Over the summer, parents, carers, and families on the Isle of Wight have been busy with a project, ‘SEND Support! – Resource Gift Packs for all IW Schools’, aimed at helping nurture a more inclusive, collaborative, and supportive approach for disabled and neurodivergent children in local schools.
Families belonging to local lived experience-led group, Isle of Wight SEN Support, wanted to help make education more inclusive, and through fundraising efforts have been able to create a resource gift pack for 54 Island schools, colleges, academies, and other learning institutions, which gives advice on how to better support neurodivergent children in the classroom.
Invitation to all staff
The resource pack, delivered to all learning institutions on the Island on 7th November 2023, contains an invitation for all school staff to an online training session with Yvonne Newbold MBE, who is the founder of national parent-led organisation, Newbold Hope.
The organisation provides strategies and resources for families to help better support their neurodivergent children. Yvonne is currently working with organisations such as NHS England on policy and strategies to help reduce anxiety-led difficulties and dangerous behaviours across all sectors.
Well-researched information packs
Alongside this training session, the pack will also include three books and a bespoke booklet created by families to help professionals better support and understand their children.
All information and resources included in the pack have been well-researched and most importantly, come almost exclusively from lived experience. A letter explaining the aims of the project will also be sent out to schools, alongside a digital copy of all resources and some extra treats for our teachers, as a small token of the family’s appreciation for their work.
Brannon: Some parents ‘have no real option’ but to home school
Colleen Brannon, co-ordinator of the project, explained parents of neurodivergent children have a ‘steep learning curve to understand and support our children’ and that schools simply do not always have the time or resources needed to help these children.
The Isle of Wight currently has the highest proportion of home-schooled children in the UK, because, Colleen says, some parents ‘have no real option’ when schools struggle to create the right environment to nurture and support all children.
Ambition for a more ‘inclusive and supportive environment’
Colleen wants this project to help to create a more ‘inclusive and supportive environment for neurodivergent and disabled children’ and feels it could make a real difference, saying that it would be ‘completely worth it’ if the project managed to help just one family.
She extended thanks to people who funded, shared, and advised on the project, without whom she said it would not have been possible, as well as for the fantastic responses she has already received from some local schools.
The story of Oliver McGowan
Colleen also mentioned the story of Oliver McGowan, a young man with neurodivergence who was ‘not understood’, and due to this since his death in 2016 his mother, Paula McGowan OBE, has successfully campaigned to make the ‘Oliver McGowan Training on Neurodiversity’ mandatory within the NHS.
Sign the petition
Paula is now campaigning to make this training mandatory in all schools, and November is 33k signatures short of having her petition brought before Parliament (sign here).
Colleen stressed that time is running out for these signatures.
You can read Oliver’s story, sign the petition, as well as visit Isle of Wight SEN Support Facebook group and Newbold Hope by following the link in the article.
News shared by Colleen, in her own words. Ed
