Nurturing Kent Programme

As we reach the 18-month milestone for the Nurturing Kent Programme, we are delighted to see the level of engagement from schools across the county. To date we have had expressions of interest from around 250 schools – over 80% of our target!

The fully-funded programme has been commissioned by Kent County Council to support a minimum of 300 mainstream primary and secondary schools to develop their nurture and inclusion practices. Each school is enrolled onto core nurtureuk courses including the Theory and Practice of the Boxall Profile®, the National Nurturing Schools Programme (NNSP), and the Theory and Practice of Nurture Groups. Schools also receive a two-year subscription to the Boxall Profile® Online, credits that can be exchanged for additional consultancy support, training, online webinars and publications, and access to networking opportunities.

“We have been able to Boxall Profile® the whole school and implement strategies that are beneficially impacting whole classes. We have looked at these results and… included more nurture activities, which has resulted in the children spending curriculum time more focused and with more intent.” – Cohort 1 School

The programme is bespoke to each school, and celebrates the things schools are already doing well, whilst also identifying areas to improve and providing regular guidance and support. It ensures every child has access to an education that allows them to flourish both academically and socially. 

“Children have made expected or better progress towards their individualised targets or outcomes. Their individual needs have been well supported ensuring that they are able to access the classroom and attend to tasks, have greater self-regulation and strong, trusting relationships with staff members.” – Kent School

Nurtureuk are partnering with the Kent and Medway Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) to deliver a two-day community summit to explore how nurturing approaches in schools can be extended to the whole community. 

The event will bring together education professionals, residents, police, the local authority, and those from community and voluntary organisations. Participants will hear from national speakers, including author Joe Brummer, as well as local speakers on the challenges that schools face and how nurturing approaches are positively impacting young people. The sessions will also explore how schools and community representatives have worked together to strengthen the support for young people and helped them to achieve positive outcomes. 

The first day focuses on the Medway, Swale and Gravesham regions, whilst the second is dedicated to Maidstone, Ashford and Thanet. In addition to the speakers, there will be a series of practical workshops to allow local representatives to discuss how plans can be created and delivered to build nurturing communities around schools. 

“We know there is huge untapped potential not only within the young people themselves, but within the communities they live in. For nurtureuk to have the chance to provide a platform for all these groups to come together to listen to the voices of young people, and then action some positive nurturing outcomes for the students, the schools and the wider community, is a huge privilege.” – Nichala Johansen, VRU Project Lead Consultant and Trainer, nurtureuk

The summit aims to identify causes of serious violence and how they affect young people, whilst looking at how partners can work together to address them. It will provide the opportunity to explore how nurturing approaches that extend from the school into the community can create safer spaces, and help young people to achieve positive short and long-term social, emotional, and academic outcomes. By bringing local services together to create and strengthen networks around schools, the summit aims to enable a localised community approach.

nurtureuk have been selected as the preferred provider for the Kent County Council Whole School Approaches to Nurture Service. From September 2021, we will be supporting over 300 mainstream schools in Kent to take part in nurtureuk’s National Nurturing Schools Programme (NNSP).

We are excited to be delivering training and consultancy for schools to develop and implement their own whole-school approaches to nurture, building upon their existing strengths, and leading to school-level accreditation. We will also provide support in implementing nurture group approaches, as well as providing access and training in the use of the Boxall Profile®; nurtureuk’s unique assessment tool to assess emotional wellbeing and identify appropriate strategies at individual, classroom and school-level.

The design of the programme will recognise that each school will have slightly different needs and requirements. Flexibility within the programme delivery model means that we can provide a bespoke service and work alongside staff and pupils within each school to achieve the best results, together creating a culture where young people can thrive and achieve through their education.

The CEO of nurtureuk Arti Sharma said:

“We are absolutely delighted to be working with Kent County Council with this important countywide initiative. We believe social and emotional development is a fundamental part of a young person’s education and with the ongoing pandemic creating such uncertainty, nurture is needed now more than ever. Taking the whole school approach right across Kent means together we can bring the nurture approach to as many young people as possible, and we will build on the successful work we have already started with the Kent and Medway Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) and Virtual School Kent (VSK). Working together with Kent County Council we will support schools to adopt a more inclusive approach for Kent’s pupils, supporting mental health, putting young people at the centre of their education and creating a culture where aspiration, motivation and application are understood to be the keys to success.”

Through embedding the six principles of nurture and using the Boxall Profile® across the whole school, schools can identify children and young people who need additional, more focused support through nurturing interventions, or as part of a nurture group. We look forward to following the nurture journey of these schools in Kent and seeing the positive impact the nurture approach has on both the pupils and the school staff.