Positive Regard – Forest Moor School

Positive Regard is more than a training and consultancy service. We put the individual needs of children at the heart of everything we do. The holistic services we offer are flexible and shaped completely around the needs of the children and young people. We work with schools and children’s services to bring about an empathetic culture of support through staff training, practice modelling and policy review.

We don’t see challenging children and young people – we recognise signs of stress, trauma and emotional imbalance. We empathise with the root cause of these challenges and use a model of relational practice and positive behaviour support to repair relationships, build trust and decrease the signs of stress in children and young people, thus increasing their focus and engagement in teaching and learning, as well as increasing their opportunities to achieve in all aspects of their lives.

Our offer includes wellbeing, mental health, behaviour and SEND services. Each service is tailored towards the specific needs of a school or establishment and a bespoke package is created by our highly skilled Positive Regard Specialists.

Meet the North Yorkshire Team

Ron Crichton

Positive Regard Specialist Leader

I have been a member of the Senior Leadership Team at Forest Moor School since April 2022. My main area of responsibility is Behaviour Safety and Welfare.

I believe that it is important to create a culture of understanding when it comes to supporting students with additional SEMH needs. Understanding that behavioural outbursts are a communicating or an expression of need, is key to supporting staff to meet the student at their needs rather than using a sticking plaster solution and masking the need by addressing the behaviour in isolation.

I became a Positive Regard consultant when I was a Care Team Leader at Springwell Leeds Academy in 2018.

During this time I have worked in school improvement support therapeutic and trauma informed approaches to managing and changing behaviours. I have also supported other schools through Team Teach positive behaviour management training intermediate and advanced modules.

Louise Heley

Intermediate Team Trach Tutor

I have worked in education for over 10 years in the Bradford District and three years based in North Yorkshire. I began working as a 1:1 support for children with ASC in a mainstream secondary school in 2013. From this I joined Forest Moor SEMH school in September 2020 during their academisation into Wellspring Trust and this was my first experience of working in an SEMH provision and I have not looked back since.

I started out as a teaching assistant in Key Stage 3 in various classrooms during a time of vast development and then working within Key stage 2 embedding routines and regulation techniques which students continue to use in Key stage 3.

I have used my values to make opportunities to support the whole school and develop as a practitioner whilst striving for the best and safest outcomes for the children in my care whilst also empowering my colleagues to make those informed choices to support self regulation.
My ethos is based around relational practice, early intervention and meeting the basics of needs from observing communication displayed by our young people for them to safely engage in any given activity.

This led to becoming a Care Team Lead for KS3 in March 2021 and helped to develop other members of the care team within the school by empowering them to work collaboratively as a whole school team.

From this I have continued to use my relational practice and unconditional positive regard to support pupils, colleagues and families by really focusing on the 95% used within a class in all key stages in school and providing strategies and techniques to support different learning styles and SEMH needs.

My specialist areas are ASC, ADHD and PDA and this has enabled me to begin to develop positive relationships with external agencies such as CAMHs and support wider agencies working with our young people to understand their needs as opposed to a behaviour or negative label.

I am able to extend my positive regard within Wellspring Trust supporting on team teach courses as an intermediate tutor and currently onsite tutor at Forest Moor School.
I believe every child has the opportunity to learn, feel safe and loved and it is our duty of care to provide this by meeting their individual needs.

It is our responsibility for us to support our young people with our authenticity and genuine care within our settings and within the communities they are a part of.

Ben Topper

Intermediate Team Trach Tutor

I started my journey at Forest Moor in summer 2021. I had previously worked for Bradford City in and around schools in the Bradford community. This was mainly delivering PE lessons and working in youth centres across the Bradford region. There was a post advertised as a Teaching assistant at Forest Moor which I took interest in and came on supply. The reason for me joining Forest Moor was seeing the positive impact we have on pupils every single day, the consistency we provide for them enables them to feel safe and be successful in the right environment.

After a couple of months working on supply a permanent post was offered to me as a Teaching assistant. During my time as a Teaching assistant I worked in all key stages across school learning about many different regulation strategies and therapeutic interventions that can best support our pupils. I worked within some extremely high need classes which helped my personal development and skills for me to take the next step in my career which was an Advanced teaching assistant post in key stage 4. I worked in the social capital class in key stage 4 for a couple of months before being appointed Care Team Leader in KS4.

As part of my Care Team Leader development, I became an intermediate Team Teach tutor and provide regular Team Teach training to staff at Forest Moor School, Wellspring Academy Trust and the wider education community.