International trends in the education of students with special educational needs

19.8 Service Integration

According to Shaddock et al. (2009), a feature of leading practice throughout the world is a move towards ‘integrated support’, ‘service integration’ or ‘wraparound services’, all of which are concerned with the delivery of specialised services in a more coordinated and integrated manner (see, for example, Peterson, 2009). Such coordination can take place at an institutional level, at an agency level, or at a government level (see Chapter Twenty-one for a description of wraparound services).

In South Africa, the writer was impressed by the idea of institution-level support teams – an idea that many other countries have adopted in various forms. In the South African model, the primary function of these teams is to put in place ‘properly co-ordinated learner and educator support services that will support the learning and teaching process by identifying and addressing learner, educator and institutional needs’ (Department of Education, 2001).

A key to the success of such teams is the support and encouragement offered by the school principal and other senior leaders. The chief function of school-wide teams is to develop a school-wide supportive culture and policies on learners with special educational needs, as well as focussing on identifying and supporting individual learners. Such teams need a dedicated leader/facilitator and a recorder of decisions and plans, utilising advanced technology where available to facilitate communication (Ademan & Taylor, 1998).

According to Schaddock et al. (2009), the literature on service integration highlights the following factors:

• 
  the active involvement of the child and support for parents as the primarily responsible party;
  
• 
  conceptualisation of schools as the predominant living and learning environment for youth and as a community resource;
  
• 
  co-location of services where possible;
  
• 
  alignment of client assessments and case management; and
  
• 
  clear and realistic objectives of service integration; leadership support; time allocation for joint planning; and clarity around administrative arrangements, funding and resources.
  

The next two chapters will examine service integration in more depth.

19.9 Summary

1. 
   Educating SWSEN requires collaboration among many people – several professionals and parents in particular.
   
2. 
   Collaborative approaches to educating SWSEN are increasingly becoming embedded in education systems around the world. This is well illustrated in the sources of support for regular class teachers in their work with SWSEN in 23 European countries, which included school-based specialists, community-based agencies and special schools.
   
3. 
   Successful collaboration depends on such factors as establishing clear goals, defining respective roles, adopting a problem-solving approach and establishing mutual trust and respect.
   
4. 
   Co-teaching occurs in inclusive education settings when a general education teacher and a special education teacher combine their expertise to meet the needs of all learners in the class.
   
5. 
   Paraprofessionals are generally inadequately appreciated, compensated, oriented, trained, supervised, and researched. Since 2001, paraprofessionals in the US have had more defined job descriptions and are expected to have a college-level qualification.
   
6. 
   Teachers need to be trained to manage paraprofessionals and to ensure that SWSEN have quality time with teachers and the general curriculum.
   
7. 
   Various countries have developed cadres of professionals to act as advisers/ consultants to teachers of SWSEN, providing advice and guidance to the general classroom teacher on the programme to be followed.
   
8. 
   In many countries, educational psychologists are considered to play a vital role, not only in the education of SWSEN, but also in education more generally and in community contexts.
   
9. 
   A feature of leading practice throughout the world is a move towards ‘integrated support’, ‘service integration’ or ‘wraparound services’, all of which are concerned with the delivery of specialised services in a more coordinated and integrated manner. Such coordination can take place at an institutional level, at an agency level, or at a government level.
   

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

FULL-SERVICE SCHOOLS

The traditional borders between schools and their communities are undergoing dramatic change. Nowhere is this better illustrated than with the development of full-service (or extended) schools (FSSs) in many jurisdictions around the world. Other descriptors of essentially the same phenomenon as FSSs include school-linked services (Volpe et al., 1999), collaborative school-linked services (Wang, et al., 1995), full-service community schools, or simply community schools (Sailor & Skrtic, 1996).

FSSs hold out considerable promise for coordinating services for SWSEN and their families – the theme of the previous chapter.

20.1 Definition of Full-service Schools

In a nutshell, a FSS is a ‘one-stop’ institution that integrates education, medical, social and/or human services to meet the needs of children and youth and their families in a school’s campus. As described by Dryfoos (1994), the earliest, and most cited, of its proponents, a FSS:

integrates education, medical, social and/or human services that are beneficial to meeting the needs of children and youth and their families on school grounds or in locations which are easily accessible. A full-service school provides the types of prevention, intervention and support services children and families need to succeed...services that are high quality and comprehensive and are built on interagency partnerships which have evolved from cooperative ventures to intensive collaborative arrangements among state and local and public and private entities. (p.142)

20.2 Characteristics of Full-service Schools

FSSs vary in character according to the nature of the communities they serve and the availability and commitment of various agencies. They have several features in common, including those enumerated by the Scottish Office (1999) in its description of ‘new community schools’:

• 
  Focus on all the needs of all pupils at the school. Children’s social, emotional and health needs are considered, in addition to their academic needs.
  
• 
  Engagement with families. Parents and family members are empowered to raise their expectations of their children and themselves through the development of a family support service in the school.
  
• 
  Engagement with the wider community. Opportunities and mechanisms are provided to build the capacity of the local community.
  
• 
  Integrated provision of school education, informal as well as formal education, social work and health education and promotion services. Inter-disciplinary teams are encouraged to intervene quickly and effectively in support of the child or the family.
  
• 
  Integrated management. Management structures include a single reporting and accountability framework for all of the core services involved
  
• 
  Arrangements for the delivery of these services according to a set of integrated objectives and measurable outcomes.
  
• 
  Commitment and leadership. This commitment and leadership is essential at the political level and at all levels of management.
  
• 
  Multi-disciplinary training and staff development. A programme should be developed involving the full range of staff working together to common goals and objectives in promoting the educational attainment and welfare of children in the school.
  

