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Nurture as a practice means relating to and coaching children and young people to help them form positive relationships, build resilience and improve their social, emotional and mental health and wellbeing. When used in school, nurture improves attendance, behaviour and attainment, and ensures every child is able to learn. A solid understanding of The Six Principles of Nurture is crucial for education professionals looking to implement nurture in their settings. 

1. Children’s learning is understood developmentally

Children are at different stages of development – socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually – and need to be responded to at their developmental level in each of these areas. Responding to children ‘just as they are’, with a non-judgemental and accepting attitude, will help them to feel safe and secure. 

Social, emotional and behavioural development tools such as the Boxall Profile®, help staff to assess and track a child’s needs and put strategies in place to support positive development.

2. The classroom offers a safe base

A classroom environment is inviting and nurturing for all. The classroom offers a balance of educational and social, emotional and mental health experiences aimed at supporting the development of children’s relationships with each other and with staff. Adults are reliable and consistent in their approach to children and make the important link between emotional containment and cognitive learning.

Where possible, predictable routines are explained and practised, and there are clear expectations and positive models of how all adults in school relate to children and young people, both in and out of the classroom. Consider whether your setting is a safe place – physically and emotionally – for your pupils, staff, parents and carers. How do you promote structure and predictability? It is also important that your classroom or nurture space has quiet zones and reflections of home. 

3. The importance of nurture for the development of wellbeing

Nurture involves listening and responding; everything is verbalised with an emphasis on the adults engaging with pupils in reciprocal shared activities. Children respond to being valued and thought about as individuals. In practice this involves noticing and praising small achievements – nothing should be hurried.

Provision and strategies should be put in place that promote the welfare and wellbeing of children and young people, as well as staff welfare and wellbeing. Consider how achievements and attainments are celebrated, and what structures are in place to promote the pupils’ voice. 

4. Language is a vital means of communication

It is important for children and young people to be able to understand and express their thoughts and feelings. It is also crucial for adults to understand the importance of their own language towards children and young people, and how this can impact them. Children often ‘act out’ their feelings as they lack the vocabulary to name how they feel. Informal opportunities for talking and sharing are just as important as more formal lessons teaching language skills. This enables words to be used instead of actions to express feelings, and imaginative play can be used to help children understand the feelings of others. 

It is helpful to provide opportunities for pupils, parents and staff to express their views, and that adults model how to share feelings and experiences. Pupils’ voices should be valued, and language should be assessed, developed and embedded in all aspects of the curriculum at the appropriate level for the child or young person.

Consider how children are taught to recognise emotions and name them in your context. Are they taught to recognise early warning signs of anger or anxiety and use strategies to de-escalate? How do daily routines allow for conversation and sharing of experiences?

5. All behaviour is communication

People communicate through behaviour. It is the adult’s role to help children and young people to understand their feelings, express their needs appropriately, and use non-threatening and supportive language to resolve situations. Our first responsibility in dealing with difficult or challenging behaviour, after safety, is to try to understand what the child is trying to tell us. 

The outward behaviour is often the ‘tip of the iceberg’, and so it is important to consider the immediate environment and what occurred just before the incident happened. School events, the time of year, and home circumstances can also give us clues. Adults need to be calm and consistent, and understand that children may communicate their feelings in different ways. Children and young people need to be encouraged to reflect on their behaviour, and understand how to express their emotions appropriately. 

This does not excuse the behaviour, but helps us to ask why the behaviour is occurring. Given what we know about this child and their development, what are they trying to tell us? It helps staff to respond in a firm but non-punitive way by not being discouraged or provoked. Having a quiet area to help students to become calm, and giving them time before a discussion can often help, as well as recognising potential triggers and anxieties that could be avoided or reduced. 

6. The importance of transitions in children’s lives

Children and young people experience many transitions throughout their lives, and on a daily basis; transitions from home to school, between classes and teachers, from breaktime to lessons, or moving from primary to secondary school. Changes in routine are invariably difficult for vulnerable children and young people, and school staff need to help the child to transition with carefully managed preparation and support. 

Pupils should be included in the planning of support, as well as parents and carers where possible, and information should be shared at key transition points. Staff need to understand the emotions that may be triggered by both small and large changes, and children should be pre-warned or reminded about changes in routines, using visual timetables to emphasise this. 

Consider periods of transition for your children; is there inexplicable behaviour just before the end of the day? Do staff feel frustrated by pupils who cause disruption as they move around the school? Children and young people may feel calmer if time can be made to discuss how they feel when things change, in an open and honest way, to help them put coping strategies in place. 

