The impact of nurture groups: a systematic review of studies examining effectiveness and a study exploring the perceptions of nurture group practitioners

Abstract

In this thesis, my aim was to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of Nurture Group provision, for autistic pupils specifically, and for children and young people more broadly. Chapter 1 provides an account of my rationale, how this fits with the current context, and my personal reflexivity. Chapter 2 presents a systematic review of the literature examining the effectiveness of Nurture Group provision. A narrative synthesis of 14 studies that met the inclusion criteria was conducted. Findings suggest that Nurture Group provision is, overall, effective at improving children’s social and emotional outcomes, however, improvements were not found consistently across both sections of the Boxall Profile, the primary tool used to measure progress within Nurture Groups. Differential effects were also found in relation to some pupil-level characteristics, namely age; baseline score; and gender. The findings highlighted the need to conduct further research to examine such factors, as well as to explore the possible mechanism for change underlying Nurture Group provision. Quantitative analysis suggested that the perceived impact of Nurture Group provision was significantly less positive when children had returned to their mainstream class compared to when they were in the Nurture Group setting. Qualitative data was analysed using abductive thematic analysis, and three overarching themes were developed: ‘Safe space’; ‘Skill development’; and ‘Person-centred’. From these findings, a number of practical implications were discussed.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Bethan Mary Jones: orcid.org/0000-0002-4458-025X

ORCID for Dennis Golm: orcid.org/0000-0002-2950-7935

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