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CourseWeDo

Reach2Teach Action for Inclusion Tool (AFIT)

 Sometimes you have the best ideas, and the expertise and experience to support this. But you lack the technical know-how to deliver this product as a service. This is where Haywyre comes in; we are the experts who can bring your ideas to life! CourseWeDo had the skills and the passion to help children stay in a mainstream educational setting, and we worked with them to design the custom Reach2Teach Action for Inclusion Tool to make this happen.

CourseWeDo

Company Profile

CourseWeDo is an educational company dedicated to fostering inclusivity in maintstream educational settings for every child. With 20 years of experience and a commitment to helping vulnerable children, particularly those with attachment issues, CourseWeDo has become a trusted name in the education sector. Their passion for inclusive education has lead them to create innovative intervention tools with Haywyre that address the unique needs of students, and help provide the support they need; they had the vision, and Haywyre had the technical skills to make that vision a reality. 

Details

Website: www.coursewedo.com,www.reach2teach.net

Industry: Education

Platform: Web

Services: Custom software solutions, UX design

Project Date: 2020

Technology Used: 

Goals:

Create the Reach2Teach Action for Inclusion Tool (AFIT) which can help keep children in education
We have been tasked with developing a custom Action for Inclusion Tool, designed to support educators and administrators in helping children, particularly those with attachment disorders, stay in a mainstream educational setting. This tool will include various custom features, designed to identify and recommend actions based on patterns in children’s profiles. It will allow educators to track the impact of these actions. All this will aid with improving the academic performance of the child, and also their relationships with others. 

Intuitive student profiles
We needed to create detailed profile layouts that centralise and organise all the essential details about the child. These automatically generated dashboards need to display academic performance, behavioural patterns, and social-emotional development in a logical, chronological manner. It needs to help educators to quickly identify strengths and areas for improvement, facilitating targeting interventions and personalised learning plans. Despite being data heavy, it needs to be easy for educators to access the important information quickly. 

GDPR compliant
Communication is a key aspect of this project, and it is vital that documents and information can be shared, including with external agencies. Due to the sensitive nature of the information, online security is a particular concern. All the sensitive information has to be safeguarded through advanced encryption and access control to ensure student privacy while facilitating great communication.

Cross-platform integration
The AFIT will need to cross check and correlate data with the world-renowned Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), ensuring that all the support strategies suggested are evidence-based. It will also allow for more detailed and tailored support plans, addressing each child’s specific needs. 

Mobile compatible
The system has to work on any web-enabled device, making it easy for busy professionals to access and analyse the data wherever they are in the school.

Solutions:

Fully custom solution
CourseWeDo saw a way to improve the education system, and support vulnerable children in the mainstream school system. We worked with them to develop a fully custom solution to address the issues they had identified, creating the Reach2Teach Action for Inclusion Tool (AFIT) to support educators in supporting these children. AFIT is designed to simplify the process of getting personalised help to students, consolidating all the necessary information and streamlining communication, enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the support the children receive. This has the potential to significantly impact their lives. This tool helps young people and children by identifying specific needs and providing targeting support for them.

Integrated Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
A unique feature of AFIT is the integration of the world-renowned Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. This tool provides a solid foundation for understanding for each child’s needs, enabling the system to recommend tailored support techniques. By assessing various aspects of the child’s behaviour and emotional health, the SDQ is particularly valuable for children with attachment and behavioural issues. It identifies specific challenges, such as difficulties in forming secure attachments, managing emotions, and social interactions. AFIT uses this data to develop and recommend strategies to enhance emotional regulation, build trust, and improve social skills. Early identification and continuous tracking ensures interventions evolve with the child, giving them the best support possible. 

Designed to promote inclusion in education 
This project was designed around the knowledge that early intervention is crucial to keep children in education. We developed a custom profile which identify trends to enable early and appropriate intervention, cross-checking and correlating with the world-renowned Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). This recommends actions to support vulnerable children and evaluates their impact, allowing for a personalised and adaptive approach. By addressing identified traits and suggesting tried and tested support for specific behaviours, the AFIT facilitates quick action, and has the potential to not only impact the education of the child, but also their relationships with others and their whole futures. 

Simple design
Although a lot of complex custom features went into this design, the interface remains user-friendly and simple. We developed a clear, automated dashboard that provides an easy-to-use, comprehensive overview on each child. These profiles allow educators to gain a complete view of the student, breaking down potentially large amounts of data into simple, chronological entries. They detail behavioural patterns, important life events, recommended treatments, and their impacts, with all data stories chronologically for quick and easy access. This intuitive system enables educators to efficiently find and use the information they need to support each child’s development. 

Easy and secure data sharing 
AFIT revolutionises the support process for vulnerable children by seamlessly integrating time-saving features with robust, GDPR-compliant data sharing. We developed a solution where essential documents and information could be shared securely, which also enabled outside agencies to access and impart information in a GDPR, super-secure manner. This eliminates the need for cumbersome paper trails and reduces administrative burdens, enabling educators to focus on providing high-quality support. All the information in the student profiles can be easily exported into PDF to be printed and shared, if required. Despite these advanced features, AFIT maintains the highest standard of data security and, ensuring that sensitive information is protected at all times. 

