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Podcast Episode 38. Friendships and purpose are two of the most important things to have in our lives. For young people with additional needs finding these can sometimes be a challenge. In part 2 of Stepping back Milla Johnson, an Occupational Therapist, and Lisa Campbell, a Speech and Language Therapist, discuss how to manage friendships and access work opportunities.

When it comes to friendships Lisa and Milla recommend having conversations to help young people understand that friendship is a two-way street and teaching them how to identify the qualities of a good friendship.  They say that as a parent, you’re also their role model and so need to be demonstrating how friendships work.

They also suggest that one way to develop social skills needed for friendships is to help our children get involved in social-focused activities within the community. This can open the door of opportunity for them to make friends in a secure and safe environment with other young people. Another option is to use a buddy system where you link them with a young person who helps them develop their social skills.  Joining local sporting clubs can also provide an opportunity to interact with others. However, Lisa and Milla also note that not all young people will want to go out of their way to sign themselves up for activities like this, so it is often parents who will need to make the initial connections, then step away once these are established.

Another key part of friendships is the ability to engage in conversations. For some young people, conversation starters can be difficult and Lisa and Milla talk about simple strategies to develop conversations skills, even playing board games after having friends around for dinner can be used to help reduce the pressure of social situations. They also touch on the issue of managing social media and talk about how to use real-life examples to educate young people how to manage their social media presence.

Lisa and Milla also talked about some of the challenges around finding a job. They suggest starting with an honest conversation about realistic employment options. However, this is not about placing limit’s but rather looking at ways to link to each individual’s strengths and interests to job roles.

There are also some practical tactics to help make finding a job easier including maximizing work experience and volunteer opportunities. Milla and Lisa argue that when an employer sees a CV, they can make assumptions but once an individual has actually worked in the organization then they can be judged on performance which is way more powerful.

Milla and Lisa also advise parents that there will come a time when they will need to let their young person take the lead in the search for work because ultimately it is they who need to convince the employer they are capable of doing the job. By not stepping back parents can be actually be hindering their young person’s chances of finding employment.

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Podcast Episode 39. Work is central to most of our lives. It not only provides a purpose to our day but also makes us feel an integral part of the society we live in. In this week’s podcast we hear about the Project Search program, being run at the Marriott Hotel in Heathrow UK, which provides an innovative approach to help young people with additional needs find paid employment. The people responsible for running the program are Maxine Simpson, course tutor, Sue Stock, job coach and Saimmah Ali, job developer.

Maxine explains briefly the history of Project Search, which originated in the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in 1996. She talks about how the program works and how the interns take part in lessons at the beginning of the workday on building teamwork and personal skills. This is then followed by their placement within a department at the hotel. At the end of the day, there is a debrief where interns have the chance to talk about their day and review any problems or issues they experienced.

Sue talks about how, along with Maxine and Sam, she is involved in the ongoing assessment of the intern’s performance. As the job coach, she provides feedback to help them to think about what their next steps should be and what type of job roles they might want to pursue. Sue explains how the interns work on rotation in different departments, which enables them to learn new skills, build a CV and identify what type of roles they like most.

Sam is a job developer, a role that involves networking with potential employers, based on what the interns have identified as industries they would like to potentially work in. Sam explains some of the challenges with this role in changing employer perceptions. She explains it takes time to break down the “fear factor” that a lot of employers have. One way to overcome this is with an unpaid trial to show an employer the abilities of a young person, instead of always having a formal interview process, which some young people struggle with.

Maxine, Sue and Sam discuss the types of challenges that young people face at the beginning of the program, transitioning from education to employment. It’s usually not the work skills that the young people struggle with, but rather their personal skills and learning how to behave maturely in the workplace. Maxine talks about the positive impact Project Search has had within the Marriott, where all staff have benefitted so much that Project Search programs are set to be rolled out across other Marriot hotels.

The success of Project Search is really down to a work based integrated supportive approach, which helps ensure that by the time a young person completes the program, they not only have a better idea about what they want to do, but they also have links with prospective employers. Project Search is providing a template for how to help young people with additional needs find paid employment that is right for them.

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Podcast Episode 40. Everyone needs a Shed – a place to go, to be. But this Shed is much more than that,it is a space for people with additional needs to build independence and work skills and engage with their local community.

On this week’s Podcast we hear from Clive Harris, the founder of The Shed. The Shed provides a community-based education and training service to help adults with additional needs develop their independent living skills. The Shed also offers a range of clubs and events for people to build social skills.

Clive explains how, when The Shed began, he wanted a location that was in the middle of the local community so it became entwined with the community. Thus, it would become part of a broader, educational environment where everybody in the community learns about the people they support, and the people they support learn about the community they live in.

One of the primary goals of The Shed is to help adults with additional needs find employment. The Shed has a shop selling upcycled furniture. The students run the shop, manage the finance and administration, deal with customers and attend auctions to choose the items they’ll work on for resale in the shop.

Another training program focuses on independent living. The Shed has its own purpose built living spaces, specially designed to support the development of essential life skills, such as preparing healthy meals, shopping and budgeting and safety and security.

