#62 - School Attendance Plans: Red Flags, Research and What Actually Works with Tiffany Westphal

Tiffany Westphal, director of School Can't Australia, joins host Leisa Reichelt to discuss a common stressful experience facing School Can't families: the school attendance plan.

Drawing on recent survey research conducted with the School Can't Australia community, Tiffany reveals some genuinely shocking findings, including that 46% of families were presented with an attendance plan with no prior consultation, 29% were never consulted at all, and 73% felt pressured to agree to a plan they didn't think would work. Only 20% said their plan reflected the advice of their young person's allied health or medical team.

Tiffany and Leisa explore why attendance plans so often fail. From the absence of child and family input, to the mismatch between what schools are measuring (attendance) and what actually needs to be addressed (the barriers and stressors making school feel unsafe). They discuss the difference between attendance plans and exposure plans, why a distressed child in the late stages of School Can't needs a fundamentally different approach, and what genuine collaborative problem-solving can look like in practice, including how Leisa used a "hypothesis" framing to shift responsibility back to the school.

There's also practical guidance for families who are right in the middle of this: red flags to watch for, when to ask for a different contact at the school, when to bring an advocate, and why it's okay to say "I disagree."

Relevant resources:

Transcript

Leisa Reichelt 0:05

Hello, and welcome to the School Can't Experience podcast. I am Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who's struggling with School Can't can be a lonely and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Today I'm joined by Tiffany Westphal, director at School Can't Australia, and we are going to be talking about school attendance plans, which is something that will be very familiar to many of our School Can't community. We're going to be talking about how a school's appproach to attendance plans can make a huge difference as to whether or not those plans will succeed, including some of the red flags to really look out for, and how we and how we can approach attendance plans so that they can actually address the needs of the child or young person, allowing them to return to school. Tiffany's gonna share with us some quite shocking insights, honestly, from recent research that's been done with the community on attendance plans and some tips to help if you are feeling under pressure or struggling to agree with the school on a suitable plan for attendance. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Hello, Tiffany Westphal. Thank you so much for joining us for our podcast today. I'm gonna start by asking you, what is the difference between an attendance plan and an exposure plan? Are they effectively different or not so much?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 1:23

I think it really depends on who's been on the source of that plan and who's working with the family or with the student to create the plan, and what the framing is that they've attributed to the reason why the student can't go to school. a psychologist who views this as a phobia or an anxiety disorder is likely to create something called an exposure plan that's designed to desensitize the child to their concerns that are considered not rational or to have been blown out of proportion or, the child just needs to push through and see that nothing to be worried about being at school. A school attendance improvement plan is usually generated by a school. Its objective is to get a child back into the school or attending school more frequently. Its core objective about improving attendance.

Leisa Reichelt 2:22

Usually involves percentages, doesn't it?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 2:25

Yeah. There'll be measures about, you know, how much school has this child missed? Are they up to the 80% or the or whatever the school has set?

Leisa Reichelt 2:35

Let's focus on schools in particular, when they are creating these kind of plans, looking at it from their perspective first, what's the school's need that's being met in drafting these plans?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 2:50

Yeah. I think there's a requirement. I mean, education attendance at a school for children up to a certain age is a compulsory thing. And so kids are supposed to be at school. That's a legal requirement in every single state and territory in Australia. Schools have been directed by the State Governments and by the Federal Government through the National School Reform Agreement as well, to achieve certain attendance targets as well, and funding, a certain portion of funding is linked to achieving those targets. So there's some pressure on schools to keep kids coming back to school and attending school. And there are impacts on learning, and on staff workloads too when kids are away from school. You know, they're missing out on learning, and learning is something that, that happens in this kind of a spiral. you learn and then you come and circle back and you learn a bit more, and you build on prior learning and so on. So when kids miss a chunk of something, there's some catch-up required. Now, that's not necessarily something that's a huge issue. It depends. We have capacity to learn things actually quite quickly when we need to. And if you're interested in learning something, I think the evidence is there that you can learn it quite quickly when you're ready.

