Staff at one of our West Midlands children’s homes have created a brand new social pedagogy tree to reflect the practice and culture within their home.

As part of his appraisal, one of the Children’s Residential Workers was tasked with using his creativity to evidence social pedagogy in the home. This is St Christopher’s approach to working with children and young people centred around “education in its broadest sense”. It is a holistic approach that takes into consideration emotional, physical and mental wellbeing, and uses strength-based models to bring out the best in children and young people.

The team decided to demonstrate social pedagogy with a tree, putting staff and young people’s handprints at the bottom to symbolise the roots. The home feel this symbolises that amazing things are created from strong foundations.

The top of the tree is filled with words that all staff and young people associate with each other – and what better way to display these phrases as “diamond leaves” to represent the diamonds everyone has inside!

The home’s manager said: “It has been over whelming to see the kind and thoughtful words that we all think about each other in the home. If at any point the young people are feeling down, they can look at their diamonds and see the positive words that have been said about them.

“Well done for adding this amazing feature to our home and also a big thank you to everyone for participating and sharing how you all feel about your colleagues and young people. You make me feel proud and privileged to be part of an amazing team. Teamwork makes the dream work!”