I Matter Blog and News

2015

Oct 19, 2015 02:03am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
3 min read

First Annual Conference: How Can We Really Work Together to Improve Mental Health and Educational Outcomes? Prioritising Parent Understanding and Competence

Picture

The seeds of this conference started a long time ago from a sense of confusion and overwhelm experienced in response to the ever rising tide of need I have seen in day to day practice in health and education settings over my career of the last 20 years.  How do you turn frustration into something constructive, how do you turn this sense of overwhelm and hopelessness into something that feels worth doing?  

The final trigger for this particular conference taking shape was a sense of exas…

Read more…

Oct 19, 2015 02:03am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
3 min read
Oct 19, 2015 02:01am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
5 min read

Stress in Schools: Who is responsible and why it matters

Picture

As a practising clinical psychologist and experienced teacher I have become increasingly concerned about the levels of stress I am observing amongst my education colleagues in schools.   This last half term it seems that staff are more stressed than ever before and we are just at the beginning of the school year.  

Teachers are by and large an extremely conscientious and hardworking bunch.   My concern is that the expectations of what class teachers and senior leaders should be able to achiev…

Read more…

Oct 19, 2015 02:01am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
5 min read
Feb 1, 2015 02:15am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals, 2015 & Theory to Practice
5 min read

The Impact of Stress States on the Performance of Adults and Children?
 Capture-yerkes dodson.JPG
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…

Read more…

Feb 1, 2015 02:15am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals, 2015 & Theory to Practice
5 min read
Jan 20, 2015 02:16am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
3 min read

Are you missing something important with your tracking?
Picture
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…

Read more…

Jan 20, 2015 02:16am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
3 min read
Jan 17, 2015 02:18am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
3 min read

What is the impact of a gap between developmental and chronological age on educational and mental health outcomes? Our Action Research Group
photo-1560785496-3c9d27877182.jpg
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…

Read more…

Jan 17, 2015 02:18am
By Cathy Betoin
Under Professionals & 2015
3 min read

Categories