Leisa Reichelt 4:09

I imagine if there is a funding element that's attached to attendance, then that would be a pretty high pressure for a school, wouldn't it? Because they're not exactly overfunded, especially our public schools And I think also if you have a child who's at the older end of school age, certainly in New South Wales, I can say if you're trying to get your ROSA in year 10, there's an attendance element to that as well. Like, you have to have been seen to have attended in order for that to be able to be awarded. Now, obviously it's not the be all, end all if you do or don't get that, but it is another kind of little element of pressure that I think comes up fairly frequently

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 4:50

Yeah. It's the same in Victoria as well, where I'm located. if you're doing VCE, the school needs to be able to confirm that the student has actually done the work, and they need to see a certain component of that work taking place in the school

Leisa Reichelt 5:04

Okay.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 5:05

Mm-hmm.

Leisa Reichelt 5:06

So that helps us understand why schools are often so proactive in terms of pursuing these attendance plans with our families. Tiff, you did some research at the end of last year, reaching out into the community to try to get a sense of what their experience with attendance plans was. What can you tell us about what we learned about what our School Can't families are experiencing in engaging with attendance plans and schools?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 5:37

Look, this came about because I'd noticed a lot of chat in our group about really distressing experiences of these things. But I personally also had a client come to me, when I was working as a social worker, who showed me their plan, and I was horrified. I said, "This is just dreadful." And, you know, they don't know any better. Until we know better, can't do better. So I wanted to collect some information about this so that we could inform people about what the experience is and what we might do to improve the experience, how we might shift it, a little bit. I think to start with, just to tell you some of the basic data about the survey. We had about 70 responses, in proportion to the population distribution between states. About 68% those were families whose child had been enrolled in a government mainstream school. 17% were in a independent school and 15% in a Catholic school. And they were across the range, I think about 36% were primary school students, and the remainder were high school students. So that's some of the basic sort of background for who responded. There were a few things that were really shocking, that leapt out, in response to the first few questions in that survey. One was that there was a lack of consultation with families in preparation of an attendance improvement plan. and I must say, when people were responding to this survey, they were responding to any kind of plan that was put in place in order to try and get their child to attend school again or more frequently than they were. So, these plans had different names. and we just accepted feedback about all of them. So, only 53% of families said that they were consulted about the creation of a plan before they saw the school attendance improvement plan. So 46% had a plan presented to them without any prior consultation.

Leisa Reichelt 7:56

That's wild, isn't it? That you just, like, walk in and they'd go, "Here's the plan"

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 8:00

Here's the plan, not what would a plan look like?

Leisa Reichelt 8:03

How might we work together to make this work successfully? Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 8:06

Concerningly, 29% said they were never consulted. They were never given the opportunity to contribute to the plan. So even after being presented with it, they were never able to make a contribution to it. It's just not good enough. I'm lost for words, honestly, as to how that can be that you are not consulting with a family. And the feedback families got was, "Well, the school really feel that they're the experts here."

Leisa Reichelt 8:41

Well, do we know what happens when these plans inevitably fail?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 8:45

Well, the side effects of plans not working are that that student doesn't get the support that they need able to access their education. That parent not able to return to work because they lose trust and faith in adults at school being helpful, and being able to support them. And it might not just be the adults at school, it could be the psychologist that worked with them on this plan as well. There was one case who said that the school psychologist and the principal worked on the plan and then told them how it was going to be. And they were told, "You know, we're experts and this is the plan." So yeah, it's, a lot less likely to be successful, we know, if a family and particularly a student hasn't been consulted about it. If it's not child-centered, if it's not student-centered and student-led, it's more likely to collapse.

Leisa Reichelt 9:43

And in collapsing, you're kind of collapsing the child and their family a lot of the time as well, aren't you? Because you're increasing the pressure on the situation.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 9:55

Yep. You're reducing the options they have.

Leisa Reichelt 9:58

Speaking from my own personal experience, you always get an attendance plan when you're already pretty stressed out. Because if the kid's not going to school, generally that's because something's not great. And then instead of getting support, you feel like you kind of, you just get more pressure from the school

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 10:17

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 10:18

go, "Oh, well I don't really care that you're having all of these difficulties right now. Like, you need to get over it somehow and achieve this outcome." As a parent, doesn't put you in a very calm frame of mind to be able to handle the situation in the way that maybe you'd like to, does it?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 10:35

