Back to school time!

Neurodivergent families and education

Get comfortable, grab your favourite sensory tool and settle in to this week’s blog post.

It’s back to school time in Qld, which can bring a lot of big feelings for neurodivergent families. Families (and teachers) are excited, nervous and possibly overwhelmed by the idea of a year’s worth of school.

Let’s be honest, 2022 was a really hard time with education. The world started to go back to normal after two years of a pandemic, but things weren’t… quite.. right. The school year was delayed, classes were led by substitutes due to vaccination mandates, teachers and students were there one day and then gone the next due to isolation leave, it goes on and on. All the changes were hard for everyone, but for neurodivergent families, the environmental challenges seemed to make life harder. 2022 was exhausting and it’s normal to feel nervous about what 2023 will bring.

What the research says

In the last three months I stumbled across research about autistic children and young people’s participation in and experiences of school. One finding that really stuck out for me, was neurodivergent parents wanting their children and young people to have a seat at the table when it came to: designing their individual support plans, as well as informing policy and planning.

With that knowledge, my brain started ticking – how could I support neurodivergent kids having agency? I know this is already happening in some schools, but was there anything I could do to make it easier? Thinking there was, I developed a resource to capture children and young people’s voices in the development of their individual support plans (these have different names in different states). The purpose of the resource is to capture their thoughts on what they want to achieve, what is helpful and how they would like to be supported. It is designed to be completed with a safe adult – either a caregiver, teacher or therapist. It can be used for a child/young person to complete before hand to remind them what to say in the meeting; or if they aren’t comfortable in attending the meeting, they can give it to their caregiver for the meeting.

A free resource??!

This resource is available for free in February’s newsletter!  If you’d like a copy of the resource, add your e-mail below, or via the pop up.

Your friend in neurodivergence,

Kristy