Putting human connection at the heart of our services
I recently heard a disheartening story that reaffirmed why I believe human connections matter so much to good services and well-functioning systems.
A Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND) team were handed heart-shaped balloons while they sat at their desks. The balloons were from parents and carers, who had marched to the council building with a message to share: “you need to put the heart back into SEND.”
It is easy to understand why parents and carers would feel this way. Getting support for a child or young person with SEND can be extremely process-heavy and can feel like it is lacking in heart. The frustrations of the balloon-carrying parents/carers might be directed at the wider SEND system but they engage with that system through the individuals in that system (You also can’t send a balloon to a system or a bad process you don’t like!)
Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) and public servants working in SEND don’t lack heart. They aren’t in this line of work for the money or recognition, they do it because they want to support children and young people to lead fulfilling lives. In my experience, they are also disproportionately the parents/carers of children with SEND, working to try and improve outcomes for everyone.
The SENCOs and SEND officers that parents/carers engage with are battling against increasing caseloads, process pressures and a lack of funding. They often share many of the same frustrations and challenges as parents/carers, wishing they could do more. These systemic challenges can prevent them from having the time or energy to show parents/carers how much heart they have. But the system isn’t the only thing to blame for us not showing our true heart. There are choices being made by teams, line managers and individuals that mean that space isn’t created for human connections and positive, trusting relationships.
System solutions without heart can’t work
The way the SEND system is designed clearly creates barriers to putting the heart back into SEND, and I’m not here to argue that there aren’t ways to design better SEND services and improve systems of work. What I do believe is that there also needs to be a focus on the power of human connections, with more space for building the skills and confidence of our workforce.
The recent SEND Review acknowledges that the ambitions of the 2014 SEND Reforms have not been delivered and outlines a range of ways to improve the system and break the vicious cycle outlined in the review. I don’t disagree with how this challenge is described but I think there is a heart-shaped hole in the SEND review.
The review recognises the importance of relationships but seems to see them as an error in the system rather than a strength: “Where local systems work more effectively, they are often too reliant on good will and relationships and this is the exception rather than the norm.” I think what they are getting at is that the support your child gets shouldn’t be dependent on the quality of the relationships in the system or your ability to navigate those relationships. I understand that but think it overestimates the power of process/system changes to create change and add heart to a system.
There is a clear acknowledgement in the review that relationships are important but the solutions are heavily weighted to process changes. The idea seems to be that this will mitigate the need for good relationships by having “the right incentives and levers to fulfil those responsibilities and be held accountable for their role in delivery.” This probably means more targets and KPIs for officers to chase, in a system that is perceived to lack heart.
The support a child with SEND gets is clearly dependent on a range of interconnected relationships. Some of these are direct relationships with teachers and SENCOs but the relationships that SENCO has with the school’s senior leadership team, with health colleagues, and with the parent/carer all play a role in the child’s outcomes. The strategic relationships between health, education and social care matter. All the relationships at all levels matter. So why isn’t there more focus on how we strengthen our relationship-building muscles?
Give people the space to build connections
We need to break down the adversarial relationship between the people delivering and receiving services and build trusting relationships. Parents/carers need to know that we do care and that officers aren’t just trying to limit access to services and support.
This starts with there being space to talk and listen. I’ve witnessed the power of this and the difference it can make to pick up the phone for 5–10 minutes, rather than just sending out a letter saying ‘no’ and then waiting for the backlash. These calls take confidence and skills that we don’t always support our people to develop. We train people in processes and specific interventions but not always how to have helpful conversations and how to deliver difficult news in an empathic way.
I was talking to a former SENCO this week who said that sometimes schools and individual teachers needed to be more confident to show vulnerability. Not knowing all the answers is ok, if the parent/carers and the child know that you care about them and are on their side. This is also true for SEND caseworkers and other professionals in the system. Again, this can be hard and frontline staff must be supported to lean into that vulnerability. It takes practice and skill.
The fear of complaints and tribunals is real but we have to believe that building better relationships, at all levels, will support us to spend time on what matters and less time on work that shouldn’t be in the system at all (failure demand such as complaints.) There is so much heart in the SEND system. While people work to fix the broken system, there is always space to show it.
