Guidance for Trainees regarding client contact

The following guidance relates to Westcountry SEN being a professional organisation that is engaged with families and vulnerable children.

Please read the following guidance carefully.

Do not contact clients using your own mobile phone UNLESS you can withhold your phone number.

The only reason you would need to contact a client from your own phone is if they haven’t logged onto an online lesson and you cannot get hold of our main desk to contact the client.

It is unprofessional and you leave yourself open to later difficulties if you give out your personal contact details.

Doctors, social workers, nurses, Dentists, Teachers, Psychologist, NHS workers and any professional worker you can think of will not give out their personal numbers and details to clients, even though clients may want them and at times ask for them.

There is a professional boundary that needs to be maintained for the safety of the client and for yourself.

Guidance for Client Contact

Remember that you should never pass your opinion as direct advice or speak in a way that represents your personal opinions or hunches about a student in a way that it could be confused as company ethos/policies/procedures.

You should always be talking to your Mentor or your client manager about any concerns / ideas / hunches before you talk to a parent who will think you are acting with company expertise.

Talking things through with mentors will help you formulate any concerns or extra feedback a client may need, please talk to your Mentor / Client manager about all concerns in the first instance.

Emails

You have a Westcountry SEN email address. This links you to company resources and company virtual meeting spaces.

If you are contacting a client and your Mentor / Client manager agrees you should be, using your company email is one way in which to do this.

Practice Mobile

Every Westcountry practice has an office mobile that you can use.

Main Desk Phone

There is always a main desk phone at every Westcountry Practice, you are welcome to use it as you are with the mobile. However, please be mindful that the desk phone is in the reception area, and you need to make certain you can ensure confidentiality.

The Human Motivation to Pair and the Risk of Isolated Relationships

For many reasons, people can behave in certain ways without realising they are doing it, especially when they are worried about something, and this is really common. One of these behaviours is for people to create an isolated pair when they are part of group. For this discussion think of Westcountry SEN as the group.

Fear of Groups

Groups can cause some fear within people. They may have had a bad experience with a group before such as bullying when they were a child either at school or at home. Or they may have bad experiences in their early adulthood, at university or in early jobs. For whatever reason clients may approach Westcountry SEN (a group) and want to move to just working with the tutor and not engage with anyone else, this could involve trying to obtain the tutors personal details, contacting them outside of Westcountry SEN and asking them questions about their child’s tuition.

Likewise, a tutor could have a fear of groups and fear engaging with Mentors, Client Managers and the main reception desk, preferring to work alone and trying to become a Westcountry SEN island with their student and/or their client.

Control Arising from Anxiety

If we think about how many people/ professions are supporting one child:

• Parents
• Teacher (unless home schooled)
• Tutor
• Mentor
• Client Manager

If parents are very anxious about their child and feel overwhelmed, in certain situations they may want to try and control these uncomfortable feelings and seek the tutor out as someone to pair with and cut away all the other people.  This is common and shouldn’t be judged in a negative way, the parent / client is trying to manage in the best way they know how.

How this will be experienced is the parent / client will try to make the tutor feel needed (because they are needed by the client, but not in the way the tutor thinks) and if the tutor enjoys feeling needed, then the tutor will be motivated to move into an isolated relationship from their Mentor / Client Manager and start engaging with the parent.

However, these types of relationships always breakdown, because the client may then have an interaction with a Client Manager / mentor that helps with their overwhelmed feeling and suddenly they want to pair with them rather than the tutor. Often a complaint is made against the tutor as a way of trying to make a new pair.

These pairing dynamics are all about trying to feel safe within a group and also trying to feel in control when overwhelmed with worry.

Let’s look at a common example:

A family (two parents) and child approach Westcountry SEN to talk about home schooling due to the child not being able to cope in school and the family deregistering them from the school.

The Client Manager engaged with the initial assessment and the family. The parent was very nervous of having a tutor and wanted the Client Manager to tutor the child. With a lot of reassurance, a suitable tutor was matched with the child.

Then the parent wanted to talk to the tutor only and the tutor became more and more reluctant to communicate with the rest of the organisation.  This continued for a short while.

However, then the student had to take an exam, the child started getting anxious about it and the parent also became anxious. One day the parent and Client Manager had a conversation about the exam arrangements, as all Clients’ Managers are able, they reassured the parent and made them feel better about the whole exam process and what was expected.

This sudden reassurance meant that parent now wanted to pair with the Client Manager, and the quickest way for humans to instantly pair is to make someone else out to be bad. The parent complained about the tutor. Complaining that the topics hadn’t been taught, that the child hadn’t been able to understand or hadn’t done any of the examined worked before.

This client Manager was experienced and fully aware of this dynamic and did not pair with the tutor. Instead, the Client Manager found a lot of evidence to refute the complaints and supported the tutor to engage more with the organisation in terms of record keeping and emails. The Client Manager brought the tutor, parent and student all within the organisation, to which the parent gained a positive and a safer experience of group cohesion.

Group cohesions, safety and experiencing how groups and organisations can achieve more rather than one person being the ‘only one’ to help is a really positive experience for everyone in the groups, however especially for any parents / tutors who are initially fearful of groups.

Lastly, Westcountry SEN has a zero tolerance on bullying or belittling in the workplace. Often some people are reluctant to share experiences or work within a group because they fear being humiliated, faults being exposed or are worried about doing something wrong and being found out. If your Mentor / Client Manager or anyone from the organisation encourages you to work within the group and share information, it should never be at your detriment. Westcountry SEN strives to be a culture of encouragement and supportiveness at all times. If you experience anything other, please inform the Director without any delay.