Working with Children with Social, Emotional and Mental Health Needs in a Nurture Group Setting: The professional and personal impact

This paper presents the results of a small-scale research project to identify the impact of working in a Primary School Nurture Group setting on two Teaching Assistants in an English primary school. This research uses a narrative inquiry approach, to provide rich data from the stories through which the practitioners interpret, and make sense of, significant events in their professional experience. The research methodology includes sessions which reflect both a supervision approach, providing a safe space in which to be heard, and more directed narrative spaces. Two themes from the research are those of the challenges of the nurture work impacting on both professional motivation and personal relationships, and of emotions being expressed through physiology. As a result of the collaborative nature of the research methodology, further themes emerged, these were: an identification of the factors which impacted on the practitioners’ resilience and the positive impact of the sessions and relationships within the research process. The discussion provides the consideration of potential implications for schools, which school leaders may choose to consider when designing Nurture Group provision, and for practitioners to address their own needs which arise from supporting children with Social, Emotional and Mental Health difficulties, thereby developing more resilient and effective Nurture Group practitioners