These six principles help staff to focus on the social and emotional needs and development of children and young people, ensuring all pupils are ready to learn. They form the basis of nurture groups – a short-term intervention for pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties which make it harder for them to learn in a mainstream class – and can also be applied through a whole-school approach. 

Want to know more, or need help implementing nurture in your school? Take a look at our range of training courses. 

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in the number of mental health issues that children and young people are facing. According to the Mental Health Foundation, 75% of children and young people who experience mental health problems aren’t getting the help they need. It is impacting their learning, with many children and young people experiencing social, emotional and mental health difficulties. This is why it is more vital than ever that we shine the spotlight on the importance of children and young people’s mental health and to look at ways we can support them.

Today marks the start of Children’s Mental Health Week. Since it first launched in 2015, Children’s Mental Health Week has become a nationally recognised event with hundreds of schools, colleges, children, parents and carers taking part across England, Wales and Scotland. The awareness week is run by Place2Be and it runs until Sunday 12th February. The theme for this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week is “Let’s Connect”. 

Building positive connections with others can help children and young people to adopt healthier thinking habits, reduce stress and manage anxiety. These connections make children and young people feel good, and as a result they are more likely to stay connected by continuing to communicate with others and joining in with classroom discussions. The more children and young people communicate with friends and family, the more they feel loved, appreciated and valued. There are plenty of ways we can help children and young people to feel good about themselves and encourage them to stay connected with others; one of these methods is to set up a nurture group at school.

At nurtureuk, we are dedicated to improving the social, emotional, mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. We’ve been at the forefront of the nurture movement for over 50 years and we know first-hand the positive impact that the nurturing approach has on children and young people. Nurture groups in particular, have helped children and young people to develop vital social skills, confidence and self-respect. The environment in nurture groups is warm and accepting, which helps pupils to develop meaningful connections with both teachers and peers.

First and foremost, nurture groups focus on supporting pupils to form attachments to loving and caring adults at school. This unconditional positive regard is the most powerful mechanism for change and it can help to improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. The relationship between the two nurture practitioners, always nurturing and supportive, provides a role model that pupils observe and begin to copy. In nurture groups, pupils are given ample opportunities to understand and manage their emotions, reflect on their behaviours in a non-judgmental way, and develop positive friendships. Food is shared at ‘breakfast’ or ‘snack time’ with much opportunity for social learning, helping pupils to attend to the needs of others, with time to listen and be listened to. 

Nurture groups led by trained practitioners offer an effective intervention both in primary and secondary education. They have been powerful in enabling emotionally vulnerable children to develop their skills and resilience to engage in, and benefit from, mainstream education. It is evident that nurture groups have positive mental health outcomes across a wide range of areas, for pupils themselves and also for teachers, the school community and beyond.

We know that a nurturing approach can have an incredible effect on the lives of children and young people, and we love to hear about the real-life impact it has in the schools we work with. The following case study was from a school on our Nurturing London Violence Reduction Unit Programme which finished in 2022. The storyteller is a Senior and Safeguarding Lead of a large secondary and sixth form community school situated in North-East London.

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Before we joined the programme, nurture practice was not really recognised as a legitimate approach. Normal school processes – assessments, data, numbers, results and targets – guided teachers’ decisions more than a pupil’s wellbeing needs. We never gave the time to meaningfully ask a pupil how they were and want to know the answer. The Covid-19 pandemic helped to change this prevailing attitude as it demanded a wider societal recognition of trauma and meeting needs. All levels of society were made to reflect on what really matters to people and schools had no option but to witness the partial breakdown of society and social norms whilst we were all being affected by the pandemic.

At the start of the programme, my knowledge of nurture practice was quite good, but now it is completely embedded in my practice. All decisions affecting a young person in our school are now made with a nurture focus, and relationships with staff and the way I frame conversations with them has also changed. Since adopting a more nurturing approach I feel that I have more support from our local authority services around social, emotional and mental health and I think that since the pandemic, there is a greater recognition of these needs from other agencies too. We may have arrived at this point regardless, but the programme allowed us to embed nurture practice earlier so that we could respond to the needs created by the pandemic at an earlier stage.

