Behaviour Support Plan: Good Practice

THE PLACE TO BE

The Place to Be, a charity since 1994, is currently based in 11 schools in Southwark, Lambeth and Camden, and helps children with a variety of problems which prevent them from fulfilling their potential.

School project managers, based in each school, manage the work of a team of volunteer therapists who are trained in various disciplines such as art therapy, psychotherapy, play therapy, drama and movement therapy.  Volunteers all receive regular clinical supervision.  In individual or group sessions, the children care given the opportunity to express their concerns, to develop their self-awareness and to tackle difficulties they are encountering at school or at home.  Brief and longer-term work is offered with a review each term involving The Place to Be, the child, the school and the family.

The Place to Be offers a provision which is accessible and does not carry the stigma of referral and attendance at mental health centres.  The attendance rate is very high and research indicates that the presence of The Place to Be has had an impact both on individual children and on the school as a whole.  In one school alone recent statistics have shown that since 1994, when The Place to Be was set up in the school, there has been a 34% reduction in the number of pupils on the special educational register, unauthorised absence has reduced from 6.2% to 0.8%, there has been a dramatic reduction in internal exclusions from an average of two pupils a day to barely one a month and exclusion from the school has reduced from seven in one year to none.  During 1998, The Place to Be saw 568 children and has plans to expand. 

Contact Benita Retson on 0171 820 6487.