S2 E10: Turning Frustration into Positive Action: SEND Strategies for Primary Years: Nicole Bateman chats with Georgina Durrant

In Season 2, Episode 10 of "Conversations with a SEND Mum," host Nicole Bateman sits down with Georgina Durrant from The SEN Resources Blog. They discuss the systemic challenges faced by children with SEND, how to channel frustration into positive action, and strategies from Georgina's upcoming book "SEND Strategies for Primary Years."

Episode Highlights:

• Systemic Challenges in SEND: Nicole and Georgina delve into how children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are often let down by the system. They discuss the common issues and frustrations faced by parents and educators, and the impact these challenges have on children’s development and education.
• Turning Frustration into Positive Action: The conversation shifts to how parents and educators can turn their frustration with the system into positive action. Georgina shares inspiring stories and proactive steps to support children with SEND.
• SEND Strategies for Primary Years: Georgina introduces her new book, "SEND Strategies for Primary Years," which is set to release on June 6th. She provides a sneak peek into the book’s content, highlighting effective strategies that can be implemented at home and in school to support children with SEND. The discussion includes practical tips on creating an inclusive learning environment and fostering positive outcomes for all students.

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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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Welcome to Conversations with the Send Mum podcast with me as your host, Nicole Bateman. Today I am joined by Georgina Durrant and she is the founder of the Send Resources blog. So hello and welcome. Hello me and Nicole, the reason I look like I'm laughing is I'm not used to being a guest on a podcast because I've got my own and we were just talking about things that go wrong on podcasts, weren't we, Nicole? Everything that normally goes wrong in a podcast just went wrong just before we, well, the first little bit when we were trying to record. So my, I got a message on my phone that was banging in the background. I think probably a cat wandered in. I don't know. Lots of things are going to happen. I'm sorry. Real life. This is real life podcasting, isn't it? So it's all good. We roll with it. Giving you a huge editing job. That's what I'm doing here. It's okay. I'll leave it in real life. Excellent. So can you share with us what is your connection to the SEND community? Sure. So as you said, I founded the SEND Resources blog, which is a website, a free website for parents and teachers of children with special education needs and disabilities. I did, so if I start at the beginning, it makes more sense. So I used to be a SEND co ed teacher. And then I set up my own tutoring service for children with special educational needs. And then someone said, Oh, it'd be a really good idea to do a blog just to help the parents of the children who I was tutoring, giving them sort of suggestions of resources. So instead of, I'm quite chatty. And if you can imagine if parents got me around to do some tutoring at their house and then they were like, Oh, Georgina, can you remember that fine motor resource that you mentioned last week? Or what was that book? You said they could have me there for like half an hour talking about. All these recommendations of resources that I could think of, and that's not really what they wanted. So I thought it'd be better if I put them on a website and then they could access them. So that's where the website came from. But then it wasn't just accessed by the people, the parents of the children who I was tutoring. Became a bit bigger than I was expecting, which was really exciting. And a little bit nerve wracking, but exciting more so. Especially like during the lockdowns, I did free daily videos for parents and teachers of children with special educational needs. So they were like little play based activities of things you can do at home with limited resources, because we couldn't go to the shops, could we, or do anything really very easily. So anything I could find in my cupboard basically was the materials for that. So I did those videos. And they were accessed quite a lot, which was nice. And on the back of that, I got a book deal with JKP to write a hundred ways a child can learn through play, which was essentially what I was doing on the videos, but in book form. But then I realized I had to think of a hundred new ways a child could learn through play, after having done them daily throughout the lockdowns, which went on for a while, didn't they? So that was a lot of activities I had to come up with. But that was fun. You have a hundred from the videos that you did. Yeah I couldn't use the ones in the videos. I had to use separate ones. You see I wasn't allowed to repeat So I had to come up with even more ideas, but to be honest, it gave me focus It gave me something to do. It was like instead of baking sourdough. It was my thing basically during the lockdowns Yeah, kept me kept me on the straight and narrow. So yeah, I did that book that that went down quite well Which was nice and then So I saw a bit of a problem with the fact that lots of children were coming, going back to school after the lockdowns and literacy was the big issue, wasn't it? There was lots of children, they were saying they need to catch them up. I hate that term, but yeah, catch them up on like the literacy and that side of things. So then I thought, how can I help solve that? Then I wrote how to boost reading and writing through play which was very similar to the first one, but just had even more ideas. That were literacy