In establishing FSSs, careful consideration has to be given to a range of issues (Adelman & Taylor, 1997; Adelman & Taylor, 2002; Smith, 2000, 2004). These include (a) managing the programme, (b) learning to collaborate, (c) building from localities outwards, (d) avoiding the colonising effect of the school, (e) avoiding the dominance of the medical model, (f) financing, and (g) evaluating outcomes (Mitchell, 2012).

20.3 Examples of Full-service Schools

In Canada, the Toronto District School Board has made a commitment to support all schools to become FSSs. It defines FSSs as ‘the coordinated delivery of health, education, prevention, and social services designed to improve the quality of life for students, families and communities. The programs and services are located inside an operational school...’(Toronto District School Board, 2010).

In England and Wales, the 2006 Green Paper, Every Child Matters, promoted ‘full-service extended schools’ (FSES), defined as: ‘offering the community and their pupils a range of services (such as childcare, adult learning, health and community facilities) that go beyond their core educational function’ (Section 2.20). The original aim was to support the development in every local authority of one or more schools to provide a comprehensive range of services, including access to health services, adult learning and community activities, as well as study support and 8am to 6pm childcare. Most FSESs served areas of disadvantage. By the end of the initiative, 138 schools were involved, together with a further 10 funded through the London Challenge (Cummings et al., 2007). For a more recent summary of FSES in the UK, see Smith (2014).

In 1999, Scotland introduced its own version of the FSES – the ‘new community schools’ initiative. The then Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, explained them as

embodying the fundamental principle that the potential of all children can be realised only by addressing their needs in the round – and that requires an integrated approach by all those involved. Barriers to learning must be identified at the earliest stage, and intervention must be focused, planned and sustained. A range of services is necessary to assist children overcome the barriers to learning and positive development – family support, family learning and health improvement (Scottish Office, 1999, p.2).

20.4 Research into Full-service Schools

UK studies have reported positive results for FSSs. A report presented the findings from the final year of a three-year evaluation of a national full service extended schools (FSES) initiative (Cummings et al., 2007). Here are the main points.

• 
  Schools broadly welcomed the FSES initiative. Issues of sustainability and the difficulties of partnership working, which had figured prominently in earlier stages of the evaluation, remained as potentially problematic in the third year. However, enough FSESs had found ways round these difficulties to suggest that they were far from insuperable.
  
• 
  The FSES approach was impacting positively on students’ attainments particularly in the case of those facing difficulties where there was improved engagement with learning.
  
• 
  FSESs were generating positive outcomes for families and local people particularly where they were facing difficulties.
  
• 
  A cost benefit analysis suggested that both the costs and benefits of FSES approaches were high. However, since benefits balanced or outweighed costs, and since they accrued particularly to children and families facing the greatest difficulties, FSES approaches were considered to represented a good investment.
  
• 
  The FSES approach was commonly associated with schools having better relations with local communities and enjoying enhanced standing in their communities.
  
• 
  The development of FSES approaches tended to rely heavily on the dynamism of head teachers and other school leaders.
  

These findings were supported by a later Ofsted survey of 20 FSES settings, which found that the major benefits to children and parents included enhanced self-confidence, improved relationships, raised aspirations and better attitudes towards learning (Ofsted, 2006). A more recent study examined the extent to which FSESs offered five core elements: (1) a varied menu of activities; (2) childcare 8am –6pm 48 weeks per year for primary schools; (3) parenting support including family learning; (4) swift and easy access to targeted and specialist support services; and (5) community access to school facilities. It was found that two-thirds of schools were offering all five elements and the remaining one-third were all offering at least some elements, with secondary schools being more likely than primary and special schools to be offering the full set of core activities. Two-thirds of schools offered extended services as part of a cluster or group of schools and there was evidence that working in clusters helped to develop links with community organisations and avoid duplication of effort. Seven in ten schools were targeting specific groups of pupils or families for support with extended services, most commonly economically disadvantaged families and pupils with disabilities or special educational needs (Carpenter et al., 2010).

According to a Scottish report on the ‘new community schools’, there was evidence of the following benefits to students: improved attendance rates, better attainment in examinations, improved employment prospects, less drug abuse, and fewer teenage pregnancies (Scottish Office, 1999). As well, these schools brought benefits to the wider community through a reduction in crime and violence, overall improved health within families, better access to services and resources which might not otherwise be readily available, more productive partnerships between schools, parents and the wider community and reduced parental mistrust of schools and teachers.

20.5 Summary

1. 
   The traditional borders between schools and their communities are undergoing dramatic change.
   
2. 
   Full-service schools (FSSs) hold out considerable promise for coordinating services for SWSEN and their families.
   
3. 
   FSSs are ‘one-stop’ institutions that integrates education, medical, social and/or human services to meet the needs of children and youth and their families in a school’s campus.
   
4. 
   FSSs vary in character according to the nature of the communities they serve and the availability and commitment of various agencies.
   
5. 
   FSSs include the following features: (a) a focus on all the needs of all pupils at the school; (b) engagement with families;(c) engagement with the wider community; (d) integrated provision of school education, informal as well as formal education, social work and health education and promotion services;(e) integrated management;(f) the delivery of services according to a set of integrated objectives and measurable outcomes;and (g) multi-disciplinary training and staff development.
   
6. 
   There are examples of FSSs in countries such as Canada, England and Wales, Scotland, and New Zealand.
   
7. 
   Studies have reported positive results for FSSs, including impacting positively on students’ attainments, particularly in the case of those facing difficulties; positive outcomes for families and local people particularly where they were facing difficulties; schools having better relations with local communities and enjoying enhanced standing in their communities; improved attendance rates; less drug abuse; and fewer teenage pregnancies.
   

 

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