Begin from a place of ‘respectful uncertainty’. This means you take what people say seriously, be they parents, young people or even colleagues, but you then look for other information to correlate or challenge the account. Where there is conflicting evidence from different professionals, the child, others students or local community, or family members, this should give you pause for thought.
Set some short term, very achievable goals. If the family promise but can’t manage these then it’s unlikely your goal of 100% attendance in three years is going to happen!
Look carefully at the evidence. The best predictor of the future we have is the past. Look at your chronology, think about patterns and the reasons for these. What would need to change? How many times have the family come through on what they’ve agreed to previously. Are the children’s needs being met now? Are they at risk? How long is reasonable to allow unmet needs or lower level risks to go on? Should you be taking action now?
Watch and learn. Create opportunities to be with the parent and the children. What can you see? What support is needed to enable the parent and the student to achieve the goals.
Where there is disguised compliance teachers can believe they’ve engaged positively with parents/carers to address risk/change. However, progress can drift, risks are not reduced and may actually be increased and staff can fail to recognise significant issues of concern (domestic abuse, drug/alcohol misuse), misinterpret vital information and lose inter-agency communication.
The child therefore remains in a high risk, unprotected environment.
Be clear about your rationale with definite, measurable milestones for the student. Keep track of the pace of progress and don’t be afraid to be direct about your concerns where appropriate. If there is drift, reassess the situation, record your evidence of disguised compliance and consider the need to increase the involvement of other agencies.