based to help children who might need like multi sensory learning, sort of children with dyslexia, for example, who their lessons sat at the table might not work for them. And they might need a different approach that's a bit more play based and younger children and children who'd missed out on play over the pandemic and kind of needed a different way of learning. So that's where that book came from. And then, was it last year? I've sat in on this parliamentary roundtable thing. I'm not really sure how I ended up there, Nicole, but I was there. And it was all about dyslexia and like, lack of diagnosis and waiting times and all these problems that I'm sure all you listeners know very well. And before I went on it, I asked some of my followers from my blog and stuff if they could give me some like stories of their experiences with waiting times for diagnosis and that type of stuff and assessments and I was inundated as you can imagine I didn't Expect it naively. I thought I might get a few Messages and a few emails, but I was absolutely inundated with messages from parents telling me how awful the situation was and how long their children were waiting for assessments, how some places weren't even doing any dyslexia assessments, all of these horrible stories and yeah, some of them were really really upsetting actually and then I suddenly got really cross and this sort of, me going from being this happy go lucky person that wrote books about play, turned into this quite angry person, if I'm honest. And I sort of lit a bit of a fire that I didn't really know was there. And then that's why I wrote the book that's due out in June, which is Send Strategies for the Primary Years, sort of on the foundations of absolute frustration that children with SEND are being let down at the moment across the country. And I realized, like, I don't have the resources to sort of sort the system out. I can't slash any waiting times. I wish I could. I can't, I can't build a system that would work for every child. I don't know how to do that, but I can write a book. I thought that could be my way of helping a little bit. So I sort of funneled all my anger that children with special education needs were being let down into creating a book that could support parents and teachers of children with special education needs with strategies that could make a difference to them right now whilst they're waiting. And whilst we're all sort of shouting for a system that works. Cause I think it's really easy. And me and Nicole have been talking a lot. Before the podcast about how awful things are. And, you know, I don't want to negate away from that cause it is awful, but I think it's really easy to point out the problems, but the challenge is how we're going to do things better and what we're going to do now. So, yeah, that's where the book came from. And yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? It's about, you know, proactivity, because we know that there's so many of us that have stories that are fighting, are waiting so long to get that support for our child. So therefore equipping teachers, parents, etc, with these strategies through your book. it's going to be so helpful because that's what I wish I wish that the whole system and everything was more proactive and less reactive because sometimes people only get support when they're really really struggling with like mental health or if they're they're in maybe in their nervous system, they get triggered and they go into fight mode, then people will intervene. But actually, for some kids, like my son, he goes into freeze mode when he's triggered, whether that's by sensory, different environmental factors. And sometimes those kids get kind of forgotten about that they actually need support, especially, those that are masking as well. So it's really good to, have a resource that is really proactive and, we can all learn from. So I'm excited. I'm excited to get your book. I hope it's going to be useful. I think, yeah, it's just. I think it's really hard, and I think, I see it from both sides, having been a teacher and having been a SENCO, like, everyone's struggling, and I think, whilst we're sort of waiting for children to get assessments, the EHCPs, all of these things that are happening, we're forgetting that, well, maybe not forgetting, I'm sure people aren't forgetting, but children are growing up during this, and they're missing out on the support they need, and there's things we can actually do, they don't cost any money, that wouldn't be detrimental if they didn't end up with that diagnosis, but things we can do now to actually support these children, With the needs that they have without, yeah, without any real expertise. It's a lot of it in my book is common sense, but I think sometimes teachers are really busy, parents are really busy. Sometimes you need someone just to jot it down and say, try this, try this. And like lots of the strategies won't work. For every single child, because I don't know the child who you're thinking about when you're reading the book, but hopefully there's enough in there that when you go through and try different things, there'll be something that works for each individual child. Yeah. I think that's so good because sometimes think about when I was teaching before I was immersed into the world of understanding special education leads disabilities, the way that I do now through my son, because, in teacher training, let's face it. There wasn't like one PowerPoint saying this is autism, but actually it's not like it was very one thing rather than actually whole spectrum and support there. So, I looked out for those kids because I, I just had a heart for those kids anyway, but I now I'm like, Oh, I could have done things that, now knowing the knowledge I have could have