No, no. It doesn't. And I think often there's a presumption that there's a lack of motivation to go to school or a lack of parental or discipline, know, in getting kids to school, that there's a, a mental health issue that the student just needs to be pushed through. But we know that, you know, a large portion of our community are supporting students who are experiencing stress and barriers that are impacting their attendance. Now, sometimes those stress and barriers exist in the family home. We know that things like family violence or having a sick parent or a sick family member, some kind of chronic illness in the family or, loss of employment or some sort of stressful experience in family can impact a capacity to attend school. The larger portion of our community, when we surveyed them back in December 2022, said that stressors in the context of school were a significant factor in why their child couldn't attend school any longer. One of the other questions that we asked in this research, late last year was, "Do you feel that adequate attempts were made prior to or during the school meetings to understand the barriers and stressors experienced by the student?" 49% said some attempts were made. 14% said yes, attempts were made, but 36% said no, no attempts were made. Did you feel that the school shared your understanding of why your child or teen couldn't attend school?" 50% said no, we don't have a shared understanding about why the child can't come to school. Only 7.2% said yes, they felt that there was a shared understanding,

Leisa Reichelt 12:36

I feel like these attendance plans often are the real moment at which that becomes clear too, because I think you can potentially be having meetings with the school where everyone's like nodding and, "Yeah, yeah. Oh, we understand. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, we understand" But then one day it's like, "Here's the attendance plan" And you realize actually that there was a lot of nodding potentially going on...

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 13:03

Often that's fawning, you know? That's somebody who's feeling intimidated, whether it's a parent feeling that their parenting's being questioned or they're being shamed for the fact that they're in this situation. There's a power difference between you and the other people in the room as a parent, or you're a child who's surrounded by adults in a meeting and you're going, "I just want this to end. I'll just say yes to anything. So there's an element of coercion.

Leisa Reichelt 13:29

I'm thinking about it the other way around though too, Tiff. Before the attendance plan happens,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 13:33

Mm-hmm.

Leisa Reichelt 13:33

and you're in dialogue with the school because you're aware that there's a problem, and you'd like

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 13:40

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 13:40

some help maybe, some support, some accommodations. My experience has been you can get a lot of people going, "Oh, yes, yes. I understand. Oh, yes, that must be difficult. Oh, yes, you know. However we can help." But then there will come a point where the attendance plan becomes the attendance plan, and all of that conversation kind of goes out the window. And it's like, "Well, that's all well and good, but we still have to do this." And I wonder if your experience is different. My experience of attendance plans is that they're really kind of like a ramping up schedule

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 14:16

Yes,

Leisa Reichelt 14:17

with very little in the way of accommodations in them.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 14:19

Mm. Often families talk about them as being focused on what the family or the child is gonna do differently rather than what's gonna happen at the other end. And so all of those conditions of felt safety that are required in order to get a distressed student back in a situation where they feel okay going to school, are left on the family to do things they have no control over. You know? So I was talking to someone the other day and they said, "Well, I managed to get my child to school, but I didn't know that their classroom teacher was gonna be away that day." So there was a stressor straight away on top of the stressor of showing up was my safe person, my safe teacher's not there. When those sorts of things are important to know before you set foot on the school grounds for a child whose nervous system's quite heightened in that space, we're letting kids down

Leisa Reichelt 15:19

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 15:20

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 15:21

And just knowing that you can ask for accommodations from the school around those kinds of issues, I think is something that so many of us just come across over time, and often way later than we would have hoped to. I loved in our episode that we had last week, there was a great example of a school who were actually able to make accommodation around substitute teachers, because that was such an issue for this boy. And gosh, you know, I've been battling with substitute teacher issues for many years, and it kind of just never occurred to me that you could do something like that, right? Yeah. We do just need a big book of potential accommodations somewhere, don't we, that we can all Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 16:09

Yeah, wouldn't that be lovely if we

Leisa Reichelt 16:11

Wouldn't it?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 16:11

crowdsource all that information?

