Best foot forward

Dinah Morley say that rather than invent new teams to do the work of existing professionals, local education authorities have more to gain if they engage with the underlying philosophy of a new initiative

BEST is a new Department for Education initiative that provides short-term funding for the establishment of behaviour and education support teams in 33 deprived areas in England for one year. After that, it is intended that partner agencies should contribute to on-going provision.

The scheme outlines a number of proposed developments, all of which offer potential support to the emotional well-being and mental health of pupils. A behaviour and education support team will work with 'school pyramids' to improve pupil behaviour, thereby reducing crime; the team will support teachers to assess and support vulnerable and challenging children; and the team will offer training to teachers in behaviour management.

Teams will also be expected to deliver a 'therapeutic' early intervention service to children and parents who are thought to need it, as well as linking to all relevant schemes and agencies in the school's community. They will also be expected to carry out 'behaviour audits', facilitating full assessments of pupils where necessary, as well taking a leading role in developing emotional and social competency work in schools.

The BEST concept is worthy but over-ambitious given its timescale. Careful work needs to be done to knit agencies together and to offer support at all levels of school activity. However, it does present an opportunity to develop those services which are crucial to children's mental health and, de facto, their behaviour, in a way that closes some of the gaps on the ground.

There is little time to take a thoughtful approach to planning the BESTs, but it would seem ill-advised to set up new teams, overlaying those already working with the schools' community and causing increasing confusing and fragmentation of service delivery.

BEST funds could be used to appoint a co-ordinator to pull together all professionals working in the community of the schools selected thereby, in effect, creating a 'virtual' BEST. Existing children's services planning frameworks locally are well placed to provide the necessary partnership structures, although the difficulties inherent in the organisation of new line management arrangements should not be underestimated.

A number of services from which this virtual team will be drawn are not well resourced and may struggle to expand their role, however minimally. Therefore these resource gaps should be filled with the resources available. The BEST guidelines allow for this.

Once the 'virtual' team starts to meet and sort out the caseloads of individual members as well as the new referral arrangements, then clearer roles will start to emerge. This is a crucial phase for the building of trust between team members who may not have known each other previously - or even if they did, may have done a fair amount of buck-passing or criticising of each other in the past. A realistic amount of time will need to be allotted to this.

As the team gets stronger and clearer about its remit, then it will be able to receive new referrals from the schools' community until it is able to deal with all referrals, undertake an initial assessment and either do a short piece of work or refer on to the appropriate agency. The intention should be to complete the work in the team wherever possible, supporting the child in a non-stigmatising and 'normal' setting.

The school policy and staff-focused work may be done most effectively by BEST professionals supporting the work of the special educational needs coordinator or inclusion manager in the BEST, rather than as a separate undertaking, which again could create confusion and fragmentation. However personal support to teachers should not be neglected.

For those more courageous local education authorities, this new initiative offers a chance to develop and link services for the benefit of pupils and families in a way that could affect educational outcomes significantly - and which, ultimately, should attract resources beyond the year end.

DINAH MORLEY

Dinah Morley is deputy director of YoungMinds