done things better at that point. So equipping people with that knowledge that they don't necessarily get because you don't know what you don't know, do you? And it's not the fault. Yeah, yeah, completely. And I think parents, teachers, I think we expect them to know a lot more than they can possibly know. And parents are the expert of their own child because they've got the internet at their fingertips, haven't they? They've got all the books and they went to research and do the absolute best for their child. And they, I think it, I think there needs to be a shift in understanding and teachers need to be aware. And I think some of them are. But. Parents of children with special education needs actually know a lot more about their child than they do and they know more about special educational needs probably than they do. They are now the experts and I think things have flipped a little bit and it's hard as a teacher to admit that and hard as a SENCO to say I don't know as much about this as you because you feel like you've got to show that you know it. And I think there needs to be a bit of a shift and a way that we're working with parents better because At the moment, there's too much fighting. There's too much was against them. And it needs, it needs to change, doesn't it? And I'm starting to get riled, Nicole. I can feel it at end. Before the podcast, just for the listeners I was getting, Nicole was talking to you about the awfulness of the SED system and I was, I could feel my blood boiling and I can feel it again. So I'm gonna calm myself down. But I think that's the thing is it's. The reason why it matters. The reason why it makes us feel like that is because it's kids' futures. Yeah. It's actual children that are impacted by something that the, government, we're not a political thing, but you know, something that's happened that's outside of our control as both teachers, parents, kids, but actually it all boils down to. We want the best for our children and if we can work in collaboration, ideally, with the school, with, the local authority I mean, yeah, that may not be our experience, it's not my experience necessarily, working in collaboration with the local authority, but that's in an ideal world, that would be great, wouldn't it? Because everyone surely wants kids to thrive and not just barely survive. Absolutely. I know. And I think, I've heard stories of children who, like autistic girls, for example, I heard a child who was autistic. She was in, I think, reception when her parents were saying they thought there was some problems. They weren't sure what it was. Perhaps she had some sort of additional needs. They didn't know what it was. It wasn't until she was in year six that they found out she was autistic. And that's her whole primary school. And, when we're thinking about, oh yeah, it takes a few years of diagnosis, we're forgetting those years. It's like a massive proportion of a child's life. Like most of their life that they're misunderstood and then it can cause kind of mental health issues and all of these problems and I think we're just forgetting time is different for children than it is for us and it's all right to say no we might get a different government and we won't like you said we won't go too political but I don't even know if that will solve it or if it will or not and I won't go down that route but it's all right I say in a few years the centre of view blah blah blah blah blah in a few years those kids are getting much much older and we're forgetting things need to happen right now today in the classroom And at home, like, we need to be supporting them right now, not waiting. We can't wait any longer. And I think that's, yeah, where I came from with this book was because, like, they can't wait. They're stuck. They're there. They need support right now. We, and it doesn't make any difference to them knowing that there's been a SEND review and then there's been a SEND and AP review from like, whatever. I mean? They need it now. It is them, they're struggling in this classroom to access, for example, comprehension or things like that. Yeah. How can we make reasonable adjustments? With little techniques, et cetera, to make it accessible to everyone. Exactly, yeah. So the book goes through, like, it goes, I've split it into sort of area of need rather than diagnosis, because I was very aware I didn't want parents or teachers to, like, diagnose kids themselves based on the book, because there's always a danger, isn't there, that, not, not that they would, but that they might have preconceived ideas, I suppose, of what, what they think the child might have, and I didn't want that to stop. And also you've got overlaps between different diagnosis, et cetera. So the book split into needs, like area of needs, like speech language, communication needs, literacy numeracy sensory processing differences, loads and loads of different areas of needs. And then in each of them, it gives you sort of an overview of the need and how you might notice them in your classroom. How you might notice somebody with those needs in your classroom or at home. Which types of SEND sort of fit under that umbrella. So then if you think, Oh, I've got an autistic child in my class. Oh, I didn't realize that could mean they've got sensory needs or that could mean that they might have speech language communication needs. So hopefully they would know that, but just in case it kind of has that on there. And then the book gives sort of like changes you can make, like you said, little tweaks that you can do, things you can make whole school and in the classroom or at home to make things easier for children and to meet their needs, resources that you can use that aren't going to cost you a fortune, things that might already be in your home or in