Description
Appletree School is Independent Primary school in Cumbria for kids aged 6 to 12 (Gender - Mixed )
They specialise in helping young children age 6-12 who have suffered severe Trauma, Neglect, Physical, Emotional and Sexual Abuse, including those who display sexualised behaviour. They have a detailed matching process which considers both the needs of new children and of those already placed with them, ensuring all the children can thrive together. The research, knowledge and experience ensure the Roots programme focuses on the children, helping them to, Feel Safe and Cared About, develop a Sense of Belonging, grow secure Attachments, become immersed in the Therapeutic Approach, which helps them to Feel Valued, Feel Good Feel Loved, Enjoy Learning, Understand Feelings, Manage Feelings, Care About & Help Others and Build the Bands of Resilience that give them the capacity to cope with life’s future challenges. Over time they help children understand that they are not bad but bad things have happened to them and help them make sense of their world.
Facilities
School
One of the first tasks is often to help the children to overcome their fear of failing at school. This can take some time and many children require individual support to help them settle into school routines. They work on the principle of gaining success in small steps with high incentives for achievement. The educational learning environments have a combined influence on the child's social functioning, educational and emotional development. They provide an alternative to a concentrated mainstream education, which has failed our children in the past. Although our are children between the chronological ages of 6 to 12 years their emotional development is well below this and they have missed whole sections of progressive development. The children are under emotional stress and therefore do not interact easily with other children or adults. This inhibits their ability to learn.
Features
Things to note
Homes
Appletree Treatment Centre has three homes for boys and girls aged 6 to 12 years old: Appletree is home for up to 12 children, Fell House is home for up to 8 children and Willow Bank is home for up to 5 children. The high staff ratios enable us to provide a structured, therapeutic, twenty-four hour programme which focuses on helping children to form positive relationships. These enable the children to increase their self-esteem, which in turn allows them to acquire the skills which they need to succeed at home and in school. Often the children need to return to play and role play experiences of much younger children in order to progress developmentally. The teams are trained and supported to help them to do this in a safe, caring and appropriately stimulating environment.
Therapeutic Approach
When children come to them - they begin by helping children who think they are “bad” understand that this is not so, but that bad things have happened to them. They can then begin to experience good things and hence make choices about how they choose to feel about themselves and live/behave. They learn to understand their own and others’ feelings and how to cope with positive and negative emotions. They gain a sense of family/community and learn to care about others as well as themselves.All of the children have experienced trauma and often neglect and physical, emotional and / or sexual abuse. They all need individual weekly therapy from qualified clinicians. All our children engage in individual therapy, most continue throughout their stay with us. As the children’s trauma has been pre-verbal we use creative therapists, art, play, drama and music to help the children make sense of what has happened to them.
Extra Curricular
Please check the school website link for details.
3.95 miles
