S2 E1: Advocating for your child: Nicole Bateman welcomes you to Season 2

Welcome to Season 2 of "Conversations with a SEND Mum" with your host, Nicole Bateman! In this exciting premiere episode, Nicole kicks off the new season by sharing what's coming up and offering valuable tips on advocating for your child with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Episode Highlights:

• Welcome to Season 2: Nicole warmly welcomes listeners back to the podcast and sets the stage for an empowering new season. She shares her enthusiasm for the upcoming episodes and guest interviews, promising insightful conversations and practical advice for SEND parents.

• 5 Tips for Advocating for Your Child:
  1. Gathering Documentation: Nicole emphasises the importance of collecting and organizing relevant documentation, including assessments, reports, and medical records, to support your child's needs effectively.
  2. Understanding Their Specific Needs: She encourages parents to gain a deep understanding of their child's specific needs, preferences, and challenges, which is key to advocating for appropriate support and accommodations.
  3. Knowing Your Rights and SEND Law: Nicole highlights the significance of familiarising yourself with the rights of children with SEND and the relevant SEND laws and regulations. This knowledge empowers parents to navigate the educational system and access necessary services.
  4. Establishing Communication Channels and Collaboration: Building effective communication channels with teachers, healthcare professionals, and support staff is essential. Nicole discusses the importance of collaboration and teamwork in advocating for your child's best interests but also acknowledges that in reality that is not always the case.
  5. Documenting All Communication: Lastly, she underscores the importance of documenting all communication and interactions related to your child's education and care. Keeping records can help track progress, identify challenges, and ensure accountability.
• Overall, Trust Your Instincts as a Parent: Nicole concludes with a powerful reminder for parents to trust their instincts and advocate passionately for their child's well-being. She shares that you are not alone and invites you to join her over on Instagram.

Follow Nicole on www.instagram.com/conversationswithasendmum for exclusive peeks to weekly episodes. Please do send feedback and rate this podcast to help it reach those who would benefit.

Check out our sponsor The Super Sensory Squad who support kids in understanding the eight sensory systems and emotional regulation using their penguin squad at: www.thesupersensorysquad.com and www.instagram.com/thesupersensorysquad

