Head of Nurture Support - Anne-Marie Leatherland 

Curriculum Intent

Keyham Base is an in-school teacher-led psychosocial intervention group whose curriculum supports students to become effective, empowered communicators able to independently challenge and realise their individual potential.

 

Keyham Base

Keyham Base is a specialised nurture intervention group which supports vulnerable children with missing or distorted early nurturing experiences by immersing them in a safe, accepting and warm environment. This enables them to form trusting relationships with adults and respond appropriately with their peers; giving them the skills to do well at school, make friends and deal more calmly with the trials and difficulties of everyday life.

It is based upon the 6 principles of nurture:

• Learning is understood developmentally.
• The classroom offers a safe base.
• The importance of nurture for the development of wellbeing.
• Language is a vital means of communication.
• All behaviour is communication.
• The importance of transition.

The ideology of Keyham Base is to work with students and address personal needs to ignite a love for learning and ensure that they can be successful in the main school and access education in order for students to fulfil their potential. We support students across both KS3 and KS4. Each of their needs are very different and therefore teaching is very reactive. Issues experienced by students overnight, over the weekend or in the morning prior to coming to school can be addressed and students supported appropriately. We provide a specialised programme in Base which covers social skills needed by our students including social scenarios and how to deal with them effectively, use of tone and expression, turn-taking, resilience and dealing with failure. We also teach PSHE focussing upon topics such as relationships and personal hygiene. Lessons are delivered by teaching staff as well as specialists including councillors and therapists as and when appropriate. Once confidence and self-esteem have both improved, students are carefully transitioned back into lessons to allow them to access an appropriate curriculum to support their future educational learning. Some of these are with Keyham Base students but taught by secondary subject specialists whilst some are with their year groups again taught by secondary specialists.

Over the past couple of years, we have seen former Base students who were unable to access lessons in the main school successfully reintegrate into lessons across the curriculum with their year group peers due to the intense and specialised work done in Base. Behaviour incidents of Keyham Base students have reduced, attendance has increased and many have successfully built up trusting relationships with both staff and students within the school.