Leisa Reichelt 16:13

Yeah. Coming back to your fawning topic though, I do remember a number of conversations that I've been in around attendance plans where I was trying really hard to be very conservative about it and going, "No, like, having made a number of unrealistic attendance plans, let's make sure this one's really realistic." And my son would be sitting right next to me going, "Oh, no, I'll do that. Oh, no, I can do this." And, you know, in the moment with all of these teachers there, like, he really did want to be able to do it. And I think it speaks to the intrinsic motivation that they do wanna be there. So he would then sign up to all of these impossible, impossible goals. And yeah, I, I would walk out just going, There's no way this is gonna succeed," and the very next morning it's all gonna, like, come crashing down and it always did

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 17:06

I think, one of the other things I just want to say that was really quite shocking to me was that, in talk about these plans, families said that, very often, plans did not reflect the advice that was given by their allied health, by their GP, their psychologist, their social worker, or other allied health or mental health specialist. That advice was ignored or dismissed or considered not relevant. And the data on that's quite shocking. Only 20% said that the plan reflected the advice of their supporting team. 8% said not applicable, but the remainder, you know, 27% said partially supported, but 43% said no, it wasn't reflected. That's huge.

Leisa Reichelt 17:56

It is huge.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 17:57

Yeah. And look, I think sometimes that happens because those people, those specialists weren't included in the collaborative effort of having that discussion. And so it comes from them as a telling, rather than as a part of the problem-solving collective. So in that case, sometimes, psychologists or social workers might make recommendations that are not possible in that particular school. I don't think that happens very often but I have found that when you present information as a suggestion for consideration and tell them that this has worked for other clients or this has worked in other places that they're more likely to be receptive to receiving that information, going, "Oh, maybe we could make that work." So I think that sometimes there's, a wall put up because it feels threatening to be told by outsiders, at a school, unfortunately.

Leisa Reichelt 18:56

If I reflect back on a lot of the conversations that we've had on various episodes in this podcast, we've heard lots of psychologists and OTs and Speechies and other people say that they don't often get a very warm reception from the school when they are kind of offering advice. But I know some people also really talked about how important it is that they make sure the school understands the why behind the recommendation as well, and that's not always something that happens. If the school's not understanding why it is that they're making the recommendation and how they think it's gonna actually have an impact, then it can be easy to dismiss as, it might look a little bit outlandish or unusual as a first request. But once you understand the purpose that it has, it can be maybe a bit easier to get behind it

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 19:43

Yeah 73%, Leisa, 73% said they felt pressured to agree to an attendance plan they felt wouldn't be helpful. Just coming back to that element of feeling coerced or having to say yes.

Leisa Reichelt 20:01

God, Tiff, honestly though, I'm surprised it's not 100%

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 20:05

Mm-hmm.

Leisa Reichelt 20:07

As a parent going into a school being presented with an attendance plan, like, who, who's not gonna feel pressured? I wanna meet the people who don't feel pressured like that. Because, you know, do, do we as parents have a right to reject this out of hand and just go, "No, I'm not gonna sign up to this"?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 20:28

Well, there's a lot of pressure in some states where the next step is referral to a compulsory schooling attendance conference meeting and potential fine.

Leisa Reichelt 20:39

Hmm. I know, and you do wanna try to negotiate some kind of a way forward with the school, don't you?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 20:46

Most of us want our kids to be able to attend school

Leisa Reichelt 20:49

Most of our kids would like to attend school themselves, right? Like we're all... This is a weird thing, right? We're all essentially on the same team trying to get the same outcomes. Getting those outcomes is best for all of us. I just had to pause there for a second 'cause not unless the school changes so that the kids can actually be there and be well when they're there.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 21:12

One of our board members yesterday told me her son, who's 10, said it made no sense to him why they were talking about attendance when they ought to be talking about whether the school was attendable.

Leisa Reichelt 21:27

Go him. That's great.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 21:30

There are consequences sometimes in some states, but I don't think you should sign something that you don't think will work. But I can't give people advice that they shouldn't sign these things or shouldn't go along with it because there are consequences in some states

Leisa Reichelt 21:48

And every school is different, right? I think it so much depends on the school that you're working with. Like, different schools seem to have a lot of different levels of flexibility for these things, don't they?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 22:00

Yeah. Yes

Leisa Reichelt 22:02

Let's shift into a more constructive mode then, Tiff. If we do wanna try to engage with the school in a way that is more positive and more likely to lead to good outcomes for attendance, what are the kinds of things that we could be doing or suggesting that might actually work, that might help?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 22:30