Transcript

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Hello. Welcome to Conversations with Send Mum Podcast season two. I am your host, Nicole Bateman, and I am A SEND mum. Myself and I chat with other parents of kids with SEND and Neurodivergent, individuals and professionals who care this season. We've got loads of great guests that I'll be chatting with starting with talks about. PDA, Neurosensory Divergence, Grief and Neurodivergence as well as talking to a dad. So there's lots coming up, even more than that. They're just the first few episodes. So you're going to want to be listening in. This podcast is here. Because I want you as the listener to feel less alone. I want to bring to you amazing guests that have been through experiences that you also may have been through yourself and professionals that care, that can give tips and advice that can help us as SEND parents. So. Today, this episode is talking about how to advocate for your child. So, a little bit about my story, and then five top tips to hopefully help in that advocation. Because many of us, I'm sure, part of our story is fighting to get our kids needs met. Now, If you've listened to Summer Season 1, you will know that for the last year we have been going through the EHCP process, trying to get that support for, for my son. And actually, about two weeks ago, the LA decided to overturn the decision and actually issue an EHCP, which is a big. Big win. However, we are not there yet. As I'm recording it, that hopefully soon we will be. Like many of you may be listening, if you have a child with special educational needs disabilities I got a no to assess my son and then a no to issue as well after the no to assess was overturned mediation. And then I had another meeting and it got overturned. So it's, it's been a lot, it's been draining emotionally, mentally, everything like that. We've got there. And overall. Trust those instincts, trust those instincts, you know your child the best, and you know if they need that extra support, so do not give up, because unfortunately, a lot of local authorities are giving more no's to see who will actually then push forward and fight and question and go to mediation or go to tribunal. So we've got to keep going. So hopefully some of these tips will help with that. But first of all, I'm going back to right at the start, potentially right at the start, when you think, okay, actually Maybe my child has specific needs, maybe I need to think about looking for some support. So first of all, whether you're right at the start of that or you're thinking about getting an EHCP for your child, gathering that documentation is key. If you have professional reports and you're going towards thinking that you may be wanting an EHCP or also applying for DLA for your child, then gather documentation from any professional that you can. Has been, interacting with your child. So for example, for us, so my son has epilepsy and he's autistic. So we have multiple different professionals that have given us reports, from the medical side with neurologists, pediatricians, all of those, those kinds of people, as well, as well as OTs and psychs. Speech and language therapy. So we've, we've got quite a lot of evidence there that, at first we gathered that together and I looked at patterns and looked at things that people were suggesting the needs there to, to support. If you haven't got any of that, that's okay. Because just start by thinking about. A day in a life, just writing, like, I suppose, like a journal, writing a day in a life of your child and think about it, especially for some of us and some of the guests I spoke to in season one, we were talking about if it's your first child, then you just, you don't sometimes realize the different accommodations that you make in your daily life and, and how much you do adapt for your child to make sure that they are safe and secure. So maybe chatting to a fellow mum friend, dad friend, whoever, with a child who is neurotypical, maybe, and thinking, okay, what's, are the extra additional things? Because if you're completing DLA forms, Then you need to be proving that your child compared to a child of the same age is needing more support and more adaptation. So think of it through that lens. And sometimes when you're filling, things out like the DLA forms, it is emotionally draining because you've got to think about the worst day, for example, that you may have. And that. We don't necessarily want to be staying in that place and thinking about those worst days. But for some of these things, we have to, and we have to think about how, what we do to support our child, what their needs are. So start by writing a day Day in the life of your child and all of the different things, just write them down and see if you see some patterns emerging as well of what you do to support. So gather any professional things, gather the documentation and write day in the life of your child and think about. If you're going to professionals and you're going to meetings and things like that, I don't know about you, but sometimes I get quite emotional when I'm talking about things. And when I'm in that fight mode as well, I get, I sometimes get overcome with the emotion. So sometimes having things written down, I can then pass them to whoever I'm talking to, so they can read. And especially, so for a while, my son got triggered in appointments with the doctors. When we mentioned seizures, then he would have a seizure. So therefore I'd have to write it down and give it to them and say, please don't mention a bath or a seizure, the words, because that could trigger. him. So writing a few things down for when you go into meetings, when you maybe go and first, you know, chat to GP or chat to school or anything like that. Have it written down in case you just can't speak because when I'm, when I'm crying. And when I continue to speak, when I'm, when I feel like I'm going to cry, I just absolutely burst. So if you're like me, then that's a top tip. So number one, gather documentation. Number two, identify specific needs of your child. So thinking about the needs they have, the strengths they have, the challenges they have. And this can be covered in a few different categories. Thinking about sensory needs. What things do they seek? What things do they avoid? You know, I, I'm the co founder of the Super Sensory Squad, which is eight penguins helping you understand the eight sensory systems and helping your kids understand their needs. So we've got a few freebies over at www. thesupersensorysquad. com. So you can have a little look and think about, okay, what does my child seek? What does my child avoid? So they may be helpful in identifying them. Communication as well. How do they communicate? There's a podcast coming out episode three that talks about gestalt language learning and thinking about how, how your child processes language, how they communicate