Park House Achieves Gold Attachment and Trauma Sensitive Award!
We have a very exciting announcement – Park House School in Taunton has been given the gold Attachment and Trauma Sensitive Award!
This is the highest recognition awarded by the Attachment and Trauma Sensitive Award (ATTSA) consultancy and acknowledges Park House’s dedication and efforts to building a culture of attachment and trauma sensitivity. ATTSA is a nationally recognised award, and to be eligible, the school must prove they have taken steps to provide educational provision that is sensitive to children who have faced adversity.
Park House School provides specialist support to children aged eight to 19 years old that have had to overcome trauma and adversity and struggle in mainstream school. Many of the children that attend Park House School, and our other schools across the country, are currently in foster care or live in children’s residential homes and have learning or behavioural issues, and find mainstream school challenging. Park House provides tailored support and does not base achievement on standardised testing, but helps each child reach their own academic targets. This, paired with specially trained teachers and support staff, helps to ensure that children in care attend school and receive an education.
To be eligible for the gold award, Park House School were required to present adequate evidence that it met all criteria which ensures that all aspects of the school reference attachment and trauma-informed practice, including the physical environment, recruitment, and people management, all forms of communication and that they are a beacon of best practice for other schools working towards attachment and trauma sensitive practice.
The following feedback was provided to Park House School by Dr Jennifer A Nock, who is responsible for granting the ATSSA Awards: “It would be impossible to communicate adequately in this letter the breadth and richness of your practice. In short, Park House School is a trauma-informed and trauma-responsive organisation, which prioritises humanising systems, making them healthier, more relational and interpersonal, more integrated, more reflective, and more interconnected, not only focusing on the pupil population, but by ensuring that trauma-informed knowledge, language, values, principles, assumptions and processes are embedded deep into the culture of the organisation; and are owned and shaped by everyone who is a part, regardless of role.”
James Hall, Head of Education at Five Rivers Child Care, said: “This is such fantastic news to end the year on. We have invested a lot of time this year in making Park House School, and all of our Fiver Rivers’ schools, attachment and trauma-informed and are thrilled to have been awarded the gold award.”
Congratulations to all our colleagues and children at Park House School. What a fantastic achievement to end the year on!