Difficulty in making and maintaining healthy relationships

Provision and / or strategies:

• Use small group/nurture group activities to support personal, social and emotional development.
• Model appropriate emotional responses to disagreements or difficulties with e.g. sharing/turn taking.
• Think about who the child or young person can maintain a relationship with, for example, adults only, younger children. Try to understand the reasons for this and use the information to build their capacity to maintain relationships.
• Use and model a conflict resolution approach to help manage upsets and disagreements. Use restorative approaches when relationships break down.
• Try differentiated opportunities for social and emotional development, for example buddy system, paired learning activities, scaffolding group work.
• Use restorative approaches when relationships break down.
• Use a key worker to rehearse and replay more appropriate social communication methods, provide opportunities to practice the social communication skill.
• Discuss the use of dedicated and planned tome with your SENCO to support the child / young person when necessary, such as during unstructured break and lunch times.
• Do not use the schools / settings ‘SEND’ base purely as a reactive strategy when friendship issues arise.
• Consider using ‘Circles of Friends’ techniques or similar.