The SEA Scale is a tool which can be used by adults to measure a child’s social and emotional abilities

What is the SEA Scale?

Developed by The Mulberry Bush, the SEA Scale is a brief 25 item tool which gives an insight into the socio-emotional abilities of children aged 5-13. It was developed to assess a child’s social and emotional profile and can be used to track how a child is progressing in this area. It is suitable for use in educational settings, plus any home setting such as foster, adoptive or residential care.

It is used with children who need support with social and peer relationships and with emotional regulation.

Completed at different points in time, it measures changes for an individual child. It is not designed to measure a child’s abilities in relation to other children or in relation to expected developmental stages. Charting the changes helps adults to monitor progress and plan specific activities and interventions.

Using the SEA Scale

The SEA scale is based on an adult’s observations and knowledge of a child’s socio-emotional abilities in different contexts. Some items measure abilities readily observable whereas others rely on the observer’s knowledge of the child.

The adult completing the scale reports the presence and frequency of each ability using a scale from 0-10, where 0 represents ‘Never’ and 10 represents ‘Always’. All items are therefore arranged so that higher frequency relates to higher numbers on the scale. We recommend that adults do not ‘over-think’ each response and draw on their knowledge and experience of being with the child. All items need to be completed. A ‘total’ score is received which can be referred to again in six to twelve months.

Practitioners

Practitioners working with children who need support with their social, emotional and mental health will find the SEA Scale invaluable in assessing the socio-emotional abilities of an individual child aged 5-13. It is a positively worded strengths based approach rather than deficit based.

Using the SEA Scale will:

• improve your understanding of the child’s social and emotional wellbeing
• help you focus on specific areas of work
• enable you to show others the impact of your work with the child
• provide information for service evaluations

The SEA Scale has 25 questions and takes about 5 minutes to complete.
It is focused on areas of a child’s social and emotional development and will help you see a child’s strengths as well as areas of concern. It is written in everyday language so all staff can complete it

Commissioners

The SEA Scale can demonstrate the effectiveness of a placement in helping Looked After Children’s social and emotional development and can help identify a child’s future needs.

The SEA Scale was developed because none of the existing measures adequately considered the social and emotional aspects which affect the emotional well being of many Looked After Children.

It addresses recommendations from the Department of Education (2017) and the National Children’s Bureau (2018) for measures to use with Looked After Children. The specific request was for tools which consider complexity and measure change rather than behaviour. The questions on the SEA Scale cover these areas.

Academics

The 25 items on the SEA Scale were derived from an expert multidisciplinary group of therapeutic childcare practitioners from The Mulberry Bush Organisation. Academics in Developmental Psychology from the University of Sussex gathered validation data and we are currently trialling it with early adopters.

‘We now have some very solid validation data for the scale’

Professor Robin Banerjee, University of Sussex.

Policy Makers

The Chief Inspector of Education (2018) reported:
‘Access to therapeutic intervention and support for children and families can be very poor. Many of the children we see in our inspections have multiple vulnerabilities that are complex and require specialist approaches. Unfortunately, not enough good support is available.’ (p.19)

SEA Scale assessments can inform networks and help decision makers when working with this population of children with multiple vulnerabilities. Observing what progress is possible can help to inform policy makers about the effectiveness of the strategies and policies laid down to support children aged 5-13 with socio-emotional needs.

You can read the full Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of
Education, Children’s Services and Skills 2018/19 here.

Try it Now

To view the SEA Scale and see its capabilities, you will need to create an account, which needs to be made by an appointed administrator within your organisation. The administrator will be responsible for buying and allocating credits on the account, as well as setting up individual assessors. As an assessor you can make assessments using the SEA Scale.

Any information submitted will be used for the purposes of setting up the account and will not be shared with any third party, as per our privacy policy.