Our Trustees and Governors expect that everyone who becomes part of the Southfield School community will contribute positively to the success of the school and its students. 

We know here at Southfield that supporting students to develop positive ways to express their needs is key to their success as adults.

We know that behaviour is a form of communication and we will always work to understand what it is that students are trying to tell us. We are developing our plans to ensure that we have a whole school, consistent approach to the understanding of this and that we work with individual students in ways that supports their development.

We know that sometimes students need additional help when it comes to management of more complex behaviors.  Where this is the case, we develop specific and individual plans to support this.  We ensure that all staff are trained in the principles of Team Teach which require 95% of interventions to be non physical.  There are, on occasions, times when students either for their own safety or the safety of others require physical intervention to keep them safe; this will always be with the least resistance and for the minimum amount of time.

Through our personal development programme we teach our students about what bullying is so that if they feel that this is happening to them that they recognise it.  We ensure that we build effective relationships with the students so that they know that the adults in school will listen to them.  We are an ethnically very diverse school and incidents of racism are very rare.

It is very rare when we use suspensions, we would always want to work with the child and their family to try and find other ways.  If we felt that a placement wasn’t suitable for the student then we would work collaboratively with parents and the SEN officers to ensure that a more effective provision is sought.