Episode 2: Christine Sketchley, Educational Psychologist

INTRO: Welcome to the Trailblazers Podcast series by Periplum, sharing the experiences of trailblazers living and working in the Tees Valley: the innovators, activists, workers and adventurers as told in their own words. Episode 2 Christine Sketchley, Educational Psychologist. Claire [Interviewer] This is Claire and I'm in the town of Norton in Stockton-on-Tees with Christine. So where were you born? Christine [Interviewee] So I was born in Manchester. I grew up in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester. Lived there throughout my childhood until I moved away to go to university at the age of 18. Claire [Interviewer] So what brought you to Norton? Christine [Interviewee] So, I mean, I still absolutely, firmly consider my home as Manchester, but I haven't lived there since I was 18, and I travelled around doing my studying, doing various, you know, training and jobs until I trained as an educational psychologist in the early [19]90s and then moved up to the North-East with my first job as an EP [Educational Psychologist]. I lived in Durham for a number of years, and then got married and moved to Norton 20 odd years ago, and I've lived here ever since. Claire [Interviewer] So going back to school days, what was it like growing up in Manchester? Christine [Interviewee] So my memories of Manchester, I've got very fond memories of my childhood, living in an area of Chorlton where it was a very firm community. My parents were very invested in education. We lived in and around fairly deprived communities but we weren't deprived. We worked hard, and we got on and we had a good life. But I do remember being surrounded by quite a lot of kind of hardship, I guess. It didn't feel like hardship - there was a real community. We all just mixed in. But in retrospect, I think probably there was a bit of hardship around. It was great. We, we made friends; we played out together. We explored together. We did lots of great things. I've got great memories of being a child, wandering about and learning about life and getting on with friends. But I think I always felt like I perhaps was looking for something a bit different. I wasn't going to settle for being around there. I certainly wasn't going to stay put and live in that area forever. I wanted to travel. I wanted to explore. I knew there was different opportunities out there, and I really wanted to do that and I, I just knew I would: a quest for difference really at that point. Maybe a few quirky interests - just always wanting more, really always wanting difference and exciting, interesting things to go on in my life. Claire [Interviewer] What were you like at school? Christine[Interviewee] I think at school I had a very good memory and I was a quick learner, so I did well at school, but I never learned how to try. So the things that I learned came to me easily. I didn't bother with the things that I couldn't do very well. It didn't interest me, really. So the things that I did and the things that I did well came easily and I was great at. So I can't say I worked hard, and as the work got harder, I guess I didn't do as well as I might have done. Kind of scraped by to get to University, scraped by, and then at University, well it was Polytechnic actually, it wasn't University in those days, it was Polytechnic I went to... But I had a great degree in Wolverhampton [Polytechnic], learning all sorts about Social Science and Psychology. I was always going to be an educational psychologist. That was a bit of a quirk, 'cause in those days nobody'd ever heard of educational psychology. And I remember going to see my careers teacher for a careers interview at the age of 15 - and I found the piece of paper not that long ago - and I went in and I said, "I want to be an educational psychologist". I remember them looking at me and thinking, well, "what's one of them"? It wasn't a thing in those days. Psychology wasn't really a current thing, but I knew that's what I wanted to do, I was always going to teach, but I knew I wasn't going to stick at teaching. I knew I was going to do something more. It was always a quest for something different and something more. So, yeah, so at school I was quirky in a way that…oh, was I quirky? I would just get on with it, but with a bit of a challenge I suppose- a challenge to this is how we've always done things, I'm not going to do it that way type of thing. But good. You know, it wasn't anything extreme. Claire [Interviewer] How did you first find out about educational psychology? Christine [Interviewee] So the influence was The Doors, Jim Morrison. So me and my friend were into The Doors, and I'd read a little bit about Jim Morrison. We were interested in Jim Morrison, and he would talk about the psychology of, kind of, you know, motivating crowds and linking in with, you know, the powers of the mind. And that just captivated me. And because, again, it was different, that was just the way I was going to go. So if I'm honest, educational psychology came from that, from Jim Morrison and The Doors. Claire [Interviewer] And your degree in Wolverhampton. Was that in educational psychology? Christine [Interviewee] No. So the first degree was Social Science, and I had to have enough Psychology across the Social Sciences to eventually achieve graduate status. So again, I just kind of got what I needed to get - majored in Psychology, but did Sociology, Economics, Politics, that kind of thing. But I wasn’t much good at that kind of stuff. I wasn't even that good at Psychology, if I'm honest, and I loved some of it, but I wasn't that invested really. I always knew I was going to do something else. That was what it was. I was always looking for the next step up, finding a way of making sure I could get there. Sticking with what's real. That's, I think, been a bit of a story attached to me. Claire [Interviewer] What was your first job? Christine [Interviewee] So apart from delivering leaflets with my friend, whose mum sorted out the leaflets and then they got a pub, ended up, you know, working a bit in the pub but, but my first actual employment was as a teacher, an early years teacher in Garforth in Leeds, part of a beautiful community. And I taught children. And you know, when I say the word taught, I think taught with a small 't', not a capital 'T', because we just had a lovely