CYP core 3.7

CYP core 3.7: understand how to support positive outcomes for children and young people.
1.1 Describe the social economic and cultural factors that will impact on the lives of children and young people.
When working with children and young people you have to keep in mind that every child is different and unique in their own way. To do this you need to understand the possible impact that the social economic and cultural environment could have on their personal outcomes in the future.
There are a number of many different types of social economic and cultural factor that will have a big impact on a child’s positive impact. A few examples are:
• Personal choices- there are many different types of family life styles out there these days that could affect impact. A good one could be a traveling family or people that live within a mobile home and only stay in one place for short periods on time. This will have an impact because the children moving around a lot will struggle to learn how to socialise with us because they will think that it is pointless making friends with people they know they will be leaving behind very soon.
• Looked after children- being a looked after child can have an impact depending on the circumstances of the situation as the child may feel unwanted or unloved. Feeling like this knocks the child’s learning self-esteem.
• Poverty- families that have a low income can have an impact because children tend to compare with one another one what they have and don’t have. Things like extra learning opportunities meaning things like one child saying they do dancing and another child’s family can’t afford it this could lead to children falling out. Branded clothes I have known to be a main issue in the past which is a good reason to schools having uniform.
• Housing and community- this could link in well with another type of poverty and low income based problems. If someone is living in cramped conditions were they have to sleep in the same room as a lot of other children in a tight space can have impact because the slightly older children have nowhere to study and the younger children have nowhere to play. Moving from house to house will impact the children learning again because of the constant change of schools.
• Educational environment- the majority of children attend main stream schools and colleges that are all setting that are inspected and checked but a very small amount of children are home tort that don’t have the right requirements or set up for a child’s learning potential.
• Anti-social behaviour- a child with really bad anti-social behaviour would experience being excluded from school or even removed away from family members (becoming a looked after child).
• Health status of self or family members- people with a physical illness or suffer from emotional situations or disturbed behaviour are likely to be affected more than those without. Physical disorders that involve the brain such as chromosome disorders or epilepsy… any serious illness puts on a lot of stress and responsibility on other members of the family as well as the child.
• Disability- people with a disability find it a lot harder to carry out any play or physical activities that other people do take for granted. Children that become carer for a family member are living in a role reversal way this means that they may have to lose out on their childhood to help support their parents or carers.
• Health and support- families that are in need of health advice and support are normally the ones who don’t receive it because they are unaware that it is available to them or are unsure how to go about seeking the help.
• Addictions in family or self- parents with addictions are normally absent from their children’s learning both physically and emotionally. Substance use is often not always but often related to poor parenting. Over time children may become a main carer for parents and cares that have an addiction and this has a big impact on their child hoods and responsibilities it would take up most of their spare time so lack of homework and effort will be available for them to give. Also children who have been around these kinds of addictions could possibly become a user themselves as its all they have ever known.
• Bereavement and loss- the physical and emotional wellbeing of parents and children suffering from bereavement can be severely affected.
• Family expectations and encouragement- some parents have a very high unrealistic expectations for their children or they have a very poor understanding of their child’s actual needs. Misunderstanding of a child needs or not offering them constant support can lead to the child feeling insecure and have a very low self-esteem.
• Religious beliefs and custom- religious beliefs and practises have the potential to profoundly influence many parts of children and young people’s lives including approaches to parenting. Young people need to be able to express their beliefs and knowledge without being judged or harassed.
• Ethnic/ cultural beliefs and customs- all children should be able to take pride in their ethnic origin. This should be on the feel of self-worth and a positive sense of identity. Most children and their families often experience racism which damages their self-esteem.
• Marginalisation and exclusion- children whose home life lack routine and stability or basic care needs are not being met are marked as different. Children are also marginalised because of their disability and poverty circumstances. Any thing that makes them different from the norm.
1.2 Explain the importance and impact of poverty on outcomes and life chances for children and young people.
There are 5 main reasons that could cause impact on outcomes and life changes for children:
• Low income: this can mean that children may not have the same advantages of there more wealthier peers.
• Poor housing: this could lead to ill health due to unacceptable standards within the home.
• Ill health: not having access to the correct food and warm clothing could affect health.
• Low academic achievement: this could come due to there not being such an emphasis on the importance to learn or support brackets within the home.
• Low self-esteem: children could have low self-esteem due to the rest of the above.
The every child matters strategy aims to reduce the adverse consequences of child poverty. An important part of the strategy is the development of places like children centres and extended schools and aim to:
• Provide more access to early year’s education and care for children in poorer neighbourhood.
• Provide health services that are easily accessible.
• Provide place for children to play and for parents to meet other parents and make new friends.
