DESIGNATED TEACHER
LEADERSHIP QUALIFICATION

Introduction

The Inclusion Expert Designated Teacher Leadership Qualification aims to build the skills around, and capture the impact of, three of the most important parts of the Designated Teacher role:

• Leadership: Progressive pedagogy and advocacy for children who are looked after, managing multiple stakeholders, corporate parenting and supporting the training of staff in SEMH and wellbeing.
• Inclusion: Facilitating staff to learn and share knowledge and skills in how to best include vulnerable children in the classroom.
• Well-being: Supporting students and staff to manage their wellbeing when supporting young people who are care experienced and struggling.

For the first time and with leading psychological support, we are shifting from one DT per setting with the aim to ensure that the responsibility for supporting these students’ emotional needs is shared across a whole school approach.

Whole School Approach

The unique strength of this course is underpinned by learning how to provide comprehensive peer support. This enables the whole school to benefit from increased resilience – not only the most vulnerable pupils but also SLT, DTs and other staff too.

Peer support is not a new phenomenon but it is underutilised in the teaching profession. This element delivers four significant benefits to the whole school:

• Improve interpersonal competence and empathy;
• Develop a sense of equality in giving and taking between self and others;
• Gain self-awareness while helping; and
• Build a profile for self and school, from the person they help, and others.

When working with vulnerable students whose needs can manifest as ‘challenging behaviour’, staff are often exposed to high levels of strain and stress and may unknowingly experience effects of secondary trauma which in turn can impact on their ability to effectively support students. Until now, this would have required a trained psychologist to supervise, which is why this programme is unique in upskilling you to implement effective peer support.

This DT Leadership qualification delivers:

• • How to prevent the group from being hijacked by one person
  • Learning how to process increased openness and vulnerability
  • Arc of integration: How to shift participants’ attitudes to the group so that they feel an increased sense of equality, thus allowing the mood in the group to evolve from scepticism, to understanding to appreciation to enthusiasm
  • The foundations of wellbeing and the role peer-support groups can play in cultivating wellbeing
  • Facilitating language and actions