Everything changes at Christmas, and that can send some of our young people into a complete tailspin.

Find out why Christmas isn’t always fun for everyone and how to support children with SEND through Christmas.

Here are tangible ideas and some useful tools that you can use to make the season as joyful as we can for everyone.

There is nothing worse than the loss of someone who is important to you whether you loved them or not. and many of our children will have experienced that pain, whether in their own families, or in their wider social circles. What can we do, as the adults who support them to make sure that we are helping them as they grieve without adding to their pain?

How you prepare and position a conversation with parents affects how they see their child, their future and their prospects for life. You can make all the difference in the world by approaching this difficult conversation in the right way and supporting parents through one of the most stressful times in their lives. 

In this 2^nd birthday episode we celebrate creating podcast number 87! We reflect on  favourite episodes, significant events and changes in SEN from our perspective. 

With over 73k downloads, 87 episodes, 3 awards and 100+ hours of content, we are going from strength to strength.

As a society, we need to create young people who are able to make choices and do so responsibly as they grow toward adulthood. 

Our children need the skills to help them manage themselves and advocate for their own needs when their teachers and parents are not there to provide support.  

The recovery curriculum has been discussed quite a lot over the last few months. It is designed to help children return to school and cope with the disruption and the consequences due to the lockdown

In a post-COVID world, many children in our schools will have experienced a number of losses and the schools they are returning to are not the same as the places they left.  They have lost routine, structure, friendship, opportunity and freedom.  Listening to them and their parents can help their academic as well as emotional recovery

Children will have different reactions to the events of lockdown and their learning experience at home or in school as children of key workers or with EHCPs.

Trauma impacts the developing brain of children’s, healing won’t ‘just happen’ and we need to act now to prevent a lost generation of children.

Acting early will reduce the impact on the child, provide a space for healing and reduce the impact on behaviour and academic performance.

 Pupils with autism often struggle with attending school for a number of reasons. Sarah-Jane's daughter Beth has autism and migraines which meant from Year 3 onwards she missed a lot of school and missed over 50% of her GCSE classes, eventually dropping out of school in year 12.

Schools are struggling with an increase in mental health issues in pupils, with escalating numbers of young people unable to attend school as a result. As many as 1:10 pupils were recorded as absent from school in 2016/17. Children not in school, unless they are electively home educated, get offered less education at a lower level with a knock-on effect on their long-term outcomes.

Exclusions continue to increase, nearly 8,000 pupils permanently excluded from school. One of the limited bits of good news is, that is only a small percentage of schools that are excluding pupils, 85% of schools excluded NO pupils at all in 2016-17. Sadly 78% of exclusions were pupils with SEND, Children in need or on Free school meals.

Exclusions have a big lifelong effect on a child. Exclusions can cause a “collision course with failure” (Robert Halpern MP – Chair of the Education Select Committee). Gang members are 5.5 times more likely to have been excluded than the rest of the population. 85% of children in Young Offender Institutions have been excluded.

Sensory issues are common to many people, including those who are not autistic as well as those who are. Most autistic people experience differences in how they experience the world through their senses. They can be sensory-seeking, or sensory avoidant and the degree of sensitivity can vary from one situation to another and from day to day.

The effects of a poor sensory environment build up over time in increased anxiety and stress and can be catastrophic for the individual and highly challenging for those around them.

Anxiety is a big topic normally, but right now with all the changes that have happened over the last few weeks to our every day lives, it is huge.

In this episode we start with the question ‘What is anxiety?’, this isn’t a simple question as everyone feels anxious, it is how much it impacts on your life. Sarah-Jane provides us with a great way to rate your anxiety and ways to help manage or reduce your anxiety.

This is part 2 of our third Corona BONUS episode looking at Anxiety within the context of the current Corona pandemic, Dale Pickles, Managing Director of B Squared is joined by his guest Sarah-Jane Critchley.

Anxiety is a big topic normally, but right now with all the changes that have happened over the last few weeks to our every day lives, it is huge. If you haven’t listened to Part 1, please go and listen to part 1 before you listen to part 2. Part 2 continues where Part 1 left off and will make more sense when listened together.

We talk about how, due to the different types of play, boys and girls engage in at a younger age, the traits were often hidden for girls due to how they played. Girls are often better at masking symptoms. There is no typical profile, they can all be very different, we discuss all the different things you can look for.

There are lots of girls and women now being diagnosed with autism. What can be done and where do you get support? The earlier the diagnosis/recognition, the better. A leading cause of death in late-diagnosed autistic adults is suicide, with women being more at risk. More needs to be done to prevent this, and it needs to start as early as possible.