1. family and parenting
2. children

Nurture Groups
– working together to
improve the lives of
children, young
people and their
families
The National
Nurture Conference
– Northern Ireland
Thursday
26 March
2015
The Dunadry Hotel
Antrim
Northern
Ireland
The conference
It is more than 40 years since educational psychologist Marjorie
Boxall decided something had to be done about the huge
number of children being put forward for special schools in the
Inner London Borough of Hackney.
She understood that these children were not ‘maladjusted’ or
‘educationally subnormal’, but had simply not had adequate emotional
and social support from their earliest months to be able to deal with the
demands of school life. And so nurture groups were born.
Since then thousands of children have benefited from spending time in
small part-time groups in their schools and being given the experiences
they missed in their early lives.
The Boxall Profile now underpins everything that nurture groups can
achieve and groups are being set up in primary and secondary schools,
in special schools and units in the UK and throughout the world.
Come and learn why they are achieving such acclaim from teachers,
parents, pupils, educationalists and others.
If you are unfamiliar with nurture groups, take a look at our website
www.nurturegroups.org, to see what teachers, parents and pupils big and
small have to say about them. See quotes straight from the heart of those
who have benefited from nurture groups and understand more fully how
they could help you and your pupils.
Who should attend:
The course is open to nurture staff, education staff, health
staff, social workers, police, family support workers and
all who are interested in effectively supporting vulnerable
children and their families.
Keynote Speakers
We are thrilled to be joined by Mervyn Storey MLA, Minister for
the Department of Social Development, and a representative from
the Department of Education. We thank them for their support.
Marie Delaney
Teaching the unteachable –
the RETHINK model
Marie Delaney is a teacher, educational psychotherapist, trainer and
writer. She is the director of the Learning Harbour in Crosshaven,
Ireland. She has extensive experience of working with challenging
behaviour, both staff and pupils! She has worked on outside school
projects – at DYP in Hackney, London, a mentoring and education
project for at risk youth – and in mainstream and special school
settings. She was manager of an on-site inclusion centre in Aveley,
co-ordinator of Learning Mentors and LSUs in Havering, Emotional
Literacy manager in Romford, Essex as well as an EFL and MFL
teacher. She is the author of ‘Teaching the Unteachable’ (2008) and
‘What can I do with the kid who…(2010, Worth Publishing) She is
co-author of the British Council’s new online course for teachers on
inclusion and special educational needs and trains teachers in
several countries for the British Council and OUP. Her main interests
are how therapeutic thinking approaches can help schools deal
with challenging behaviour, unlocking learning blocks and
supporting staff in their dealings with challenging pupils.
As teachers we have a range of behaviour management strategies
which work with most pupils in most classes most of the time.
There are, however, pupils for whom the best strategies do not
seem to work. What is happening with these children and with us,
as teachers, on these ‘bad’ days? How can we find ways to get
new insight and understanding into their behaviour and learning
blocks? In this plenary, Marie will present the RETHINK model as a
way of looking at challenging behaviour and finding new ways
forward. It will focus on:
• Why the best strategies sometimes do not work
• How we need to manage ourselves to work with these
pupils
• Understanding and breaking patterns of negative
• interaction
• Behaviour management vs behaviour change
• Understanding and working with the child’s internal world
Queen’s University
Belfast
The methodology of
assessing the
outcomes of the
Signature Project
Nurture Groups
Dr Seaneen Sloan is a Research
Fellow at the School of
Education, Queen’s University
Belfast. Her main role is to
generate and review the evidence
base for school-based
programmes and interventions
which aim to impact on pupil
wellbeing and/or academic
attainment. In Northern Ireland,
Helen Stollery
Reflective practice in
nurture groups
Helen joined the Nurture Group
Network as a National Training Officer
in 2007 becoming Head of Training in
2013. Previously she worked as a
mainstream teacher for many years
during which she set up a nurture
group. Before that she worked for
three years as a volunteer in Bermuda
on a programme supporting children
with social and emotional learning
difficulties and working with their
parents and teachers.