So some of the things our community, lived experience suggests is that collaborative problem-solving is very helpful. But before we do that, we really need to have a really good understanding of what the problems are that the student's experiencing, what the stressors are, what are the barriers the student's experiencing. I think we also need to remember we need to be mindful of the journey of distress and where the child is at in their journey of recovery as well. Because we know that a student who is early, in the early stages of being distressed about attending school, you can identify the problems, find solutions for those problems, and that kid's gonna respond really well to intervention and be able to be repatriated back into school attendance. a child who's been distressed for a long time, and often they have been distressed a long time by the time they stop being able to go to school, that's like the, the last very end stage sign of distress. That's, "I can no longer do this. It has broken me. I can no longer." But they were distressed for some time. When we get to that point, we need to be mindful that an attendance plan is gonna have to look very, very different for a student, and it's gonna have to focus on rebuilding sense of safety and connection and belonging and, support a nervous system state that has the student feeling regulated most of the time and not threatened. And that's not something that's gonna happen to a six-week plan. You know, our community tells us that in those sorts of situations, giving the child agency and control over what that plan looks like and what things they think they can do, and having some control over what's gonna happen next, and knowing that the adults aren't gonna shift the goalposts without consulting them or change something or up the ante, before they're ready, then they're gonna feel safe with that plan, because they're sitting in the driver's seat of it, and we are working on the edges of what feels comfortable to them, and they have some control over that. We know that we need to be responsive to fluctuations in capacity. At any point in the journey, something can happen that changes capacity. it does for me personally as an adult. I can have a bad sleep and all of a sudden my day needs to change. So we know that giving the child agency, checking in frequently with that young person about how it's going for them is important. That we don't just have a meeting at the beginning of the term and say, "Okay, this is what we're gonna do this term. We'll check in with you again at the beginning of next term." That's too long a period of time, to go if you've got a child who's being chronically stressed. They need somebody checking in with them. They need adjustments regularly. Checking in and adjustments as needed, in order to continue building that sense of safety, that sense of, "I'm okay here. I'll be supported here, people will notice my needs and respond to my needs. I'm not trapped." I think feeling trapped in distress is one of the biggest fears, and not being able to communicate about that distress. So when we find ways to, make it possible to communicate about that distress, remove some of the shame about talking about it, and provide options for self-advocacy. You know, because they do try and self-advocate, but we very often say, "No, you have to do this." So seeing those little resistances as opportunities to build on capacity of learning to self-advocate instead of shutting down self-advocacy, I think is important.

Leisa Reichelt 26:36

A lot of this sounds like a very significant mindset shift for schools from where a lot of them are now to be able to understand this. Like, all of this means that a school has to take seriously that this is a nervous system related issue, and that there are all of these stressors that are occurring at school that are leading to the nervous system feeling unsafe, and that there are things that they can do, that can contribute both negatively and positively to that. That, that feels like a distant dream, I think, for a lot of people in terms of how they a- are trying to communicate with their school at the moment.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 27:23

Mm-hmm.

Leisa Reichelt 27:24

Have you got any suggestions for people who are kinda hitting a brick wall with the school in terms of trying to get on the same page as to, like, where the problem is coming from?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 27:36

Yeah. Get an advocate. I think at some point you just have to choose, is this worth continuing to persist pushing this wheelbarrow up this hill? or not

Leisa Reichelt 27:51

By that do you mean you need to look at a different school or a different educational option?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 27:57

Yeah. All sorts of options. Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 28:01

Yeah

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 28:02

I think you can start with the options that are closest. Do I need to deal with somebody different at this school? Is there someone else I can have these conversations with at this school? I did that once in my daughter's school. I said, "I don't think I can make any progress talking to you." I went to the principal. I said, "Can you give me someone else I can talk to?" And they did. They appointed somebody else to deal with us, to respond to us and to work with us. So the one relationship ended, and we went forward with a new relationship. So, that's a close-to-home kind of option. You can ask, "Is there someone else we can deal with here?" You can ask, "Can I bring someone else with me, an advocate or a, a psychologist or a social worker who's familiar with my child and my, my child's story?" so you can start with those sorts of options.