time. I taught young children, and we played well together and we had a lovely time. I would take pride in their emotional literacy, making sure they could get along with each other, knowing, you know, that social kind of connections were absolutely important to them. So that was really what we invested an awful lot in. That was just prior to National Curriculum, so I could get away with it in those days, certainly couldn't get away with it now. But knew what was real really. During my first teaching job - and that was always en route to being an educational psychologist, because you had to go that route in those days - you had to have psychology degree, you had to be a teacher, you had to work as a teacher before you could apply for the educational psychology course. So that's what I was doing. That was kind of the route I was on. That was always my goal. But then, during that period of being a teacher, I had a very significant life-shaping experience, which very much added a, a real shape and direction to my ,I believe. So in 1990, there was an event, which you might recall, in which Iraq invaded Kuwait, and that was prior to the Gulf War. The Gulf War happened after that. But, at the point of the invasion, there was an airplane that flew into Kuwait. A British Airways flight flew into Kuwait, and the passengers were held as human shields. I don't know if you can remember that, but that's what happened, and I was a passenger on that plane. So I was taken as part of that human shield experience, and I was part of the group that was held there for kind of four, five weeks. And that was a hugely life-shaping event. It taught me so much about me, life, everything, people. And… I now hold on to that really significantly today. And it was only fairly recently that started to surface again. Now, there’s more kind of content coming out about that…, um, and…what people were noticing more recently is the fact that I now work in trauma, and I had never thought of it in that way before. [emotional] So…that's had a very significant but absolutely positive effect on my life - not, I don't consider in any way a negative impact. I see it as an incredibly powerful, positive experience in my life. It has shaped me, and shaped my work and…added real determination to not do things that are not right or not the way forward that we need to move, but to challenge those methods and think differently about how we can do things better. So I think the experience in Kuwait and Iraq really helped me realise what was valuable, what matters, [emotional] and…the importance of human connection in a very, very good way. So that made a huge impact and has been a very valuable, a very valuable part of my history that has driven me and drives me and directs me and guides me and helps me, all the time, really, all the time. Claire [Interviewer] Thank you for sharing that. Do you want to tell us about your practice, when you're ready? Christine [Interviewee] When I'm ready. Sorry, I thought I might cry, I didn't think I'd get that emotional, but that’s fine. So the work that I do, kind of, in many ways it relates to all of that of course doesn’t it, it relates to all of my heritage and, you know, the values and the principles and the experiences I’ve had have shaped my thinking about how we need to approach situations within which children are struggling to attend, engage, be successful at school. And I think over these past decades I've developed a real confidence in knowledge about how to approach that. And very, very clearly recognised that the way we are attempting to address the extremely damaged system that we have to support children in schools is just not working, and there must be [exhales] a better way of doing it, because we're getting much of it very, very wrong. And what drives me to distraction is the fact that nobody seems to realise there's another way of doing this. And actually, why are we investing our energies or intentions, our devotion to duty, to things that just don't work? Why would we do that? So a more traditional approach for educational psychology is to inquire after the child as to what's going on for them. Try and find out what's going on. "What do you feel about that? What do you think about that? What could you do to make a difference in your life? What do we need to help you with?" And then [exhales] to talk to adults around the child, and then to put together a report that will describe what they’ve found and describe methods of intervention. So I have some very, kind of, clear views on all of that. So one element of it is that the child is presenting in the way that they're presenting as a result of their context and circumstances. They haven't got parental control over changing that. It's the adults with responsibility to do that. And we can ask the child again and again what they're going to do, but it's not their job [exhales] to change their context. It's the adult job to understand and adjust around them. There will be some requirement for the child to participate, of course, we have to shape and guide children, of course we do. And listen to what they want. But it's not their job to lead us through that. So working directly with the child who has the least power to change and influence, for me, does not work at all. And the other side of the more traditional approach is that actually within the systems we've got, nobody has got the time or capacity to read lengthy reports and interpret and implement the changes that are implied within it. Nobody has. Our systems are absolutely consumed by bureaucracy and paperwork. And if you going to influence change, that's not the way to do it. So instead of going that route, what I learnt to do was to connect with the parents that are absolutely desperate for some support, understanding and change on behalf of their child. The parents and carers who are so worried about their children, and don't know what to do for the best, and are faced with a system that is so complicated and so difficult to navigate that even with the knowledge of a professional within a system, it is very, very tricky to find the way through. So what I have learnt to do is to find ways, better ways to connect initially with those parents - parents, carers, it's not always birth parents, main care-giver, might be grandparents or a family member, or even a foster carer or an adoptive