Team Over Program

Transcription: Team over programme

A Collaborative Approach to Supporting Children

I want to talk today to a broader audience, to not just parents, but to teachers and therapists and anybody else working with children in the space of remediation and special needs.

This is my view on how I think the system should work, or at least this is how my system works in the remedial and special needs space.

I see the value in everything that is coming forward in terms of collaboration and multidisciplinary teams. Including the parents in those teams are vital, and keeping the child at the centre of that is even more important.

The inclusion and participation of a child in their therapeutic journey cannot be undermined or undervalued. Their voice is important, so we need to find a space for their voice in what we choose for them to do and the journey that we take them on.

Communication Within the Team

But more to that, if we think about how we collaborate as communication partners, as therapeutic and education partners, as people who spend a lot of time with these children from a collaboration point of view, we need to view each other as team members, greater team members.

Our communication needs to be more ongoing, a little bit more colloquial, so not always formal. We need to have conversations about what we’re doing, the successes we’re having, share our successes, and share where it’s not working.

We must take on other advice and understand that if we are not the right person to address a specific thing, or even if we’re not the right person for that child, we need to step back. We need to step away, because this is a child’s life.

Letting Go of Ego and Fixed Approaches

I always talk to parents about how I can’t guarantee anything. If I was somebody who painted houses, I could pretty much guarantee I could cover your house, or at least the walls you want me to paint.

But when it comes to children, they’re human beings, so I can’t guarantee anything. Which means I cannot do it alone and I cannot do it with ego.

I need to do it as a whole, with everybody’s voice, taking on feedback, giving feedback, taking on suggestions, trying things out, taking on new ideas, even opposing ideas, being open to various things.

In my environment, we don’t believe the program is the solution. We believe that the team is the solution for the child.

If we believed in the program, we wouldn’t let go of it even if it failed a child. We need to be able to do that. We need to be able to let go of our approach if it’s not working.

Holding on tight because our approach is something we believe in doesn’t serve the child unless it does.

So if you have an undying belief in a particular program and you want to bang your head against the wall trying to make it work when it clearly isn’t, that’s not serving the child. I don’t think that’s the way we should go about it.

Open, Transparent Professional Dialogue

I’m talking to all of you. How do we open ourselves up, be transparent, and have open, professional communication about what we’re doing and what we’re finding is working?

We need to be able to recognise that sometimes a particular approach works in one environment but not in another, and that we’re not here to fight for our voice, but to add and lend our voice to the problem, to the child, to the progress, to the solution that we’re trying to find, and walk everybody together along the road.

Inviting Participation and Shared Insight

If you’re working in my environment from a school’s perspective, or if you’re working in my school environment as a therapist or any kind of interventionist, I openly invite you to come and get involved in my school.

Get involved in the WhatsApp groups I create around the child to hear everybody’s voice, lend your own, share suggestions, say what you’re working on, be wowed by progress, and offer encouragement.

All of those voices are so important to parents, in particular, who are not in our profession and have a child with difficulties, and they’re trying their best.

Can we give them “aha” moments, insights? Can we listen to them and have our own “aha” moments and insights?

Professional Responsibility and Scope

I think it’s so important that we are transparent and mature in how we communicate, while taking into account all the legalities and ensuring that we work in the service of the child.

I think that is how we get further than trying to pull in different directions on our own.

When we look at each of our specialities, stay within your speciality, but do not necessarily swim in your lane. If you have an opportunity to help a child, to help a child.

Thinking Beyond Your Lane

I think perhaps from a therapy point of view, this can be a tricky part to think about or a tricky way to think about therapy.

But if you’re not thinking outside your scope and sharing information, you’re leaving teachers and parents to handle the cross-lane work.

Whereas you, the trained specialists in your field, whether it be speech therapy or occupational therapy or specialising in sensory integration from an occupational therapy point of view, if that’s all you do and you work in your little bubble, it’s like only looking at the child’s ankle when there’s systemic inflammation and not looking beyond that.

But to open your scope to say, “Sure, I’m working on this, but I see there’s something else going on. Who do we need to bring in? What do we need to do and say?”

If we don’t say that, you’re leaving it to the teachers and parents to do that. And you guys are the professionals, the therapists. You guys are trained in particular areas.

I think your voice is so important when it comes to talking outside your scope, offering suggestions and ideas, and potentially even applying them.

And I know that steps outside of your mandate, but who’s actually applying it? In layman’s terms, when it comes to therapy, the parents and teachers end up doing the application.

A Holistic View of the Child

So rather than only leaving it in our hands, how do we broaden our scope as a full team so that we serve the child, so that we generalise skills, so that we are consistent with our message, so that we share feedback, and we move with the child, and we don’t get stuck?

This comes from a very personal example where my daughter was being treated for a swollen ankle until a homoeopath said, “This is not a swollen ankle. This is moving. Get some blood tests.”

And it turned out to be an autoimmune disease.

If the homoeopath hadn’t been general, which they tend to be, they would have looked at the whole body. We, as parents, who didn’t know anything about autoimmune diseases, would have continued to treat the ankle with ankle specialists.

So I think we need to make sure we’ve got people in our children’s lives who look broader than just the little focus area, who look to the strengths and not just the weaknesses, who can step out of their specialty and guide parents and teachers to better solutions, more solutions, holistic solutions.

These children are human beings. They’re not ankles or maths problems or anxiety. It’s a complex need that they have.

Conclusion

So in our environment, we work collaboratively on a daily basis with no ego, full humility, full transparency, and full respect.

And I think it’s really working.