Leisa Reichelt 28:55

A lot of our lived experience stories though do tell of people who just move away from a school that has an incompatible mindset and finds a school that is more closely compatible with this way of thinking. And that can be an enormous relief for the family and much more successful for the kid as well.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 29:16

That's hard when there are zoning issues in some areas as well though. So it's, you know, sometimes it's an option, yes. I was just talking to someone earlier today saying, "Well, I was worried we were gonna have to move house again to access an alternative." That can be difficult. Sometimes it involves stepping away and registering for home education for a little while, because it takes energy from a parent to be advocating, to be trying to educate others about what their child needs. So you've got to consider not just the child and the child's interests, but the wellbeing of that parent-carer advocate as well when we're making these decisions. I sometimes parent carers don't think about their own needs. They're only thinking about the child's needs, and sometimes we push ourselves to exhaustion,

Leisa Reichelt 30:09

Absolutely. And presumably if our kid's not going to school, they're probably pretty exhausted emotionally as well, right? So it's worth reminding ourselves that home education isn't a one-way door, right? It can be just a temporary thing that you do to rebuild for a little while. Tiff, if we've got families who are listening who are in the midst of being pressured by their school to agree to attendance plans that they are not comfortable with, and knowing how frequently they come up and, you know, amongst people who are listening to this almost certainly there will be a bunch of people who are right in the middle of this. What's your guidance to them?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 30:57

Stay calm. It feels threatening. It looks like a legal contract in some cases. And I think, look, encourage schools, encourage the staff at schools to attend our professional development that we offer for professionals so that they can begin to understand this from a different perspective. It shouldn't all be on families though, to have to educate staff at schools. and, As a parent carer, I wanna focus on my kid and my young person. I don't wanna have to be mum and advocate and, you know, healthcare worker and all the other things.

Leisa Reichelt 31:40

And yet, realistically, most of the time we are, aren't we? So

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 31:44

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 31:44

And you talked, earlier about, collaborative problem-solving. I assume we're talking Ross Greene and his methodology there. That would be something else that they would be able to lean into potentially?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 31:56

Even just understanding problem-solving from a generic perspective, you know? Problem-solving involves having a conversation about what's working, what's not working, and brainstorming ideas. What could we do? And then making a plan and trying it out, and seeing it as an experiment rather than as a solution. Because sometimes we try things out and they don't work, or they don't meet the need, or they work partially, but there's something else that needs... So we need to keep talking about those things. When plans are made as fixed things with end goals and we go, "But the end goal didn't happen," we go, "Well, the intervention failed." Not necessarily. Be curious about it.

Leisa Reichelt 32:41

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 32:43

yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 32:44

My son's doing distance education at the moment, but when he was last at school earlier in the year, something that worked really well I think for me, was for me to basically state my hypothesis. It's like my hypothesis as to why he's struggling to attend is, and in his case it was that sense of being able to be taken seriously if he needed to leave. So he didn't wanna feel trapped. And so I could talk to the school and go, I would like us to do this, this, this, and this, and it's based on this hypothesis. Let's let it run for a while and see if I'm right. 'Cause I'm, you know, I might not be. We're all here to learn. If you have a different hypothesis that you would like to run, like, let's talk about it. But, we all share the goal, including my son, of wanting to be at school more often. Here's my guess as to what the problem might be and how we might solve it." and kinda articulating it that way seemed to be hard to argue with, I think. Well, at least what it did was it kind of put the discussion on the hypothesis and the possible interventions and how they related to each other,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 33:55

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 33:56

rather than the measure.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 33:57

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 33:57

Which I think so many of the school plans are just about the measure and not about, where is the problem coming from and how might things that we could do help get the outcome that we want.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 34:08

Yeah. And, that's the more important discussion to have is what's gonna happen and how is it gonna be helpful or not helpful, in order to get here. You know? it's like saying, "Well, we're gonna travel to such and such," but not having a ticket on a plane or not having a you know, doing that research beforehand that you do before you take a really expensive trip overseas somewhere and show up and go, "Well, now what?"

Leisa Reichelt 34:33

Yeah. Yeah

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 34:35

to have a good time. So,

Leisa Reichelt 34:37

I mean, that said, my son's now doing distance education, so you can see that my hypothesis didn't actually end up working. Or not in time anyway, which I, I don't think, I don't think means it was wrong, but, you know,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 34:50

Oh

Leisa Reichelt 34:50

Complicating factors are complicating

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 34:52

Accepting that sometimes we'll try things and it won't be the right thing at that time. Doesn't mean that it might not be the right thing in the future though.

