in the classroom for learning

•xxx will learn a variety of self- regulation strategies to use in school and at home when needed

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