Barnardo's Blackford Brae Community Support Team

The Community Support Team (CST) is a joint initiative between Barnardo’s and City of Edinburgh Council.

The CST is a team of multi-disciplinary professionals who work with primary aged children at risk of losing their mainstream school place because of severe emotional and behavioural difficulties. The team travels around with work, serving the south-west and north-west of Edinburgh.

Aim and objectives of Blackford Brae CST

• To ensure that as many primary aged children with emotional and behavioural problems as possible can remain in their own schools and families wherever safe and appropriate.

Objectives of Blackford Brae CST

• To provide a community based multi-disciplinary assessment of children and their families, and recommended appropriate services to meet assessed needs.
• To assist teachers of children with behavioural difficulties in their own school.
• To provide assistance to parents/carers of children with behavioural difficulties at home, which enables them to gain confidence and promotes their parental responsibilities.
• To promote whole class and whole school approaches, working with others, towards including the child positively in school.
• To work collaboratively with external agencies, promoting a multi-disciplinary/multi-agency approach.
• To offer a range of help to parents through groupwork, family therapy, counselling, parenting skills, time-limited focused work and relationship therapy.
• To help individual children through a range of interventions including play therapy, groupwork, anger management and relationship therapy.
• To offer support to families out of school e.g. play schemes, individual work with children, after-school clubs etc.

The CST has been fully operational since February 1999, and consists of a manager, 4 social workers (who allocate 0.5 of their time to Blackford Brae School and 0.5 to the CST), 2 teachers and 2 community support workers. The role of the social workers is crucial in working closely with teachers and parents to ensure consistency between school and home setting, and to enable parents to improve relationships and meet their children’s developmental needs. A strong multi-disciplinary approach greatly enhances the service received by the family and school. Community support workers are experienced in work within the school setting and also providing support in the community.

From the beginning of their involvement with schools and families, the team has monitored their work by asking parents, teachers, children and keyworkers to complete brief questionnaires. The evaluation sheets seek the individuals’ views on the work done, and provide four different perspectives on whether there have been any measurable improvements for the child at school and at home.

The team works in eight primary schools in two clusters within south-west and north-west Edinburgh.