Provision at The Lookout Education Centre
The Lookout Education Centre provides education for young people who are inpatients at The Lookout Adolescent Unit at Hopewood. The Lookout is a 32-bed facility for young people aged 12 – 18 years old. These young people are experiencing mental health difficulties that can no longer be managed in the community. This may include eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.
The unit has three wards:
• Pegasus Ward, a 12-bed specialist eating disorder unit
• Phoenix Ward, a 12-bed general adolescent unit
• Hercules Ward, an 8-bed Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for children and young people needing more intense support.
We offer the young people a timetable comprised of the subjects that they are studying at their home schools or colleges. We use specialist teachers who liaise closely with their home school teachers to create a bespoke, personalised education package. All groups on site have a personalised curriculum, differentiated to their needs. This includes an enrichment programme and PSHE.
The young people at The Lookout face a range of medical conditions and mental health challenges and the amount of time they are inpatients can vary from a few days, to weeks or months. As a consequence, the needs of pupils who are missing education due to medical conditions and hospital therapies vary. The Lookout education staff recognise this and consider each pupil’s curriculum pathway on a case by case basis. They consider not only their current educational needs, but also their medical condition, as well as procedures and treatments they are undergoing, which may have a cognitive, physical and emotional impact on the pupil’s readiness to learn.
At The Lookout, we intend to provide our pupils with a rich and varied curriculum to enable them to develop and maintain a love of, and success, in their learning, whilst preparing them to transition as easily as possible into their next educational setting or challenge. Knowledge of pupils is gained through assessments, observation, conversations with family, liaison with home school and other involved professionals and sharing of key information and prior assessments.
Each pupil receives a well-planned and considered curriculum. Whilst taking full account of their medical, social, emotional and academic learning needs, this also focuses on overcoming their individual barriers in order for them to progress to their current potential. Teachers and teaching assistants liaise closely with the home school of each pupil and then personalise and adapt the planning sent, to ensure accurate pitch and challenge. Through liaison with home schools, priorities are set. Pupils at The Lookout receive a reduced timetable of two and a quarter hours of school each day adapted to their age, stage and current circumstances. If it is in the best interest of pupils, there are circumstances when they may follow a curriculum pathway which offers alternatives to their Home School curriculum.
Reading is a key component of The Lookout provision with cross curricular reading skills taught and embedded throughout all subjects as well as promoting a love of reading in a number of ways. Read for Good is a charity which provides free books for children in hospital and our young people are also invited to take advantage of Listening Books’ audio library of content in our library. Other reading activities include reading for pleasure, researching, reading around an area of personal interest as well as reading across the curriculum.
At The Lookout, a variety of additional opportunities are provided through the wider curriculum. These opportunities include creative work, including music delivered by an expert one day a week, regular visits to St. Ann’s Community Orchard, and art with a visiting artist. Further curriculum experiences are delivered by education staff, which are tailored to the individual pupil’s circumstances. These sessions help to develop their security in learning and readiness to learn. Young people are encouraged to engage with special events and days such as SRE days which are delivered on a termly basis. We believe that these additional curriculum opportunities can support and encourage pupil participation in a wide variety of circumstances. Additionally, they develop a range of personal skills, attributes and learning behaviours, for example, confidence, self-esteem, resilience, organisational skills, problem solving, creativity and social skills.
E- Safety and Digital Citizenship are taught on a personalised basis if deemed appropriate in relation to individual need or circumstance, this is assessed formatively by The Lookout staff. E-safety is discussed with every pupil before they use a computer/online technology in the Education Base. With regards to PSHE, Futures, SMSC and British Values, teaching staff will teach these discretely as requested by the Home School, as part of curriculum subjects or in relation to wider curriculum opportunities, events or celebrations. PSHE, SMSC and British Values are also addressed in a more holistic approach across the curriculum: through discussion, sharing opinions, debate and developing personal learning behaviours and attributes.
The site is also an examining centre for GCSEs, Edexcel Functional Skills and offers AIM Awards and AQA Unit Awards in addition to, or as a supplement to, public examinations.
