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The Impact of Stress States on the Performance of Adults and Children?

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Everywhere I go in the course of my work with complex children and families, I find schools and children and families and staff under huge pressure, delivering curriculum that are becoming more and more preset.  

What I hear over and over again is that the curriculum has become so super-charged that the times that used to be available in the day and week for just easing off pressure and taking a step back to explore a wider field have become more and more rare.  So, what has an understanding…

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Are you missing something important with your tracking?

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So you know well the extraordinary investment of time, energy and finances that is currently invested in tracking children's progress.

But what if we were missing something REALLY important?

I think we are.  

We have huge concerns about rising problems of child mental health and concerns to raise educational outcomes, with huge numbers of adults being driven to monitor more and more details of what children are doing.   

But believe it or not this massive industry is are not tracking the foundatio…

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What is the impact of a gap between developmental and chronological age on educational and mental health outcomes? Our Action Research Group

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January 2015:  The day to day impact of child development on outcomes is the important question that our Action Research group is setting out to explore. We had our first session on Monday and I am very excited that we have got going.   We are 8 practising professionals from education and children's services.  Our goal is to make space over the next 6 months to think about what we are seeing in our settings.  

Because when it comes to outcomes, child development is the elephant - no, the ma…

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Is challenging behaviour a mental health issue?

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Is challenging behaviour a mental health issue?   Of course it often is! 

As a psychologist one of the issues that has concerns me most is that people too often make a bold distinction between young people who present with oppositional and challenging behaviour and young people who present with issues such as eating disorders, depression, anxiety and self-harm.    

Challenging behaviour and anxiety and depression as examples can look very different.  At first regard they demand different skill…

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Yay! The I Matter Project is now a Social Enterprise!

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Cathy Betoin Training Ltd is a limited company, registration number 07570100, that I set up to administer the work of the I Matter Project.  

In November 2014  Cathy Betoin Training Ltd formally and legally became a social enterprise.  As someone who has trained within the public sector and been deeply committed to the public sector values this was a transition that was dear to my heart.  

A Social Enterprise is defined according to 3 criteria:

i) There is a social mission - the mission of this p…

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Why I Matter Training? #4 Adult and child wellbeing are linked

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The fourth reason I decided to develop this training was that as I studied all the research, it became very very clear that there were so many different approaches or models but to me, many of them were missing a key and fundamental issue, or adding it as an afterthought.  

How many can you list yourself? Here are a few: Behavioural approaches, Cognitive-Behavioural approaches, Play therapy, Family Therapies, Psycho-dynamic or Person-centred counselling, Solution-Focussed approches, Webster-Str…

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Why I Matter Training? #5 Understanding improves outcomes

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So the fifth reason I became interested in creating this training is that I became convinced that to make a difference to the numbers of children who were struggling, the answer was not just more therapists and more therapy.  Therapists and therapy tend to work with an approach that is inevitably based on an individualised approach.  That is great!  

Yet we have so many children who are struggling and the work involved to help put a complex child back on track can often be so time consuming tha…

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Why I Matter Training? #6 There is rarely a quick fix

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The sixth reason I decided to develop I Matter Training is that when it comes to living with or caring for children with complex needs, there is rarely a quick fix.  Sorry!

When we are faced with really challenging situations - we have all been in the situation of just wanting someone or something to come and sort things out and make things better - More than that we often want something or someone to come and sort the child or other person out - right now!   Unfortunately, this can rarely, if …

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