Explore the support.
Understand the fit.

Changing adult language, pace, proximity and demands to reduce avoidable pressure, while preserving safety, communication and support before, during and after distress.

Noticing and acknowledging a young person’s emotional experience, while keeping necessary boundaries and offering useful support without requiring them to name a feeling.

Offering responsive support that changes with the young person’s signals and preferences, including welcome help through everyday difficulties, distress and recovery.

Working with a young person to understand recurring difficulties, make adult and environmental changes, and review solutions they can meaningfully help shape.

Changing noise, space, timing, information or task conditions to address a specific barrier, with the young person’s participation, comfort and choice guiding review.

Keeping plans, instructions and choices available in an understandable format, with adults checking meaning, updating changes and preserving a way to question or stop.

Understanding sensory experiences and exploring specific changes that support comfort and chosen participation, while distinguishing everyday adaptations from specialist equipment and therapy.

Gathering observations and different perspectives to develop a careful working explanation of recurring behaviour, while addressing immediate needs and avoiding false certainty about causes.

Coordinating assessment, environmental changes and individual support around a person’s daily life, with adult responsibilities and meaningful outcomes made explicit and reviewed.

Responding to harm through safety, voluntary participation and practical repair, while respecting personal boundaries and keeping individual conversations distinct from whole-school programmes.

Zones of Regulation offers shared language for feelings and energy. Explore whether its colours help a young person communicate and influence support, without making a preferred colour the goal.

Help a young person understand and influence possible therapeutic contact. Adults make the offer clearer and more reliable, while preserving choices about whether and how to take part.

Mindfulness invites chosen attention to present experience. Explore a practice the young person can influence and stop, without promising calm or overlooking practical concerns and other support.

Structured choice gives a young person real, understandable options and support to compare them. Review whether their decision is honoured and whether the arrangement improves access and influence.

Graduated exposure is agreed therapeutic work with a qualified practitioner to approach a specific fear. Preserve the young person’s influence, communication and essential support throughout the plan.

Executive-function scaffolding makes steps, materials and reminders available when they are needed. Explore whether a practical support reduces effort and improves access without becoming another organisational demand.

Communication partner strategies change how adults listen, wait, respond and repair misunderstandings. Explore specific partner actions that help a young person express meaningful messages through their preferred communication methods.

Augmentative and alternative communication combines methods that supplement or replace speech. Explore reliable access to personally meaningful messages, with suitable assessment, partner support, backup and independent authorship.

Task analysis makes the parts of an activity visible so adults can adapt or teach the difficult step. Review useful whole-task learning, access, effort and the learner’s chosen support.

Explicit instruction makes important knowledge and thinking visible through explanation, modelling and responsive practice. Check understanding, later use and access rather than relying on imitation or completed work.

Providing an accurate, accessible account of a specific situation, with realistic options and adult responsibilities, while keeping the young person’s questions and choices central.

Preparing willing peers to support reciprocal communication and shared activities, with adult responsibility, meaningful roles and everyone’s experience guiding the plan and review.

Making an activity’s materials, sequence, scope and stopping point clearer, while preserving choice and checking whether the organisation is understandable and useful.

Organising dependable relationships, communication and manageable routines, while keeping learning, peer connections and the pupil’s experience central to any nurture provision or review.

Organising decisions around a young person’s priorities, accessible contribution and real choices, with named adult responsibilities and a clear review of what actually happens.

Cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety explores a young person’s specific fears with a qualified practitioner. Keep treatment, practical access changes and the person’s own goals and experience distinct.

Speech and language support begins with a specific communication purpose. Distinguish assessment, direct intervention and everyday access, and review meaningful communication alongside learning, effort and the young person’s experience.

De-escalation changes immediate adult responses and conditions to reduce distress and danger. Preserve communication and support, use the appropriate safety pathway, and review the young person’s experience afterwards.

Group dramatherapy uses creative processes within a planned therapeutic group. Consider the young person’s purpose, preferred participation and peer context, with clear boundaries and careful review of experience.

Individual dramatherapy offers creative therapeutic work at a young person’s pace. Agree its purpose and boundaries, preserve communication and choice, and review experience without assuming superiority over group work.