• Help parents and carers to access any adult training and education.
1.3 Explain the role of children and young people’s personal choices and experiences on their outcomes and life changes.
Children should be given the opportunity to take part in contributing their ideas to their learning as giving that opportunity to them will encourage them to strive and achieve to their full potential and keep them well determined to carry out tasks. The EYFS says that every child’s individual needs and capabilities should be centre of all planning and decision making. Children have an equal right to be listened to and their ideas valued when it comes their learning.
2.1 identify the positive outcomes for children and young people that practitioners should be striving to achieve.
The 5 positive outcomes that children should achieve are:
• Be healthy
• Stay safe
• Enjoy and achieve
• Make a positive contribution
• Achieve economic wellbeing
The additional support that is in place for children that may need a little more support to be able to achieve these gaols are:
• Speech and language therapy
• Support from the health professionals additional learning support
• Assistive technology
• Specialised services
2.2 Explain the importance of designing services around the needs of children and young people.
There is a wide range of different services available for children and their families. They are all designed to make sure that children will reach all positive outcomes by working towards the every child matters framework. Facts about child poverty can make it seem like the problems involved with poor neighbours can only be resolved by government interventions. Although an alternative approach is an asset based community development approach.
This approach builds on strengths of all the community’s neighbourhoods rather than just focusing on the problems and areas where things are lacking. When working with parents this approach highlights the following things:
• Finding out the skills and capabilities of the parent and carers group
• Building on existing community groups and organisations.
• Linking with and helping to improve local services.
2.3 Explain the importance of active participation of children and young people in decisions affecting their lives.
Active participation is important because it’s all about involving the children and parents in decision-making at every level. All children have the right to take part in any thing that involves or affects them. Their involvement is essential to be able to reach the best possible outcomes. The skills you need to use to promote active participation are active listening and responding to feedback.
Active participation benefits children by giving them:
• Opportunities to build skills in communication, decision-making, resilience, developing positive relationships and confidence.
• Opportunities to learn, to have fun and to achieve to their full potential
• Active citizenships: having a voice and being able to influence service provision.
• Updated services which are responsive to children and young people’s needs.
2.4 Explain how to support children and young people according to their age, needs and abilities to make personal choices and experiences that have a positive impact on their lives.
Child centred practise: supporting children and young people- to carry out a child or young person centred approach practitioners need to take in to account and value the child and young person’s voice whenever possible within the planning process. There are positives to both children and adults in making your practice a child centred approach. This includes the following:
• Services are appropriate for their needs- having children’s opinions help adults to work more effectively and can relate to a child’s individual needs.
• Taking into account the needs of others- children who learn to express their own needs also learn to consider the needs of others around them.
• Respect and understanding- children and parents often working together can make relationships stronger and promote greater understanding and respect
• Promoting self-esteem and self-worth- when children are involved and you have respected their ideas and capabilities they start to grow in confidence and self-esteem.
There are many things that can affect children and young people. E.g. opportunities of play, social interaction and local environments. On these issues and many other things children will have a valid contribution to make.
3.1 Explain the potential impact of disability on the outcomes and life chances of children and young people.
Disabilities can have a huge effect on a children positive outcomes and life chances but the potential effects will vary as much as the children tend to, and it depend on the sere verity and nature of the actual disability in question to the amount of support that’s to be offered.
Communication and interaction- the majority of children with special needs have difficulties in one or more areas of speech communication and interaction. A child might show signs of delay in their speech and language: their development might be what is expected of a child that’s 6 to 12 months younger. Other children might have speech difficulty but can understand speech very well.
Cognition and learning- children with difficulties in this area find it hard to understand new concepts, solve problems and learn skills. Children with slight difficulty in this area will need additional support to develop their learning and understanding this could include additional time, repetition and practical experiences. Children with severe/complex difficulties in their cognition and learning are the ones that need considerable help to develop early concepts like under and over. Their play may stay at the level of sensory exploration without moving in to pretend and role play.
Behaviour, emotional and social development- children with these kinds of difficulties are normally ones that are withdrawn or isolated, aggressive and behaving in disturbing ways and lack in concentration this could also be to do with their difficulties towards social development such as sharing attention, cooperating well with others or recognising their own emotional state when in groups.
Sensory/physical needs- sensory difficulties can vary from long-term to lower levels of visual and hearing impairments, which can sometimes be temporary. Physical impairments arise from physical causes and can also arise from neurological causes like cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is to do with failure to parts of the brain, leading to loss of control over muscles, posture and balance. Some children could have a combination of both kinds of impairments which has significant effects on their development.
