Special Needs Jungle reports "Special needs experts offer views for Labour's SEN plicy review". There are no surprises, but there was indeed one something worth a moment's attention which I copy below. First, the event itself - as Andrew Sutton recently wrote on Facebook
"UK: SEN CHEWING OVER THE SAME OLD NOURISHMENT-FREE GRISTLE
The Labour Party is holding yet another weary review of 'special educational needs'. Look at its agenda, if you can bear to: http://www.nasen.org.uk/latestnews/?news=109
Not a hint that the system has no idea of what it is doing, employs 'teachers' with no training in pedagogy, and does not even grasp that this results in the fundamental problem of children's not being taught.
Just to reinforce the point, Andrew then added the Comment:
Why are they doing this anyway. The Government surely is about to publish a White Paper. The old agendas are all trampled flat, nobody has anything to say. Haven't people anything better to do to fill their (highly) paid time?
So it's good to find a nugget of something interesting - and not just because I too am a Churchill Fellow - recipient in 2007 of a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust travel fellowship (and yes, you should check it out). Here it is: an inspirational mother and daughter:
One inspirational mother and daughter team are Nadia Clark and her mother, Katie. Nadia has cerebral palsy and is deaf. She uses a vocal synthesiser to speak, but her indefatigable spirit and intelligence shines through and she soon hopes to go to University. She is the recipient of a Winston Churchill Foundation grant to research alternative methods of communication.
Her mother, Katie, is a woman of great determination and she has worked tirelessly to support her daughter. She spent two years looking for a school that would take Nadia, moving her family across the country to do so. She later formed the parent-carer forum, One Voice Communicating Together and believes the future for SEN & disability services should be about “looking at things differently and more creatively”. She stressed, and I thoroughly agree with this, the need for good emotional support for families in the early years, saying supporting parents’ self-esteem is vital if they are to be able to be strong for their children.
Each will find their own inspiration and interest in their story. As one who has just seen his daughter aged 29 years move out of the family home, I can assure anyone that "good emotional support" is essential for parents (... and grandparents ... and siblings) well beyond "the early years".
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You can find Special Needs Jungle's ever interesting updates on SEN on twitter as @SpcialNdsJungle and also on Facebook, though I haven't checked the link.
BTW I don't know how to link to Andrew's specific Status update on Facebook, but if you go searching for it, it was on Monday this week.