your classroom. And then like. Strategies and activities you can do and there's even some videos there's QR codes. I haven't told many people about this actually. There's QR codes. Exclusive. Yeah, exclusive. There's QR codes in each chapter of ten activities that link to that so you can watch You can watch a video of me doing the activity showing you what to do for the activity So that sort of adds another dimension to the book And a bit of a nod to the YouTube videos in the lockdown, really, I suppose. Yeah, I love that. That's so good. Like a QR code, if I'm honest, Nicole. I think that it's fun. I love scanning QR codes. It's more for me than anyone else. I don't know why she scanned them, but yeah, it looks pretty. You will. You'll, you'll get your book and you'll scan it. I'll know if people have scanned them because it will tell me on YouTube how many views you're into. And then I'll be like, oh, no one's actually done it. I will. I'll scan it. But you don't have to. It sounds, it sounds excellent. I think, every school needs to, needs to have a copy of this. And I'm sure many of us, like I said, I'll pass it on to my school. So anyone listening, grab the book, grab a copy for yourself. Please do. Yeah, I don't have any commission for this. I haven't actually read the book, but I trust that Georgina's book is amazing and very useful. And it resonates with me in the facts of what we try and do with the Super Sensory Squad, trying to give those strategies, those Sensory adaptations in the classroom, little things that everyone can do at home and in the classroom. So I think it's very much needed and very, very, helpful. So what can you, can you give us a, you know, a taste of, before a few strategies that you think, Oh, that's something someone listening right here. I wrote this book ages ago. So like, put me on the spot here. I should really, I was thinking to myself the other day, I need to read the book again, because I wrote it, like I'd finished it this time last year. So it's been a long time. But strategies wise, let me, so for sensory in particular one of the things I wanted to do was. upskill people on, and I'm sure you, well, you're an expert in this Nicole, but upskill people on that. It's not just sensory play. It's not just, we have children's sensory play and that will solve everything, but how children can be sort of hyper or hypersensitive to different senses, what the different senses are how they might be hypersensitive to one thing. They might be hyposensitive to another or on a different day, or if they're hungry or if they're, Like how it can vary throughout the day. So there's, there's a lot in the sensory chapter about that, trying to upscale people. on that and then giving sort of strategies that aren't just sensory plays. There is sensory play in there, but giving strategies such as, you know, having weighted resources, having, yeah, loads of different things in there. We have, we have like exercise bands on our chairs at home to, help my both kids actually sit at the table because they want to get that proprioceptive input, that, feedback and muscles. that's something that technically could. for use in school too. So yeah, it was when I think it's in the organization and concentration chapter as well about making like fidget toys. And I think there's been a lot of issues with fidget toys in schools and some schools are very resistant to them, but for some children they can really make a difference. And I think we're forgetting that it does have a place, but a fidget toy doesn't have to be something from the shop. Well, whenever they put sensory on any resource, it suddenly becomes 10 times as expensive as it actually should be, shouldn't it? But yeah it doesn't have to be an expensive sensory resource or a fidget toy per se. It can be something, it can be anything from Blu Tack. It can be something on the bottom of a pen. So one of the videos And strategies for me is showing you how to make a fidget pencil so you can put like a thing on on the pencil to make it so it becomes a fidget pencil. But you could do it as an activity with your class or with your kids at home to make the resource and they get a bit of ownership over it and then they can use it themselves hopefully in lessons. I suppose a lot of it's thinking outside the box and thinking of ways to support children that way. Yeah. Without giving too much away, I've got to be careful. Yeah. Well, it, means, I, I'm like, yeah, I want to make that little fidget pen. Like, I'm definitely going to watch that one. For sure. Well, yeah. Thank you so much for, for chatting with me. And. You're welcome. I think that the more of us. Joined together that share, you know, little tweaks, little strategies, little things that could be really helpful Can make a big difference to a child's life. So thank you for gathering all of that information into a book What date is it out? It's out on the 6th of June, which isn't that far away that's what my calendar tells me. Yeah, what is the name? Can you just share the name again? Of the book, Send Strategies for the Primary Years. Do you like a play on words? It's like we're sending the strategies. Yeah. And I send strategies, yeah. Yeah, good. Like you can make loads of different play on words with send, can't you? You can, I love it, I love it. Thank you so much Georgina. Really, really great to chat with you. Definitely, I'll put, your links below in the show notes and go and follow her as well. Thank you for listening and remember that every Wednesday a new episode comes on Spotify, Apple, all of the different podcast places. Go and have a listen because we look at a variety we chat with. Parents who get it, we chat with professionals who care, and also neurodivergent individuals. So I will see you next Wednesday. Bye!