Compatible on all devices 
The whole site has been designed to be compatible on all devices. Extensive user testing has allowed us to build something that everyone can easily access wherever they are, allowing immediate access to the information and support of the pupils.

Supporting children with Attachment Disorder
AFIT is particularly beneficial for children and young people with Attachment Disorder. It includes assessments to identify affected children, helping to establish predictable routines that reduce anxiety and create a safe space. The tool focuses on building trusting relationships through consistent, sensitive responses, and can help the child learn emotional regulation and coping strategies that can applied at home and in school.By fostering attachment-friendly environments, AFIT enhances emotional stability, behaviour, and academic performance, helping children develop stronger relationships and a greater sense of security. This not only benefits the child’s education, but has the potential to have a huge impact on their overall well-being and future life outcomes.

Social Impact

In 2020, over a million young people in the UK were estimated to be missing out on full-time education. This number was not helped by the pandemic, which emphasised the strain on safety nets that schools and councils provide to prevent children from missing their educational entitlements. 

An educated population has a massive economic impact, not only on the individual but on society. The Social Justice Strategy outlined how low education was a major factor in causing entrenched poverty, while research after the Covid 19 pandemic suggests that children impacted by the closures could face up to a 3% lower income over their entire lifetime as a result of the closures.

On the flip side, there have been numerous studies into the positive contribution of education to the economy, and how keeping children in a mainstream educational setting leads to higher productivity and ecomonic growth.

Staying in education fosters better social skills and relationships, as children interact with peers and develop important social competencies. These skills can be crucial for personal and professional success later in life. 

In 2022, the Office for National Statistics shows that more than half (52.5%) of young adults who received immediate custodial sentences had been persistently absent during schooling. The lower the persistent absence, the lower the percentage of criminal convictions.

Children who miss our on education come from a wide range of backgrounds, making it difficult to idenity and support them effectively. This diveristy has made it challenging to create legislation and guidelines that ensure every child gets their right to education. This is where CourseWeDo steps in, with a vision to idenity and assist as many children as possible in a timely manner.

Key features

A comprehesive student profile dashboard provides an overview of all the important information in a logical, chronological manner. This ensures all educators and support staff have a consistent understanding of the child, fostering a coordinated effort to support them. Additionally, it increases efficiency by having all information readily available in one space, enabling children to recieve support sooner.

An assessment summary detailing a child’s behaviours and support recommendations provides a clear, concise overview of the child’s individual needs and effective strategoies for addressing them. It helps identify specific behavioural patterns and triggers, guiding targeted interventions and facilitating proactive, personalised support. This summary can easily be converted into PDF for sharing and printing, if required. This is particualy useful for supporting children with Attachment Disorder.

A detailed assessments strategy section recommends actions to support each student, and allows you to document what’s be tried and note any impact it has had on the child. This enabled continuous monitoring and adjustment based on real-time feedback. This data-driven practice allows educators to identify the most successful methods for individual students, allowing for more personalised support.

Significant family situations and events can be easily added and edited on the student’s profile, automatically appearing on their timeline. This feature helps educators maintain a comprehensive understanding of each child’s context and challenges, allowing them to better emphathise with and support the child. This supportive approach also ensures that interventions and support strategies are relevant and sensitive to the child’s current cirsumstances.

Triggers and responses can be easily added and edited, allowing for personalised support and consistent, coordinated care. It also enhances intervention strategies, aiding in understanding each child’s unique behavioural patterns and facilitating proactive measures. Detailed records also support communication among staff and external agencies, and help them monitor progress and intervention effectiveness.

All the information can be easily converted into PDF report for printing and sharing if required.

Final Thoughts:

CourseWeDo have over 20 years experience in education and supporting children, and we have even more experience in building custom solutions. Symbiotic relationships like these, where two different sectors can come together to create something new, something with purpose, are an incredibly rewarding part of working in software development.

Projects like Reach2Teach AFIT, where technology becomes a force for real change and improvement in people’s lives, are incredibly satisfying to work on. From the early planning stages to seeing the results after the project is launched, it is incredible to see the positive impact technology can have on our lives.

We cannot wait to see how the Reach2Teach AFIT tool develops, and what other functionality we can add to continue to support vunerable children and promote inclusion in education. 

Main Benefits of our Partnership

  • 95% of users would recommend the AFIT tool, and believe is has been beneficial to them and their pupils
  • A custom solution which fits the exact needs of the company, now and as it grows
  • Fully GDPR compliant, ensuring data protection
  • AFIT saves time, allowing educators to focus more on supporting children
  • It has helped hundreds of students stay in a mainstream education setting since 2020 
  • Promotes inclusion in education 

‘We are starting to now have a better understanding of why the children behave like they do and what we can do to tackle these issues for the children and the families. Children and families feel better supported so we have moved significant steps forward.’

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