 Today we're thinking about home visits. So when people from school visit children or the family at home I'm thinking about why it might be a good idea and if you're thinking about it What will enable you to kind of make it work? So drawing on ideas from many different schools that I've been working with Now home visits is something that's come up more and more in my course recently with schools when I'm doing my coaching conversations And it's something that many schools have said they found really impactful This has been particularly helpful where they've had families which are struggling to engage with school Where there are children who are finding it hard to attend perhaps due to anxiety and that kind of thing And where essentially it's really important to build some bridges between home and school Now one of the great things about visiting a student and a family in their home Is that it really helps you to begin to build those bridges and create those connections between home and school And when we expect people to come in that can feel really hard for them And it can feel really challenging. Sometimes there's a lot of fear around school both for the children and for the adults as well Sometimes so we can think instead about visiting them in their home or perhaps somewhere else It's kind of neutral territory and this will feel kind of less scary for them The other benefit of visiting a family's home is that you learn a huge amount really really quickly about that family Often people would interact more naturally when they're in their own environment rather than when they've come into school And also you just can get a feel for things And there will often be things that you notice and you learn about the child and their family from being in their home That can really help to strengthen and build those connections with the child and with the family It adds a real sort of personal touch and also when you're willing to invest that time and resource into visiting the family at home And it says a lot about the fact that you kind of really value that family that they really matter that you Really want to work together in terms of making it work. Of course. This is a massive resourcing issue It's really difficult to find enough time for someone to go and visit a child a family in their home So it's not something you're going to be able to do really frequently and for everybody But what I would say is from the schools. I've been working with who've been practicing this They found that if they're picking up on the early warning signs that a family is beginning to disengage A child's beginning to find it difficult to attend or things are beginning to change for that family That sometimes investing a bit of time here early on holding those meetings at home And really trying to get the family on board can stop that child dipping into an entire kind of cycle of non attendance It can make a difference if we intervene early. So it's like, you know, like my grandma always taught me a stitch in time saves nine So that investment of resource early perhaps prevents things escalating You need to think really carefully as well about who is going to visit the children's home Because again thinking about this can make a really big difference A in terms of who can you spare to go and do those visits? So lots of schools that I work with will have learning support staff Or family workers or people like that who will go and make these kind of visits The other thing is that apart from being able to free those staff up You want to think about who's really well placed to actually connect with and build those bridges with that family Who is that family most likely to kind of welcome into their home? And a really good to think about here is think about who is most like the family that you're visiting Do you have staff who share the same sort of cultural ethnic background? Do you have people who speak the same language if there's any kind of language barrier? Thinking about those things can make a really big difference And if you're able to identify a member of staff who feels less threatening Who's more able to communicate with that family who perhaps they might have already built a bit of a relationship with as well They're more likely to be welcomed into the home and this is more likely to be a successful visit The other thing that I think really helps to make this work is having a really clear focus for what you're hoping to get out of these home visits And to make that focus clear both within the staff at school and with the family as well Let them know why you're coming because again all these interactions with school can be quite frightening For families who don't know what's going on and you can be seen as an authority and they might worry they're in trouble It's really important to remember here that we are a genuine team around the child And it's the child's best interest that motivate all of us adults here together, we're all on one team So trying really hard to address that us and them thing and remember that we're in this together We want to work with them and you might as part of that visit think about what are your next steps What do you hope to happen as a result of this meeting and how can you further support What can the family expect from you but also what are you expecting from them because this is a real sort of team effort So have really clear goals, don't aim too high, I generally find with this kind of thing It's better to have small but achievable aims that we can celebrate and then look to move on So do this incrementally rather than aiming up here somewhere with the possibility that then this might fail And we might find that people kind of somewhat give up, we want to set goals that we can achieve and celebrate I'd really love to hear from you about whether you're conducting home visits, whether they work for you And what are the things that you find that you have to bear in mind to make this work, to make it financially viable To make it a good use of resource, to make sure that it's acceptable to families Leave your comments down below remembering loads of different people watch these videos And actually when you comment sharing your experience of what's worked and maybe also what hasn't It's really valuable to other people so do take a moment to comment with your experience I hope this was helpful, remember to subscribe, hit the subscribe button if you haven't already For new videos every Tuesday and Friday And if you've got ideas for future videos please leave them in a comment, take care, bye