Practitioner for Engagement and Behaviour

Job Description: Practitioner for Engagement and Behaviour

Role Overview

• Job Title: Practitioner for engagement and behaviour
• Location: The Lowen School
• Reporting To: Class Teacher/Head of Specialist Support/SLT
• Salary/Grade: £28-30,000
• Contract Type: Full-time, Permanent

Purpose of the Role

The practitioner will operate within a values-led, Quality of Life (QOL) framework. Grounded in the core understanding that all behaviours are functional, purposeful, and meaningful acts of communication. The position supports children with complex needs, learning difficulties, and developmental trauma profiles.

Unlike traditional teaching assistant roles, the role is an active consultant, advisor, and modeller within the classroom team. They will be assigned to a student on a short-medium term basis, who requires more support than can be provided within our classroom arrangements. This professional will play a vital role in translating biopsychosocial theory into daily practice, advising and training classroom staff on trauma-informed approaches, co-producing robust engagement and behaviour plans and modeling evidence-informed, proactive strategies directly to teachers and support staff.

A further key role of this post is to deliver our in house training around these approaches to other partner agencies and schools who work alongside us.

Key Responsibilities

1. Specialised Pupil Support & Co-Regulation

• Presume Competence
• Trauma-Informed Co-Regulation
  
  • Establish Felt Safety for unregulated pupils using a calm, warm tone of voice, maintaining safe environments, and dropping expectations/demands immediately during survival responses.
  • Provide a steady, regulated physical presence to support emotional co-regulation and attachment needs during periods of intense anxiety.
• Support Core Human Yearnings

2. Advising, Modelling & Capacity Building

• Staff Modelling & Support
• Advising on De-escalation: Guide and coach classroom staff to recognize early warning signals. Advise teams on adjusting their own body language, dropping demands, giving physical space, and avoiding confrontation to prevent escalation.
• Delivering Targeted Training: Design and deliver training on practical trauma-informed tools.
• Post-Incident Recovery Support: Lead the delivery of restorative, post-incident support.

3. Effective Collaborative Planning & Assessment

• Lead or assist in systematic, data-driven assessments, utilising observations, structured incident logs, and the Iceberg Model to identify covert environmental, biological, and emotional triggers.
• Bespoke PBS Planning: Collaborate with teachers, parents, and multidisciplinary teams to co-produce bespoke, person-centred, and culturally sensitive support plans.
• Implement Quality of Life Accelerators: Direct the planning of proactive classroom adjustments that protect pupils' dignity and human rights.
• This includes:
  • Choice and Control
  • Predictable Environments
  • Positive Social Engagement
  • Independent Coping
  • Personalised Routines
• Elimination of Restrictive Practices: Champion the complete elimination of aversive, restrictive, or abusive educational practices, ensuring physical restraint is treated strictly as an unauthorised, absolute last-resort requiring immediate multidisciplinary and parental review.

4. Teamwork & Classroom Integration

• Unified Team Practice: Work seamlessly as part of a single, collaborative classroom team alongside Teachers, TAs, and external specialists.
• Adaptive Planning Loop: Participate in data-driven decision-making, routine monitoring, and collaborative evaluation of support plans to dynamically adapt to pupil needs.
• High Professional Standards: Maintain an environment of mutual respect and high expectations. Commit to professional integrity by raising minor issues directly and kindly with colleagues, avoiding gossip, and maintaining unwavering standards of child dignity.

5. Delivery of training across other partners

• Update and collaborate to produce child centred, evidence based ethical training
• Work alongside other providers to support culture and change as well as modelling best practice
• Deliver high quality training to professionals
• Understand and reinforce feedback loops to ensure the quality of the training remains high.

Person Specification

Qualifications & Education

• Essential: Relevant Level 3 or 4 Teaching Assistant qualification, or equivalent specialist training in childhood development, education, or social care.
• Desirable: Accredited training in Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), or Trauma-Informed Practice.

Knowledge & Understanding

• Essential: Strong understanding of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) as a values-led quality of life framework and its three main pillars.
• Essential: Knowledge of the biopsychosocial model and the core components of learning theory.
• Essential: Grounded understanding of child development, particularly the impacts of trauma, sensory processing difficulties, and learning difficulties on the neurosequential brain.
• Desirable: Familiarity with the "Iceberg Model" of behaviour and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) concepts (the 6 Core Human Yearnings).

Experience

• Essential: Extensive, demonstrable experience working directly with children who present with complex needs, developmental trauma profiles, or profound communication and learning difficulties.
• Essential: Experience in designing, modelling, and evaluating proactive behaviour support strategies.
• Essential: Proven track record of working effectively alongside classroom teachers, actively participating in team meetings, and co-producing pupil plans.
• Essential: Experience in delivering training and coaching others
• Desirable: Experience delivering informal or formal peer-to-peer coaching, training, or advisory support to other education professionals.

Skills & Attributes

• Emotional Self-Regulation: Outstanding ability to remain calm, respectful, non-confrontational, and emotionally stable under high pressure or during a crisis.
• Active Co-Regulation: Skills in adapting physical presence, body language, and tone of voice to match and soothe a dysregulated child.
• Communication and Presumed Competence: Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to interpret non-verbal behaviour and word-finding difficulties with deep patience and empathy.
• Collaborative Leadership: Ability to advise and coach peers constructively while maintaining a warm, kind, and supportive relationship within the classroom team.