For anyone wanting to start a similar enterprise within their local community, Clive offers some advice on who to speak to and the importance of getting the right advice if you want your program to succeed.

The Shed is changing people’s perceptions in a local community, and showing just what people with additional needs can do when they are given the right opportunities and the support.

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Podcast Episode 41. What is Dyspraxia? If you don’t know or if you do and want to know more this week’s podcast is for you. My guest, Christine Draper has written a book called My Friend Josh has Dyspraxia to help more people understand dyspraxia and, more importantly, help more people understand what it means for her son Luke who has dyspraxia. Christine strives to spread awareness about the condition to help people have a better understanding of Dyspraxia.

Christine starts by explaining her journey with Luke and the early days of getting a diagnosis. Concerned about her son constant dribbling, Christine took Luke to the doctor who initially dismissed it as the normal dribbling of a young child. However, Christine persisted and was finally referred with Luke to a paediatrician.  Luke was diagnosed with Oral Dyspraxia and later on diagnosed with General Dyspraxia.

Christine explains Dyspraxia in simple terms and talks about her son’s challenges with Dyspraxia. She explains how it impacts on his communication and coordination and how it affects his daily life, including being unable to play any sports or ride a bike. This has made it difficult for him to join activities with other children.

One result of Luke’s dyspraxia (in part because of his communication difficulties) is that he never made any real friends when he was younger and now has no desire to. However, as Christine argues, as long as he is happy and content in himself, she isn’t going to try and force him to make friends. Christine goes on to talk about the impact dyspraxia has on her son’s independence. His navigation and organisation skills are affected, which means he finds getting from one place to another difficult without help. He also has difficulty with daily tasks like using a knife and cutting things up.

We also discussed what the future might hold for Luke and Christine admitted she doesn’t know, although at this point in time she feels it will be very difficult for him to be completely independent. We discuss the impact of this on the family and, in particular, his older sister who he is very close to.

One area that Luke has got a head start on is purpose. He has already written a novella with plans for it to be published later in the year. As Christine says, the purpose he gets from his writing, has given him a real sense of identity and self-worth.

Dyspraxia is sometimes called a hidden disorder because it is often not as obvious. But the impacts are very obvious. However, Christine and Luke show that it possible to not only live with dyspraxia but find your own identity and be seen as an individual who just happens to have dyspraxia.

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Podcast Episode 42. Do you need more sleep because your child needs more sleep? Maybe this weeks guest can help.Vicki Dawson is the CEO of The Children’s Sleep Charity and helped write the Children and Young People’s Sleep Manifesto presented to the UK government, which argued among other things for quality sleep support to be available for all families and for sleep to be recognised as a vital component of mental health.

Vicki was once a sleep deprived mum who struggled to get enough sleep at night and had no time to take a nap during the day. She realised how little help there is for people suffering from sleep deprivation or sleep issues with children. So Vicki decided to take things into her own hands and launched The Children’s Sleep Charity in 2012.

Vicki explains the process of helping a parent who comes to the charity for advice. They usually discover the charity via social media or by word of mouth. The first step is to talk to a sleep practitioner who helps to identify the causes. Vicki stresses how key it is to understand the triggers causing the sleep issues before thinking about what strategies might work.

Vicki discusses also how important is to find strategies that work for individual families and fits their parenting style and their schedule. As she says when people are sleep deprived, it’s often difficult to have the capacity to make massive changes. So it’s essential to come up with a plan that works for each individual family.

Vicki shared some of the things she has learnt about helping children develop a more structured sleep pattern. Vicki suggested that parents consider the time their child naturally falls asleep and use that time as a starting point. So, if your child falls asleep at 11 pm, put them to bed at 11 pm. Then, gradually move the bedtime to a more appropriate time to help strengthen and readjust your child’s natural body clock. Also, try and make sure that you wake up your child at the same time every morning (including weekends!). Developing this habit will help to strengthen their body clock, resulting in a more structured sleep routine.

Vicki emphasised the importance of investigating the hour before bedtime in close detail and offers some practical ideas for that pre-bedtime routine. These include encouraging children to eat foods that induce sleep, using relaxing and therapeutic play activities like lego, drawing and play dough to help promote a sense of calm, using a warm bath to foster relaxation and the obvious one getting rid of ALL screens.

As Vicki says many parents feel like others are judging them when they talk about their child’s sleep issues as well as offering unhelpful comments to make them feel like bad parents. The Children’s Sleep Charity provides the support sleep-deprived parents need without judgment.

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Podcast Episode 43. “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right,” according to Henry Ford: this week’s podcast guest Marjorie Madfis clearly believes this to be true. With Yes She Can Inc., Marjorie has not only created employment opportunities for her own daughter, but she has also created a training process which other parents can use to help their children develop better employability skills. In essence, by using the same processes she has used, you too could create a sustainable business to help young people with additional needs to gain work.

Marjorie starts off by explaining why she started Yes She Can Inc., which is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping young women with autism spectrum disorders develop transferable job skills. Marjorie watched as her own daughter received job skills training which simply wasn’t fit for purpose and which wasn’t teaching the right job skills that would help her to get a job.

