As many of you begin the prospect of home schooling, I felt a blog at this time may be able to reassure you. I’ve received many private messages through the facebook page about this topic over the last few days. It is without doubt, a worrying time and a time of uncertainty, juggling a number…
This quote from Mark Lever, Chief Executive of the National Autistic Society, had a great impact on me from the moment I read it … ‘Every teacher deserves the right training and every autistic child needs a teacher who understands them’ At the time, my understanding of ‘teacher’ was the…
If we are dedicated to making ‘reasonable adjustments’ in our provision for autistic children, then adjustments must be made in what we are assessing and how we assess. In my previous role, school visits would almost without question involve me asking why children were being assessed with academic targets when, for example, they were not…
If you have read previous blogs, you will know I am a big fan of the Autism Education Trust’s concept – the four key areas of difference. It appears in their Tier 1 and Tier 2 training and, as a result of being a registered AET Trainer, this concept became my main approach to help…
Exclusions can have a devastating affect on not just the child, but the family and staff too. During my teaching and SENCO years, I was lucky to work for a headteacher who avoided exclusions at all costs and we always focused on what else we could do, what help we get, what changes to…
When I was deciding on the name for my company, those I liked had already been taken. autism act was the one that I kept coming back to. Any research on that for a company name brought up only one thread – The Autism Act 2009. You may have already tuned into a play on…
‘FORGIVE YOURSELF FOR NOT KNOWING WHAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE YOU LEARNED IT’ I can really identify with this quote and I am sure many of you can too. The reality is that we can’t go back in time to do things differently but we can raise our knowledge, take what we have learnt from…
The luxury of working as an independent consultant and trainer is that I can set my own diary and be creative with the events I want to promote. I have organised some events with others I have met on my autism work journey and have some great things in the pipeline. At the moment…
January 2020 is nearly over and this means so is the first month running my own business. While many of you may have your minds on Brexit today, as always my mind is on autism! I have had plenty of time along the way to reflect on what I am doing and this has allowed…