Audit the School Through the Family’s Experience
Family Coherence Check
Companion to The Child Should Never Experience the Organizational Chart · Updated 2026-09-30
Use this to learn how coherent the school’s work looks to a family. Worked as Tool 4 in “Seven Prototype Tools Put the Ideas to Work in Real Meetings”, in “Make the Seams Disappear for the Child”, and grounded in “Schools Should Not Depend on Families to Connect the Specialists.”
The purpose is to audit the organization through the family’s experience, never to grade the family. Ask the questions in accessible language, in the language the family uses, and write the answers in the family’s own words. Record the answers under your school’s privacy rules and do not put a child’s or family’s name on a copy that leaves the team.
| Ask the family | Their answer, in their words |
|---|---|
| Do you know what the school is currently trying to help with? | |
| Do the explanations from different school staff make sense together? | |
| Do you know who is coordinating the plan? | |
| Have you had to repeat the same important information to several people? | |
| Is there anything happening at home or outside school that you think changes how we should understand the situation? | |
| Do you know what will happen next and when we will review it? | |
| What part of the school’s process is hardest to deal with? |
What the School Should Do With the Answers
- Bring the answers to the next meeting about the seam they describe, and record them in the Five-Output Meeting Record.
- Count a “no” to the coordination questions as a finding about the school, not about the family.
- Tell the family what changed because of what they said.
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- Download the tables as a spreadsheet (CSV)CSV · 550 B