Northern Health School - Regional House Unit

Reviews

1. Ngaio Hanlon ★☆☆☆☆

   Some individual teachers were wonderful and quietly did a good job. There is a lot that is good opportunity in the health school. Its a shame about the factors below. TRUST BOARD The appointed non staff Trust Board members seemed to follow the staff leadership rather than act with enough of their own expertise, and knowledge to reliably provide needed checks and balances on the staff members of the Board. COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE The school complaints procedure has comparatively little detail. It leaves staff at each level, to mostly decide how to do things. However I saw an absence of reasonably skilled listening by staff in these situations. Outcomes I saw were very often unecessarily poor. At times, the child was treated poorly or more harshly by the staff, straight after a complaint had been made and this was a worry. NO RELATIONSHIP REPAIR PROCEDURE USED When a staff member in the small base class at NHS mishandled the student and distressed them, albeit not intentionally, there was no procedure for healing the resulting rift. That same staff member was in time, forced upon the student as their individual teacher. The assignment was traumatic for the student and failed. STUDENTS AND THEIR SPECIAL NEEDS Similar to above, at times, and in the last couple of years particularly, for this student, the school made decisions without adequate understanding of the student's special needs, ignoring advice from parents and the student, and avoiding consulting first with the child's therapist. This resulted in a lot of unecessary trauma to the student. As an example, the student's teacher advised us at a meeting, that unless the child attended at least one subject in a normal class at Northcote College in the next year, that NHS would refuse all services. This was presented as a fait accompli, not as up for any group decision. The child had a major health crisis by trying desperately to comply, and was out of all education for some time afterwards and never rejoined a class until a long time later.

   almost 5 years ago

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