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Danielle Batist is an experienced freelance journalist, founder of Journopreneur and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project. She lived and worked all around the globe and covered global and local stories of poverty, exclusion and injustice. Increasingly, she moved beyond ‘problem-reporting’ to include stories about the solutions she found. She witnessed the birth of the new nation of South Sudan and interviewed the Dalai Lama. She reported for Al Jazeera, BBC and the Guardian and regularly advises independent media organisations on innovation and sustainability. She loves bringing stories to the world and finding the appropriate platforms to do so. The transformation of traditional media fascinates rather than scares her. While both the medium and the message are changing, she believes the need for good storytelling remains.
What’s the best way to ensure children with behavioural problems, attachment disorders and complicated mental health needs flourish in school? Battering them with kindness, says the principal of Springwell, a UK school which pioneers the ‘unconditional positive regard’ approach.
The concept dates back to the 1950s and the work of psychologist Carl Rogers, when it was applied to therapists and counsellors in the treatment of their patients. It means treating every human as equal instead of saying someone is good only if they behave a certain way, or if they tick certain boxes.
This article zooms in on why the method works so well, particularly for children who often have nowhere else to go, after having been expelled from mainstream education.
It is the polar opposite of the approach of “no excuses”, used in a growing number of UK schools, which enforce a super-strict behaviour code regardless of the child’s individual story. In the view of Springwell’s headmaster, such schools leave no room for pupils to make mistakes, but instead “consign certain children to the dumpster.”