Behind the Inspection Rating: Excellence in dealing with trauma

The Mulberry Bush School is on something of a roll. The residential special school has been awarded an outstanding rating in its annual Ofsted social care inspection every year for the past five. The institution recently had its first education inspection since 2008, in which it also managed to score the top grade from the watchdog.

Ofsted’s report praises the “excellent progress” made by Mulberry Bush pupils and their attitude to learning, despite four-fifths of young people being deemed “not able to be educated” ahead of their arrival at the school.

“Our children have struggled to function in any sort of home or school,” says John Turberville, director of the school. “Many have had multiple foster placement breakdowns, are unable to live with their birth families or have adoptive parents who are really struggling to understand or manage their behaviour. We take children from local authorities who have exhausted all the provision they might have.”

Multi-disciplinary workforce
The school’s multi-disciplinary workforce is divided into three groups: an education team of teachers and teaching assistants; a group living team that cares for the children outside school hours; and a therapies and networks team that offers various forms of therapy to the children and their families. All three groups employ the same psychodynamic approach to dealing with children’s behaviour, that Turberville says provides consistency and continuity for children at all times.

“We look to understand behaviour as a communication,” he says. “The vast majority of the children have had some sort of traumatic experience in their first couple of years of life and that experience stays with them. We train our staff to understand the meaning in their behaviour. For example, many of our ch