Workshops
Please chose workshop One before lunch and one after. See the booking form and tick
All four workshops will include strategies to suit all ages appropriate boxes
she is conducting evaluations of Nurture Groups and Roots
of Empathy in primary schools, and is also evaluating a
number of initiatives in primary and secondary schools
across England. These include literacy programmes (Success
for All and Quest), best practice in grouping students
(setting and mixed ability grouping), and using text
messaging to engage parents.
Aideen Gildea is a Research Health Visitor in the School of
Education, Queen’s University Belfast. Her role involves
evaluating school-based programmes in educational settings
in Northern Ireland and England. She is currently working
on the Roots of Empathy, Nurture Groups and Dead Cool
Smoking Prevention Programme evaluations in Northern
Ireland and Physically Active lessons and Parent Engagement
Programme evaluations in England. She is presently
working towards a PhD “Parental engagement with schools
on child wellbeing”. Her research aims to generate evidence
to inform policy and practice and ultimately address social
inequalities in health and wellbeing particularly for school
aged children and their parents with limited social capital.
This keynote will focus on the methodology used for
assessing the outcomes of the comparative Nurture Groups
Signature Project.
Teaching can sometimes feel like a thankless job. Working
within a nurture group setting every day is the most rewarding
and privileged job to do, but working in this environment can
quite quickly make staff feel deskilled. Therefore it is important
that you are given the time, space and resources to be able to
reflect on the work that you do with some of the most vulnerable
pupils in your schools. Reflection is an important human activity
in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it
over and evaluate it.
In education, reflective practice refers to the process of the
educator studying his or her own teaching methods and
determining what works best for the children/young people in
their care. Without reflection we as a practitioner are not able to
look objectively at our actions or take into account the emotions,
experience, or responses from our actions to improve our practice.
RP is a self-regulated process and Helen will give staff key ideas to
help staff to become a more reflective practitioner.
Northern Ireland –
Nurturing schools
to nurturing
communities
A bottom up approach
to nurture provision in
a multi-sectoral
education system?
This workshop will be an
integrated approach involving 4
presenters:
Geoff Dunn, MBE, principal of
Ballysally PS, Coleraine: The rise of
nurture education in Northern
Ireland
Emmet Norris, Save the Children:
Families and Schools Together –
supporting nurture in families
Joanne O’ Neill, Barnardos:
Pathsplus – supporting nurturing
thinking in schools
Alex Bradley, ABC Counselling:
Supporting nurturing schools
This workshop will run in the
morning only
The National
Nurture
Conference –
Northern Ireland
Marie Delaney
Claire Eccleshall
We understand the theory Nurture groups at secondary level
but what do we do?
- working with adolescents
This workshop will continue the themes
of the keynote speech and give
participants practical strategies for
supporting students in changing their
behaviour and improving their learning.
It will include:
• A practical case study with the
suggested interventions
• Setting meaningful behaviour
targets with pupils
• Activities for working with the
child’s internal world to bring
about lasting change
Angi Franklin
LEGO® BuildToExpress
Angi previously worked for Telford and
Wrekin Council where she held posts
from teaching assistant to most recently,
senior inclusion mentor. Angi has a great
deal of experience in the training of
MAPA, attachment theory, behaviour
management, sensory disorders and
much more.
BuildToExpress (BTE) encourages
students to express their thoughts and
ideas on any topic by building symbolic
models with LEGO® bricks. The method
ensures a secure and non-judgemental
process in which every student in the
class gets the opportunity to be
active, engaged and listened to.
Delegates will have hands-on
experience with BTE and will
learn how to create, develop and
organise their own BTE processes to
provide the nurture group with
stimulating learning through creative
thinking and self-expression.
Claire recently joined The Nurture Group Network after a
long career teaching in a mainstream primary school. Claire
previously ran a QMA primary nurture group and has been a
NGN associate trainer for many years.