Medical conditions- some medical conditions can have a huge effect on children’s learning. A child’s condition may cause them to have frequent time out of learning environment to attend treatment. Other medical conditions like asthma or diabetes may be managed by taking medication and do not need to cause interference with a children’s learning development.
3.2 Explain the importance of positive attitudes towards disability and specific requirements.
It matters a lot how we label those who are different to others. We are generally much more aware of differences with in an individual and have a lot more knowledge about diverse needs and abilities. People with disability still seem to be experiencing a lot of discrimination and prejudice towards them. It is therefore very important that we think about what we say and who we say things when using the terms and labels for people with disabilities. Settings may not exclude children from participating in activities unless it is on the grounds of health and safety but usually could be advised with some planning and communication from the child’s family.
3.3 Explain the social and medical models of disability and the impact of each on practice.
The social model is people with a disability that has been caused because of society and the barriers it has created which include:
• Attitudinal barriers: the notion that the disabled people are childlike, fearful or incapable of bringing value to different things.
• Environmental barriers: limited or no access to education, shopping and pleasurable activities. Poor lighting, small printed signs and use of complex language.
• Institutional barriers: the lack of anti-discriminative legislation; policies and procedures which exclude disabled people and transport or housing systems which do not provide for people with impairments.
An example would be that wheel chair users in mobility impaired meaning that they are only physically disabled but are not actually in a facilitated environment where they can use public transport or the same facilities that others without the disability could.
The medical model is the disability that was used a lot until quite recently. Disability was seen as a medical problem:
• The focus is on the disability or impairment rather than the required needs of the person.
• People are labelled according to their impairment.
• If a medical cure is not possible they were excluded from normal society. Isolated away from others.
• The emphasis is on dependence. Everything is backed up by the stereotyping of the disability which then leads to pity, fear and patronising attitudes.
An example of medical model: a child is born a year later they are diagnosed with epilepsy and has delayed development. Before reaching the age of 2 years they are then labelled as a special child. By the time the child reaches 4 years they had special educational needs and was a statemented child. The child was identified to have dyspraxia, epileptic, developmentally delayed and had severe communication problems. By the age of 6 years the child had been diagnosed as severely epileptic, cerebral palsy and communication difficulties. It wasn’t until the child reached the age of 9 that he started to attend a main stream school with professional help and started to progress really well. As you can see from this case study it was just constant labelling of others things because of the diagnosis that the child had already got and his actual needs to pushed to one side because of this it wasn’t until later in life when it could of been too late that his needs were taken into account and his learning was encouraged.
3.4 Explain the different types of support that are available for disabled children and young people and those with specific requirements.
Many children with disabilities and learning difficulties have their own personal needs that are central to their learning a quality of life. Some children may need additional support from a kind of therapy, some may just need additional time and attention and others may need adaptions to be made activities or building wise.
Examples of people available for offering support are:
• Learning support teachers
• Physiotherapist
• Speech and language therapist
• Occupational therapist (O.T)
• Special educational needs coordinator (SENCO)
• One to one support worker
• Social workers
4.1 Explain the meaning of equality, diversity and inclusion in the context of positive outcomes for children and young people.
Equality: ensuring that everyone has the chance to take part in society on an equal basis and to be treated appropriately regardless of their gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, language, social origin, religious beliefs, marital status and other personal reasons.
Diversity: every individual must be respected and particular values, attitudes, cultures, beliefs, skills, knowledge and life experience of every individual in a group of people.
Inclusion: this means that every child, young person and adult or learner is given equality of opportunity to access education and care, by meeting their specific needs.
4.2 compare, giving examples, ways in which services for children, young people and their carers take account of and promote equality, diversity and inclusion to promote positive outcomes.
Stereotype thinking prevents people from seeing the child from what they can actually achieve as an individual with a particular life and interests. Doing this leads to negative attitudes and discrimination. This will have a damaging effect on the individuals out comes and life chances.
An example of stereotype thinking is:
There are a group of children both girls and boys playing on the carpet and its tidy up time ready for snack. The teacher approaches the group of children and ask them individually to tidy a section up like asks a little boy to tidy up the trains and cars then asks the girls to tidy up the dolls and put the doll’s house away. The little boy asks if he can tidy up the dolls and the teacher says no because a doll is what little girls play with.
The assumption in this example is that girls play with dolls so they need to be the ones that pick them up and put them away and that boys are the ones that play with trains so there for they need to be the ones to put them away. The teacher is stereotyping the children by their gender.
Children and young people who experience inequality and discrimination may:
• Be unable to fulfil their potential.
• Find it hard to form relationships.
• Feel that they are in some way to blame.
• Lack confidence in trying new activities.
• Be aggressive towards others.