What a good monthly report looks like: the document that turns a placement into a plan

The three to five targets agreed at the last review, each with a plain statement of where the child is now. Not 'doing well'. 'Put on the school shoes without help on four mornings out of five, up from one.' 'Stayed at the table for the full homework block on most days; the exceptions were the two days after the family travelled.' A target that cannot be described this plainly is not a target; it is a wish, and the report is where that becomes visible.

Which strategies worked and were kept. Which were dropped and why. What the professional wants to try next month, and what they need from the family to do it. And the honest paragraph about the thing that is not moving. A report that has no such paragraph is not being straight, and families learn quickly to trust the reports that include one.

What the class teacher and the coordinator said this month, in their words where possible. What happened at the IEP review if there was one. What the speech-language pathologist or occupational therapist changed in the plan and how the home carried it. Any accommodation the school granted, refused or forgot. The report is the one place these three worlds are written down together, which is why the school and the clinicians are usually glad to receive it.

Every incident record from the month, summarised: what happened, what preceded it, what was done. Sleep, appetite, illness, any medicine given as agreed. Patterns across the month that a single day would not show: the bad Mondays, the better weeks when the house was quieter, the afternoons after a particular class. And a note on the household: who is new, who has left, what the briefing needs.

Hours actually worked against hours agreed. Leave taken. The commute, if it has become a problem. Anything the professional needs from the family or from us. A professional who is exhausted by the fourth month is the most common reason a placement ends in the sixth, and the report is where it shows first. Families sometimes find this section odd. It is there because a placement that is not sustainable for the professional is not sustainable for the child.

The family, always, with a short call to go through it. The school's coordinator and the clinicians where the family consents, and most families do, because it is the document that makes the team a team. Two pages, sent on the same date every month; longer reports are not read. Special Minds writes it with the professional, and the family can ask for the daily record behind it at any time. In the first three months a weekly conversation sits alongside; after that the monthly rhythm usually holds.