parent - whoever it is that is their main care-giver is our expert in the room on that child. And what we find when we seek to connect with a number of care-givers is that they themselves are so badly bruised by the systems they've experienced that they are terrified of what's going to happen when somebody talks to them about being a parent. And they expect to be criticised and blamed [emotional] and they expect that they're going to be told they need to do something different or better, and shape up and step up, and attend a training course, or do something more. When actually what they're doing is just struggling with a variety of complicated factors about raising a family and keeping themselves safe, aside from any trauma that they've been through. And what is very, very evident to me today across schools is that the majority of our resources are necessary to address the adult mental health needs that surround these children, because A.None of us can be happier than our saddest child. We can't be. And B.If we can't reach the adults to influence a sense of connection and belonging and teamwork, we're never gonna implement change for children, ever. We’re spitting in the wind if we think we can do it without the parent with us. So over the years now, my attunement to that connection with main care-giver has become absolutely central to the work that I do. And my belief is, my understanding is that the more we can train professional people to understand that the whole point of this relates to that connection - the connection with parents in order to partner them genuinely in their delivery of care to their children, at their neediest point, is the point of all of this. I cannot do that by writing it down. [exhales] It doesn't work. So finding ways to communicate through dialogue to achieve that is the way that I work. So we invite, very carefully, parents into the room via the schools, who hopefully work very hard to develop that partnership of trust to enable willingness to at least be present. And then I start my work by linking in, connecting with that parent. And the work that I do to achieve that is informed by some approaches in psychology that are less well used but very well informed. So I'm just going to speak for a minute before I get back to that, if I may, about an organisation that's heavily influenced me across the years. So there is an organisation and a colleague of mine that I've known for a very long time who has helped me a lot in understanding this work. And the work is informed by understanding that humans are merely complicated animals, and that in order to help us understand responses of vulnerable, frightened beings, the place that we need to look is to the animal world to see how behaviours are influenced by their vulnerability, and attuning to horses, which themselves are prey animals, not predators, actually, by watching and learning behaviours of horses and interpreting human behaviour in that same vein, it helps us understand how we can better connect to the humans that we work with. So the work that I do is influenced by horse psychology, and my hope and intention of achievement in my working life is to gain a sense of connection with parents who are typically misunderstood, misinterpreted, regarded as confrontational, difficult, the problem. Actually to attune and hear their story, understand their perspective on their child, ask them to help us to understand what their child's been through - that's where the magic lies. And when we get that, we can move forward. So in terms of my work, that's the first step achieving a sense of connection with parents and carers, using some different approaches in psychology to assist that connection and achieve trust - that actually we're working together. "I can help you, but I need you to help me. I can't do it without you." It’s absolutely central. And the other bit - there are two bits - the other bit is that what we have to do is work to lead, connect, develop, attune the services that are available to families. Because each of those services needs to be utilised in an effective way, and the communication between them needs to be shared. So there are two aspects to my work: connection with parents, and leading multi-agency shared focus work and when we get that we achieve change in a positive direction for our most vulnerable children and young people who are otherwise out there. The obstacles come from systems resisting change. Organisations struggle with new ways of working, struggle to believe that working in a different, in a new way will actually achieve what we needed it to achieve. Especially when we use what may appear, on the surface, some quite quirky mechanisms. If you think about a traditional EP [educational psychologist] who will work directly with children, and write reports, and my take on this is that: I don't see children, I don't write reports, and my main practice relates to adult mental health. That takes quite a shift in thinking for educational psychologists, typically. So I face obstacles of mistrust from colleagues, a lot. I experience challenge from people who would rather I did things the way we've always done them. I face obstacles in the fact that because everything is so very, very obvious and clear in my brain, I expect everybody else to be able to see it the way that I do, and I become quite frustrated when they don't. So that becomes an obstacle. I face obstacles because a lot of my work and absolutely core, and central to my work is a huge amount of challenge that I bring. And our systems are set up on complete support for people, but the answer is to support more. And, actually we kill people with kindness. What people desperately need in life is a challenge, and providing people who are never given a challenge because they are assumed to need more support actually achieves the best outcomes. So I do hit obstacles, in terms of people raising concerns about the level of challenge that I bring to services. I… I'm not sure that I hit any other obstacles, actually - most of the time we get through. Claire [Interviewer] How do you overcome them? Christine [Interviewee] By standing firm. By knowing what I'm talking about. By being very, very confident. By sticking to the principles of practice. By standing up for people. At the core of my work, there are two things I need to be. I need to be brave, and I need to be kind. And that's at the core. So that's how we overcome the obstacles - by remaining brave and remaining kind. Claire [Interviewer] I was going to ask you about your proudest moment within that. Obviously, you can't talk about cases... Christine [Interviewee] Yeh Claire [Interviewer] ...but has there been a moment where you realise that this new form is really working? Christine [Interviewee] The moments that count - and there are many moments that count actually in that arena - the moments that count most are the parent feedback, when parents who are experiencing the most extreme challenges in their lives find their way back to me to say: "Please, can you help? Because I don't know where else to go?"