The school leadership recognised that if we continued our previous approach, we would continue to see the same results, so our school completely changed our behaviour system at the start of this year, moving away from exclusions and moving towards creating a space where young people build and rebuild relationships with staff across the school. We have numerous pupils who have not been excluded because nurture has changed the way we meet their needs. Now we check-in more, make space for them to voice their needs and make more reasonable adjustments and we find that we are managing them, they are managing themselves and they are staying in mainstream education. The unseen work of the nurturing approach is reaching across the school and our pupils are aware that things have changed. They have more faith in the system in which they find themselves in, and if they have made a mistake or are in trouble for something, now they don’t question that they aren’t punished or excluded – they trust that there will be a conversation or a reflection, rather than a sanction.

The PATTERN partnership programme afforded us the opportunity to have inspiring young people come in and work with our young people. Having adults that pupils could relate to, speak to and be honest with became such an important outlet for these vulnerable young people who were on the cusp of exclusion or big educational changes. They were made to feel secure and at ease which made them want to turn up! The pupils attending were at risk of truancy, but they attended consistently each week and enjoyed the sessions. I was constantly asked each week if the sessions were taking place and what the topic of discussion might be! These pupils already have excellent English teachers, but I think they got so much more from the PATTERN sessions than they were from their English classes.

The staff training offered by the programme really resonated and has helped us to spread the message of nurture and the importance of building relationships across staff teams. The networking meetings that I attended were excellent and really valuable for my own development. The toolboxes we received were well used during lockdown and have now been embedded into the curriculum for next year.

We will continue to move the school further in the nurturing approach because of the impact of the programme. The small things we have done and changed as a result of this programme – those small things have moved mountains for our young people and for the school.

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We are delighted to have been commissioned by the London Violence Reduction Unit to deliver a new programme alongside delivery partners Tender. The Inclusive and Nurturing Schools Programme aims to tackle school exclusions across 70 schools in seven London Boroughs. For more information, please visit our website. 

A whole-school approach to nurture focuses on the emotional development and academic learning of all pupils, as well as embedding the Six Principles of Nurture throughout the policies and practices of a school. By adopting a whole-school approach, schools can not only understand and respond to the social, emotional, mental health and wellbeing of all pupils and staff, they can also help enhance teaching and learning.

At nurtureuk, we have spent over 50 years building an evidence-based approach and today we are known for supporting education professionals to implement expert nurturing practice in schools. 

Developing a nurturing culture is different for every school. The way in which it is embedded depends upon the school’s core beliefs, pupil’s needs and the school’s commitment to supporting pupils to achieve their very best. There are several tools and resources that support this process, including the following:

• The Boxall Profile® – An assessment tool which provides an overview of pupils’ social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs, and how to respond to them – both in the classroom and with specific nurturing interventions. 
• The Six Principles of Nurture – Developed by educational experts Eva Holmes and Eve Boyd in 1999, these are the core principles that should inform any nurturing culture and ethos.  
• Nurture groups – A short-term intervention providing focused support to pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties which make it harder for them to learn in a mainstream class.

Our National Nurturing Schools Programme helps schools to develop a whole-school approach that upskills leaders to embed a nurturing culture to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all pupils and staff in a school. Through embedding the Six Principles of Nurture and using the Boxall Profile® across the whole school, the National Nurturing Schools Programme supports schools to identify children and young people who need additional, more focused support through nurturing interventions or as part of a nurture group. 

We want to see every child’s education and development embracing nurture. A whole-school approach is the most effective way to support every child with their social, emotional and mental health needs, and equip teachers with the necessary tools to meet these needs.

Inspirational and enlightening are just two of the words that spring to mind when describing yesterday’s nurtureuk AGM. 

As a new nurtureuk employee, it was the first time I had attended and it was a genuine pleasure to meet some of our wonderful members and hear more about the incredible journey the charity has been on over the past couple of years. 

Like many charities, nurtureuk has faced considerable challenges and change as it navigated a global pandemic and continues to evolve in a post Covid-19 world. 

Despite this, we’ve gone from strength to strength and are determined to keep championing nurture and supporting education professionals at a time when our work is more vital than ever. 

This passion and determination was clearly evident at yesterday’s meeting, as was the hard work and dedication of the education professionals we work alongside.

We were privileged to hear directly from the deputy head of a school in Kent that has been implementing nurture across the school. It was truly inspiring to hear just how nurture is transforming not only the lives of vulnerable individual children, but also of the whole school community. 

Despite all the political and economic turbulence we’re currently facing, yesterday’s meeting left me hopeful for our vision of nurture in education being the norm. There is so much more we can and want to do to support practitioners and children and young people. 

I’m very much looking forward to meeting more of our members in the coming weeks and months, and I’m keen to hear what more you think we can do for you. 

Please do get in touch with any questions or comments by emailing [email protected] 

Suzi Bowles

Senior Membership Development Officer