and things like that as well. Routine, what's their routine like, write it down, think about, are there certain things, transitions, all of those things that they, they may find a bit tricky sometimes, the social, emotional side of things as well. What are their deep interests? What do they absolutely love? What do they focus on? Motor skills, how, how are they developing attention and focus and then patterns of any observed behavior, especially if they are triggered, let's say by something in the environment that they're in, in the room, in school, et cetera. Then how do they respond? When the nervous system is on, on that kind of fight, flight, fawn, freeze, what, how do they respond? What do they actually showcase? So any observed behavior in different settings as well, because we know that sometimes kids don't act in the same way in, different settings, because. they are triggered and in some settings, they do not feel safe. Gather documentation number one to identify specific needs. And number three, research rights and send law. So a lot of the time unfortunately, and I've. Definitely experienced this myself and many of my friends have too, and people that have, sent messages. Unfortunately, some local authorities don't necessarily abide by the law when it comes to EHCPs and things like that. So knowing your rights and understanding them is really, really important because sometimes they count on people not knowing the rights. Like for example, you know, a needs assessment for an EHCPs, it's only two criteria that you need to satisfy and that's, you know, they, they may have. You know, SEND need, and they may need an EHCP. So those wordings of may, that's all you've got to prove. You haven't got to prove that they definitely need it until you get to the issue stage. But at the assessment stage, it's only may. Thinking about that and knowing the wording of some of the law is really helpful. IPSEA website, they're a charity. They're so useful. I'm currently doing a level two, send law at the moment to, to help myself understand it, but also then to help others and offer some different advocacy services and things like that coming in June. Yeah, definitely go and have a look at the Yibzeo website because they've got so many free resources that can really help you with understanding your rights and understanding SEND law. Number four is establishing those communication channels and collaborating, or trying to, because, if everyone's on the same page, Yourself, school, if they go local authority, different professionals, if we're all on the same page, that can really help our child to thrive. Now, in reality, I know that that's not necessarily always the case. But we can try, we can try and go with a solution of actually, we all surely care about this child, want this child to thrive, go with that and, and then see what happens. Think about. When it comes to individual education plans, when it comes to individual healthcare plans, even before, even applying for an EHCP, those things should be in place at a school if your child has additional needs and if it's not, then yeah, send me a message. I can give you some examples. Because my son has, has both with the individual healthcare plan for his epilepsy. I first of all just created it myself as a parent. Now we've got one from an epilepsy nurse, but at the time we didn't, at the start we didn't have an epilepsy nurse to help with that. So yeah, if you need any help then let me know. And there's some great charities like I know for epilepsy, young epilepsy, they have examples. So maybe for different conditions, medical conditions, having a look at some charities that are specific to the condition that your child has can help with individual healthcare plans too. So. Yeah, but establishing that collaborative relationship is really important. But if that doesn't work out and there isn't that collaboration there, then you've just got to trust your instincts and you've got to continue to advocate for your child's needs because they are the most important person in this whole thing, because we want them to thrive and we want them to get the support they need. Aim for. Establishing communication channels and collaboration, but be prepared for some kind of fighting potentially there. Not fight, not physical fighting, obviously, but standing up for your child. And number five document all this communication, the decisions, the copies of emails, put them in folders in your email, save them on your computer, on your cloud, write down, after you've had a conversation, write down what was said all of these things can be used as evidence. And sometimes we have to have extra evidence, the amount of times that it's like, Oh, can we have some more evidence for this? And it's, just trying to say like, okay, this is what's happened. This is the communication trail. This is what you said. This is what I said, and let's move forward with this. So keeping any evidence, any documentation is really, really important. Especially if people disagree with your, your viewpoints and your decisions. So. That's, that's some five tips, gather documentation or create some yourself. Identify your child's specific needs, linking with all those different areas that I talked about, research your rights and send law. IPSEA your website. Great for that. Establishing communication channels and aiming for collaboration is key. And then document all of that communication that you have with all of the different professionals and governing bodies and things like that. If you need additional support, they're in our area, there's Sendai ASS for BCP, and I'm sure that Sendai ASS are all over the country so check them out as well, if you need any support, they give impartial advice. above all, like I said, trust your instinct. You know your child, you're with your child. And don't let other people who, for example, haven't even met your child tell you what your child does or doesn't need because you are their biggest advocate and, we as parents have got to be the voices of our children when they are young. And, continue to be there for them and be their support as they, as we hopefully kind of teach them to advocate for their own needs and we are that support on the side. Know that you're not alone in it as well. This is why this podcast exists is so that you know, that you're not alone. There's many of us out there come over to Instagram and, connect with me at conversations with a send mum on Instagram. See that you're not alone and know. That I'm rooting for you. I'm rooting for your child. And I really hope that some of these episodes coming up in season two, resonate with you and help you and give you that support, give you those tips. And the people that I bring onto this podcast will really give you that value, that support and help you feel less alone. Enjoy season two. I know I am going to, and definitely come on over and see me on Instagram.