The connection between failure at school and in later life,
in criminality and in mental illness is well known. The
transition from the security of primary school to secondary
school is challenging to many young people coping with
change and the stress of adolescence. It is often the
beginning of educational failure. More and more schools are
seeing the difficulties that surface at this point as a chance to
intervene with nurturing approaches, thus turning around
young people’s life chances.
This workshop will be an ideal introduction to the 3 day
accredited course on the Theory and Practice of Nurture
Groups and will consider the practicalities of setting up a
secondary nurture group, along with how nurture groups
help young people to acquire the skills they need for success
in life.
Wendy Roden
The Marjorie Boxall Quality
Mark Award
Wendy has a long career in teaching and in developing and
supporting nurture groups. She joined the Nurture Group
Network Board of Management in 2010, stepping down when
she was appointed Training Officer in 2012.
The Marjorie Boxall Quality Mark Award involves assessing
the work of a nurture group against a set of quality standards.
These standards are derived from the six principles of nurture
groups and their clearly defined operational characteristics.
These principles and characteristics have been distilled and
refined over a number of years by those people most directly
concerned with the growth of the nurture group model
including the originator, Marjorie Boxall.
This workshop will be of value to those seeing to work
towards the Marjorie Boxall Quality Mark Award. The six
principles of nurture groups will be considered against the
standards with examples of how this can translate into practice.
www.nurturegroups.org
All applications to Sophie Slater, The Nurture Group Network,
Booking Email:
18A Victoria Park Square, Bethnal Green, London E2 9PB T: 020 3475 8980
sophie@nurturegroups.org
Form
CLOSING DATE FRIDAY 20 MARCH 2015
Please return this form with payment or visit our website to pay with a credit or debit card.
The Northern Ireland
Nurture Conference
A Nurture
Group
Network
Conference
Thursday 26 March 2015
The Dunadry Hotel, 2 Islandreagh Drive, Dunadry, Antrim BT41 2HA
Cost £150 plus VAT (£180 per delegate)
Discount for members 10% Please insert your membership number here
Please
choose
two
workshops
you would
like to attend
by ticking
appropriate
boxes
A bottom up approach to nurture provision (AM only)
We understand the theory but what do we do?
Nurture groups at secondary level - working with adolescents
LEGO® BuildToExpress
The Marjorie Boxall Quality Mark Award
Cheque made payable to
The Nurture Group Network Limited
£
18A Victoria Park Square, Bethnal Green, London E2 9PB
Address for invoicing
Postcode
Tel
Email
Purchase order number
Name of
1
delegate/s
Please print 3
2
4
School/organisation
Telephone/email of delegate
Special requirements
(please give any special requirements including dietary)
Registered England and Wales, charity number: 1115972. Scottish registered charity number: SC042703
AM PM
Conference programme
The National
Nurture
Conference –
Northern
Ireland
Nurture groups
– working together to improve the lives of
children, young people and their families
Thursday 26 March 2015
The Dunadry Hotel, 2 Islandreagh Drive, Dunadry, Antrim BT41 2HA
08:30 – 09:15 Registration
09:15 – 09:30 Kevin Kibble, CEO of NGN Welcome
09:30 – 09:40 Mervyn Storey MLA
Minister for the Department of Social Development
09:40 – 09:50 Department of Education
09:50 – 10:30 Marie Delaney Teaching the unteachable
10:30 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 11:40 Queens University, Belfast Nurture Group Evaluation
11:40 – 12:50 Choose 1 of 5 workshops
12:50 – 13:50 Lunch
13:50 – 15:00 Choose 1 of 5 workshops
15:00 – 15:40 Helen Stollery Reflective practice in nurture groups
15:40 – 16:00 Questions and closing comments
www.nurturegroups.org
The venue
The Dunadry Hotel, 2 Islandreagh Drive, Dunadry, Antrim BT41 2HA
T 0044 28 9443 4343 | F 0044 28 9443 3389 | E info@dunadry.com
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