The Thrive Approach
Hawthorn and Thrive
Thrive is a systematic approach to the early identification of emotional developmental need in children and young people so that differentiated provision can be put in place quickly by the adults working most closely with the child or young person. It is preventative, reparative, pragmatic and easy to use.
Why Use It?
Because addressing emotional developmental needs builds residence and resourcefulness, decreases the reins of mental illness, reinvigorates the learning provision and helps those young people who are at risk of underachieving or exclusion to stay in school and re-engage with learning.
Thrive is a specific way of working with all children/ young adults that helps to develop their social and emotional well being, enabling them to engage with life and learning. It supports them in becoming more self assured, capable and adaptable. It can also address any troubled, or troubling behaviours, providing a fire foundation for academic attainment.
Using the THRIVE approach, each child or young person is assessed using the online Thrive programme. THRIVE is currently being adopted by many schools throughout the country.
It is based on a large body of evidence from the field of neuroscience that when a child is exposed to trauma, the brain reverts back to its instinctive form. This is where the child often becomes emotionally ‘stuck’ at a particular age and ceases to progress or engage in social or education settings. As a result, this often manifests itself as bad behavior, self-harm, suicide attempts and poor development of cognitive skills. At the moment the social care, education and mental health systems isn’t designed to accommodate these children, as there are an ever-increasing number and they have such a wide variety of needs. Many refuse to leave the house or become dangerous to themselves and are currently offered tuition to help but often can’t mentally engage. When they are due to leave school, they are still very damaged and haven’t been able to engage with studies as the brain needs to move from being to doing. The longer this state is left, the harder it is to change behavior patterns.
Using the THRIVE assessment we can set goals and monitor progress very closely. Activities are tailored to the assessments and not what we visually see or believe a child of a particular age should be doing. We progress as the child progresses using sensory activities and equine assisted therapy.
The animal side of the school teaches new skills, builds confidence and self-worth and allows the child to engage with a living creature who can sense their emotions far better than any human. They learn body language and communication skills with the animals and are never judged. Cognitive skills are improved using activities such as art, gardening and woodcraft and a sense of achievement is very important to somebody who has rarely succeeded during their childhood, either at mainstream school or at home.
Other counties across the UK are adopting this way of moving a young person forward and it works. For those who wish to read more about the THRIVE Approach and the research and evidence upon which it is based, it can be easily found online. Our THRIVE Practitioners, are also available to answer any queries.