Clerkenwell CoE Primary School has committed to becoming an Islington Trauma Informed Practice school, through a year-long project dedicated to understanding trauma and behaviour.
Islington Trauma Informed Practices in Schools (iTIPS) is a project that works to develop and embed whole-school trauma approaches in schools, to provide a stable, safe space, in order to improve pupils' ability to regulate and increase their learning potential.
iTIPS draws from the ARC (Attachment, Regulation and Competency) framework, and has been piloted in 2017-18 with five Islington primary schools and the PRU. The second wave of schools to take part in 2018-19 include six primary schools and two secondary schools. Whole school staff teams and their partners were trained in this framework, and each school has an 'ARC champion' from Islington CAMHS and the EP service to support them in embedding the ARC framework and trauma-informed approaches.
The ARC Framework (Attachment, Regulation, Competency)
Since TIPS started in September 2017 schools report that:
- Staff are attuning to pupils and being ‘curious’ about behaviour
- There are improved staff-pupil interactions
- Staff are better able to self-regulate and respond empathetically
- Staff are having more reflective conversations with pupils
- Pupils are reflecting more on their feelings and emotions and are better able to self-regulate