Connect first
Warm-start questions and out-of-school successes create a low-pressure way in. Sometimes the useful first question is simply “What’s your favourite flavour of crisps?” — relationship before intervention.
Interactive prototype · Primary / SEND · Targeted support
Stay Together
Success starts small. We build from there. Stay Together gives pupils accessible ways to communicate what is affecting their capacity, helps adults create achievable moments of success, and keeps the support around them consistent over time.
MORE THAN A CHECK-IN
Pupil voice + adult responsibility.
The pupil is not being asked to dictate school expectations. Their voice helps adults understand what is happening, what support makes success more achievable and what should remain consistent. Boundaries can stay in place while the route to success becomes more equitable.
Communicate at the pupil’s level
When stress rises, communication can reduce. Pupils can use quick taps, visual choices, grids, typing or optional voice input rather than being required to explain everything verbally.
Create achievable success
Targets begin with what can be successfully managed today: entering the room, staying for a short period, completing one step, asking for help, taking an agreed break or successfully returning.
Understand capacity
The shared plan can notice changing tolerance for activities and the things that affect it — including sleep, hunger, sensory load, uncertainty, task demand and transitions — without treating a difficult day as failure.
What helps me succeed
Pupils and staff can identify helpful adjustments and motivators together. The emphasis is on participation, agency and progress rather than rewarding disclosure or simply removing expectations.
Keep adults consistent
Staff can record what they are noticing, what the school is maintaining, what is being adapted and what should happen next. Staff can also request pastoral or leadership support when an agreed approach is difficult to sustain.
CONSISTENCY AFTER INTERVENTION
Keep the progress when external support steps away.
Stay Together is designed to retain the useful learning from SEND, pastoral, Virtual School or other external involvement: what the pupil says works, early signs, successful strategies, achievable targets and agreed staff responses. The aim is continuity, not another short-lived intervention.
Basic needs + safeguarding
Pupils can quietly indicate that they have not eaten, have not slept well, feel unwell, are worried, do not feel safe or need to speak privately. Basic-needs information can shape support for the day; safeguarding concerns remain subject to the school’s normal safeguarding procedures and human judgement.
Patterns, not labels
Over time the approach can show useful patterns: when successful engagement lasts longer, which support is consistently helpful, whether planned check-ins are happening and where a review may be needed. It is not intended to diagnose pupils or score staff.
Shared with pupils, staff and families
The pupil’s experience stays visible alongside staff observations. A future school version could also allow carefully limited family input, helping explain changes that may affect the day without opening confidential staff records.
Built for equity
The same expectation does not always require the same route. Stay Together helps schools preserve appropriate boundaries while giving pupils who have experienced repeated difficulty a realistic opportunity to succeed, recognise that success and build from it.