[emotional] Those are proud moments. Claire [Interviewer] Who has supported you in your career? Christine [Interviewee] So there’ve been lots and lots of people that have supported me. Friends, colleagues supported me by helping me to understand, challenge my thinking, guided my thinking, not always let me get my own way, because that's a danger. I think that is a danger that because I have a huge amount of courage of my own convictions, that maybe people don't challenge me enough anymore and that can be a danger. So the people who have helped me have themselves been able to shape me through their own challenges, but have also shown me different ways, and taught me ways of being. So there are many people, but I like to think that actually our best lessons come for those who get it wrong with us - where things go badly wrong - because even though that can be a painful experience, those are our best learning outcomes. So, I think most people have supported me by shaping my knowledge Claire [Interviewer] Who have been your trailblazers? Christine [Interviewee] Oo…that's an interesting story. Who are my trailblazers? So, I think it's the people who do things very differently, who refuse to accept that what's happening is the right way when it clearly doesn't work. So people who stand for difference, who've got creative energy to come at things in different ways. So Jim Morrison, Che Guevara, James Dean, it's all of them. Barack Obama, Monty Roberts is the big horse guy that I was introduced to, who has challenged the whole way of training horses worldwide. Yeah. People who have done really astounding things when everybody has doubted that's the way to do it. Claire [Interviewer] What are you looking forward to in the future? Christine [Interviewee] We're starting to get a bit of traction now where people are interested in what I'm doing. We’re getting a bit of shape to it, we’re getting a bit of affirmation, a bit of confirmation that there's something in this. I'm looking forward to when the system's going to catch up with us and realise this is the way to do it, and I feel that we're already ahead of the curve 'cause I get this. I know how to do it, and I feel in a position to lead that way. If I can. [exhales] And if I'm offered that opportunity. So it feels as though we're on the brink of something now that could be really exciting and really, yeah, really trailblazing and could shine, you know, shine a light on a very dark place, really. I have absolute conviction this is the way out of the quagmire that we're in at the minute. I absolutely know that, I've done this job for 30 odd years, and I'm waiting for everyone [laughs] to listen. So that's what I'm looking forward to, erm… when we have that platform. I'm looking forward to being on a stage in Rio de Janeiro, delivering a keynote address. That's what I'm looking forward to. I want to be able to talk about this stuff, and for people to be sitting there listening with an appetite, not of mistrust, but actually engagement in learning how to do this. And we’re starting to get there. Claire [Interviewer] Is the work mostly in Tees Valley at the moment? Christine [Interviewee] So more recently it started to stretch a little bit further. I've been doing some work up in Newcastle for a little while. I work quite a lot now across North Yorkshire as well, so we're starting to stretch the regional influence a little bit. What I haven't got is a mechanism with which to train other people to do this work, and if we’re gonna get more stretch and reach, I've got to come up with some ways of teaching others to do the work. And that's tricky, because in teaching somebody else, you've got to realise what it is you're doing. Whereas I do it very naturally and responsively, so it's not necessarily an easy thing to put into a training schedule. But I'm learning a little bit about how that might work now through various different experiences that I've had in, in guiding others and talking with others. So I'm looking forward to this thing growing. I'm looking forward to extending its reach. I'm looking forward to seeing how far we can get with it. Erm…It's great fun, it's great fun. And I absolutely love my job. I love it, and I get so much positive energy from it. I get so much job satisfaction from it. What better way to earn a living [laughs] than to do something that you absolutely love and are able to do? It's brilliant. So doing more. Doing more. Claire [Interviewer] What advice would you give to your younger self? Christine [Interviewee] Umm… oh dear me… I think to be braver quicker really. I think [emotional] there were times when I wasn't this brave. So being brave is really good fun - [laughs] gives you a lot. Maybe to not feel things too deeply so much, but that maybe that's part of it. It's a dangerous game when you stop feeling things - it's important to feel things deeply. But that can hurt, can’t it? So in terms of my younger self, yeah, to stay determined really, not to waste a moment doing stuff that doesn’t matter. Claire [Interviewer] We're coming to the end of this interview. Thank you for being brave and kind and for being a trailblazer. I just wanted to ask if there's anything else you'd like to add? Christine [Interviewee] Thank you so much for inviting me into this space. I think it's so valuable to achieve these opportunities to bring stories to life. So thank you for inviting me into it. It's very special. OUTRO: Thank you for listening to Periplum’s Trailblazers Podcasts funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. To listen to more of the series, and follow our projects visit our website at periplumheritage.com