In Tauranga they love their bridges. The council maintains 17 bridges throughout the city, and Transit New Zealand look after the other 15. Despite former Tauranga MP Winston Peters’ quip that Tauranga didn’t need any more bridges, the people of Tauranga couldn’t resist voting in the National candidate – Simon Bridges.
There’s some serious bridge building going on in special education too. John McGovern, Service Manager, Group Special Education, in Tauranga, says the co-ordination of education and social agencies is the key to dealing with the growing problem of disruptive students in the city. Though Tauranga is known for its retirees (twice the national average), its marinas and McMansions, it also has a growing number of young families attracted by steady work and a pleasant lifestyle. Unfortunately, says John, the social infrastructure has not kept pace with the burgeoning population.
“When kids are referred to us, things are usually going wrong in both school and home, so we try to intervene at every point, with the teacher, the teacher aide, the student and the parents. Where possible, we try to get parents to attend the Incredible Years parent training programme (see box). Sometimes there are issues between the student and extended family so we have to work with grandparents and so on. Sometimes there can be borderline offending so we have to work with the community as well. That’s a lot of work for an educational agency so we try to involve Child Youth and Family, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, the police, Youth Aid and a number of community agencies.”
It’s this “wraparound service”, the bridge building, that offers the best chance of success, says John. But sometimes schools leave it too late to make a referral. “If it’s too late the level of breakdown between the school and the family is fairly high, and so is the breakdown between the student and the teachers. So there’s a lot of repair and rebuilding work required. It just doesn’t seem to work well because attitudes have hardened.”
Early intervention can make all the difference, says John. “If we do a wraparound at primary and intermediate we actually ameliorate the situation so the crises at secondary level are not as great. The research is really clear that it’s much harder to do a turnaround with teenagers and the outcomes are much less effective”.
From 2002 onwards John worked with a paediatrician and a RTLB to set up a Service Co-ordination for Children with Disruptive Development Disorders. The service aims to identify children who may fall through the cracks because their disability or delay is not diagnosed early on. By building up a database of children with DDDs in the area it makes it easier to target resources because we have quality assessment data, says John. “It’s possible to link it in with B4 School Checks and make the use of paediatric time more efficient.”
So how can teachers recognise the signs that a child is not just being naughty but needs help? “When kids get upset the first thing we see is high levels of activity, either physical or verbal but often not directed at anything. You can see they’re tense and anxious but you need to respond effectively so the kid settles. The wrong response at that time can make them more upset.” Often, teachers will leave it too late, says John, and then over-use punishment which increases the likelihood that the behaviour will deteriorate.”
Most teachers are ill prepared by their training to handle disruptive and troubled students. Next year GSE is planning to introduce Incredible Years training for primary teachers in Tauranga. The programme will strengthen teachers’ classroom management and student engagement practices, promote prosocial behaviour in the classroom, help teachers work with parents and promote consistency between home and school. GSE will also be delivering training to teachers and senior management staff in crisis intervention and prevention in 2009.
John believes school suspensions can often be useful as they “give a space to work out robust strategies to deal with a crisis”. However, exclusions leave the student with few options. “In Tauranga, schools often don’t accept students who’ve been excluded and if they’re not accepted they are often marooned in a difficult position with a family that is having difficulty functioning. With their education on hold, they lose access to a lot of positive influences and opportunities and it opens a gap for them to engage in community offending.”
Consistent, effective and ongoing interventions involving multiple agencies are obviously timeconsuming and expensive. A Ministry of Education review estimated the monetary costs of successful interventions increases from $5000 for a five-year old to $60,000 for a 15-year-old. Not cheap - but perhaps not as pricey as the alternative. Four prisons built in the last five years cost $1 billion.
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