Our vision
We work together with children, families, educational settings and organisations. We apply psychological expertise, using consultation, assessment, intervention, training and research at all levels of the system. We do this so that children can be included, reach their potential and have good lives.
Our mission statement
We help our children to have good lives by applying psychology together with the people who care for and work with them.
Our values- what matters to us
Safety and wellbeing
We prioritise the safety of children and their families in their homes, schools and communities. We are committed to ensuring safe workplaces for everybody working in education and care.
As a service we live this value through: Robust safer recruitment practices and active assessment of risk; regular high quality safeguarding training and supervision; vigilance and the confidence to challenge and whistle-blow where needed; regular health and safety training; safe workplace policies; and practice; trauma-informed practice which values the safety and wellbeing of caregivers; critical incident response offer which helps schools and communities to regain a sense of safety following trauma.
Attunement and relationships
We understand the importance of attuned relationships in children’s development and wellbeing. We know that growth and change happen in the context of trusting relationships where people feel seen, heard and held.
As a service we live this value through: Prioritising continuity of relationships with families, schools and partner services, whenever we are able to; trauma-informed practice which tries to meet people where they are, providing the right help at the right time, in the right place; commitment to nurturing the relationships between the adults who care for and work with children; a parenting support offer to sustain parents in their roles; a staff support offer to sustain staff providing key relationships for children and young people; creating time to nurture our attuned relationships with each other, and with colleagues in our partner services across the local area.
Collaboration and co-production
We take seriously the challenge from children, young people and parents with SEND to do ‘nothing about us without us’.
As a service we live this value through: Centering the experiences of children, young people and their families in all the work we do; using our psychological expertise to understand and amplify children’s views, aspirations and strengths; regularly asking children, young people and parents about their experiences of our service, and acting on their feedback; co-production work with Enfield’s parent-carer forum; regular involvement with other stakeholders, including schools, through the SENCO reference group and other forums.
Integrity and professionalism
We uphold the Health and Care Professions Council’s standards of proficiency and standards of conduct, performance and ethics. We are respectful and honest, and treat children, families and schools as we would wish to be treated.
As a service we live this value through: Regularly considering the HCPC standards; ensuring high quality supervision for every team member; taking responsibility for caregiver affect management for ourselves and each other, to sustain us in our work, and through the varying circumstances of our lives; listening to everyone we work with, apologising when we make mistakes, and making changes to improve our service.
Reflection and time to think
We apply psychological theory and evidence-based research to understand and make meaning, in different contexts and at different levels. We create space and time to think, and we invite others to think psychologically with us.
As a service we live this value through: Offering supervision for staff in educational settings and partner services; building reflective spaces into our initiatives for schools (e.g. ETIPSS, ELSA and MELSA); spending time together during learning lunches, team meetings and whole service days; providing high quality supervision for everyone working in our service.
Inclusion and ambition
We want children to access education and grow up being fully included in their local communities. We are ambitious for children. We want them to have good childhoods, and are always working towards preparing them for full and meaningful lives in adulthood.
As a service, we live this value through: Having high expectations for children in relation to progress and outcomes; drawing from high quality evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence about what works for whom; eliciting and working with the aspirations of children, young people and their families; supporting schools and settings to provide and evaluate the impact of their reasonable adjustments, ordinarily available provision and special educational provision; contributing high quality advice for every child’s EHC needs assessment; acting as critical friends to our schools and partner services when we observe barriers to equity and inclusion; a service-wide performance and impact framework which demonstrates and interrogates the difference our involvement makes to the life chances of children.
Equity and cultural responsiveness
We want to ensure fair access to the EPS for children and their families. While we may vary in the ways that we work, we are working with shared goals and outcomes. We want every family, school and setting to have an experience of the EPS that is responsive to their culture and unique needs.
As a service we live this value through: Providing interpreters so that parents and carers can be fully involved in our work with their children; celebrating diversity within Enfield and our service; regularly analysing our data to consider and challenge patterns and biases in who has access to our service; providing reflective spaces for team members to reflect on our own social graces and follow our own learning journeys; coming together as whole team for our anti-racism workshops, to develop our knowledge and skills and turn our intentions into action which we all share ownership of; providing high quality CPD to develop new skills which align with the communities of Enfield, such as dynamic assessment as an alternative to standardised assessment; breaking down traditional barriers to entering the EP profession, and recruiting with diversity in mind.