Leisa Reichelt 35:01

Yeah. The other thing that did for me by making that hypothesis meant that both the school and I had a responsibility to help create the environment in which we might be able to be successful. So I had my job to do, but then they also had their jobs to do when he said he needed to go home. They needed to react in a particular way, which was not the way that they were used to reacting. And so, you know, that a- a- almost kind of created a little bit of like shared responsibility in a way that hadn't really been the case in any previous attendance plan that I had been involved with. So I felt that took the pressure off me a bit because it turns out they found it really hard to do their side of the bargain all the time as well, and I could call them out on that and go, "Hey, hang on. I thought we agreed we were gonna do this." Which, you know, again, like I, I had never had that opportunity really previously, but my attendance plans before were pretty much the school saying how many days they wanted him to be there and for how long.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 36:10

Yeah. that's often what our community's telling us. That's what an attendance plan looks like. The goal is attendance. I think it would be great if we considered that instead of calling them attendance improvement plans, we considered calling them student wellbeing plans. Because we know when students' nervous systems and, their learning support needs are met, then attendance happens. When they feel connected, when they feel safe, then attendance happens. Attendance is a byproduct of all of those other things, and that's the substance of what a plan should have, is how we're going to tend to those things that make school feel safe and accessible and remove the barriers that the child has been experiencing. And really, they're no different from a student support plan. But they're not a list of things the child's gonna try harder to do.

Leisa Reichelt 37:07

If you're struggling with attendance plans in schools, you are absolutely not alone because you can often feel like the only parent in the school who's got an attendance plan. You're almost certainly not, and you are part of a wide ranging community of people who have had many attendance plans over the years, no doubt. So yeah, so feel very much amongst a community if that's something that you're going through.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 37:31

And remember, it's okay to say, "I disagree with you." I think a lot of us, especially, people who've got trauma backgrounds or experiences of being parented in a way where there was a huge power difference or the use of power as adults, we still find it really challenging to say, "I disagree with I don't think this is the right thing for my child." Having the confidence to do that and not just go, "Okay, somehow we'll make it work." It's okay to say no.

Leisa Reichelt 38:09

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 38:10

yeah

Leisa Reichelt 38:11

Yeah, I think I was just always a massive teacher pleaser, and so learning not, learning not to do that as a parent has been a journey, that's for sure. Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 38:18

Yeah, you just said it so much more succinctly than me, Leisa.

Leisa Reichelt 38:22

All right then, Tiff, any final words of encouragement or, or advice for folk who are on the school attendance plan mouse wheel?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 38:36

I think there are certain red flags that I wanna highlight. You know, if your school is saying, you need to walk away and just leave them here, if they're wanting to use physical restraint, if they're suggesting reward charts and sticker charts and compliance-based things, you're gonna need to speak up about those things. That's not gonna be helpful. That's gonna be harmful, in many cases. Be brave.

Leisa Reichelt 39:06

and, you know, I mean, I just wanna echo what pretty much every single lived experience person who has come and shared their story on the podcast has said, which is trust yourself, prioritize your relationship with your child, prioritize mental health and wellbeing because those are the most important things, and, education, the formal education childhood part will pass.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 39:31

And learning can happen any time, no matter how old you are.

Leisa Reichelt 39:36

100%. Thank you so much.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 39:39

Thanks, Leisa

Leisa Reichelt 39:40

It really is shocking to see how attendance plans can impact our School Can't families in such a huge way, and many thanks to Tiffany from School Can't Australia for helping to shine a light on how widespread that challenge is and what the opportunity is to make things better. And if you're feeling under pressure from a school attendance plan right now, I hope at the very least you feel less alone and amongst friends now. I have put some links to School Can't Australia resources in the show notes. And as we approach the end of financial year here in Australia, a reminder that your tax-deductible donations make a huge difference in helping School Can't Australia do more advocacy and education about the real reasons for School Can't with health and education professionals. If you know someone who might find this podcast helpful, please take a moment to share it with them, and I would be so grateful if you were able to take a moment to subscribe in your podcast app even better, give us a rating or a review. This makes a huge difference in helping us get the podcast in front of more people who need it, and it absolutely makes my day. We love to hear from you, so if you have feedback or suggestions, or perhaps you'd like to suggest a guest or to share your own lived experience story, you can use the fan mail link in the show notes or drop me an email to schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you're feeling distressed, please remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Please don't hesitate to reach out for some extra support. Thank you again for listening. We will talk again soon. Take care