Her daughters’ dream job was working for American Girl, a doll production company, so Marjorie decided to help her daughter go towards achieving her dreams by opening a store which resold used American Girl merchandise. Once she realized that it wasn’t only her daughter who needed a space to develop job skills she turned her business idea into a non-profit organization, focusing on helping young women on the autism spectrum develop transferable job skills

Marjorie talks about the importance of having a “proof of concept” trial. She started out small and got professionals involved, including social workers, psychologists, and occupational therapists. Once the trial was successful, she was then able to scale up quickly to have a “Girl Again” retail shop along with a connected training program.

Marjorie talks about the training program and some of the challenges for the young women on the program. In particular, the need for them to realize that their work isn’t always about them. It’s about the customer and satisfying someone else’s needs before your own. Marjorie talks about how her own daughter struggles with prioritizing the immediate customers’ needs over other tasks she had already begun. She also explains the kind of skills that the young women learn from data input to phoning customers to writing marketing materials.

She also talks about why a reselling business is an ideal route for training young people with additional needs. She explained how a business like this has a variety of job roles which other businesses might not have, from sorting stock to online selling. This enables young people to develop a much broader range of skills than other types of work might. In addition, as with her daughter, the right kind of business can enable young people to work in a business they are genuinely interested in. Marjorie also talks about her belief that training programs need to have qualified professionals, such as occupational therapists and psychologists, actively included in the design and delivery of any training rather than less qualified training providers. She argues that professionals have a much better understanding of why behaviors occur, and so can help develop long-term strategies to help the young person developing coping skills in the workplace. This ultimately helps the young person.

She also explains very well why we all need to think differently about the job options for our young people. As she explains the job market has become more generalized. Organisations want flexible employees that can carry out several or more tasks. Why? Because businesses aren’t in the business of employment. As Marjorie puts it, they want as few employees as possible. This means that one of two things need to happen young people need to develop a variety of skills which is what the Yes She Can Inc. program aims to do. Alternatively, as Marjorie also suggests we need to find smaller employers who have a job role which matches the core skills of the individual.

Marjorie also discusses how the model developed at Yes She Can Inc might be replicated how the processes used and best practices developed could be taken by other parents and professionals and used across any reselling business.

Like many parents/carers of a child with additional needs, Marjorie is on a crusade to change perceptions about what young people with additional needs are capable of in the world of work. She has created a model and process which we can all use as a guide to our efforts to change our young person’s work future.

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Podcast Episode 44. To truly learn, it has to be caught rather than taught is the mantra of this week’s podcast with Diane King, author, and special needs teacher. One way to do this and at the same time develop childrens’ self-worth is through storytelling and creativity.

We start with Diane’s own journey which has been an interesting one. As a child Diane was a selective mute and struggled to communicate with the world; that was until her sister introduced her to the magic of storytelling. Diane found that through storytelling she could release the built-up emotions she had kept hidden. She also decided quite young she would become a teacher and help children who were struggling as she had.

Over her years as a teacher working with children with additional needs, she noticed that the vast majority of children had speech and language issues which limited their ability to communicate impacting on their confidence. After working with speech and language therapists, physiotherapists and educational psychologists she realized the importance of the relationship between rhyme and alliteration in stories, and how this could be used to help children learn easier and, through that, feel better about themselves.

Using this knowledge and from her own experiences as a child, Diane has written a number of children’s books, including Ruby Red which uses rhyming and alliteration. Ruby Red is a story about a young girl with additional needs and how she is constantly learning how to deal with her emotions, how to articulate her thoughts and how to communicate with the people around her. It is also about the inner struggles young people with additional needs have as they try and understand a world that for them can sometimes be a very scary place. The stories are intended for younger children but could also be used as a tool to teach anyone more about the struggles children with additional needs often face.

Diane talked quite a lot about the importance of allowing children to express their feelings. If a child isn’t allowed to express their emotions, it’s like a dam that’s ready to burst. She believes, as parents, we should always encourage children to express their emotions and make sure we model to them the best ways to cope with and release these emotions.

Diane acknowledges that there will be times when it will be difficult for parents to find the time and space to deal with their children’s emotional releases, so she offers some ideas as to ways that we can help our children manage their emotions. She talks also about the different ways everyone learns and how some children are oral learners, others visual learners and others are kinesthetic (learning by doing) learners. Diane is a strong advocate for providing as many kinesthetic experiences as possible because these, she argues, will enable children to manage their emotions better in the long term. She uses her own journey as a parent to illustrate what she means, and how she would encourage her children to express their emotions and the kinesthetic experiences that worked for her children to develop their sense of self.

Diane also talked about how even young adults can benefit from storytelling and other creative activities. These can provide them with spaces to express themselves, understand and manage their own emotions and through all of that develop the confidence to become more independent because of their increased feelings of self-worth.

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Podcast Episode 45. Successful sustainable employment opportunities for young people with additional needs comes when support is provided for not just the young person but also for their employer too.This is the message in this week’s podcast with Lisa Campbell-Squires from Team Domenica. Team Domenica is a social enterprise charity with a vision to help people with additional needs reach their full potential in the workplace.

Lisa explained how Team Domenica was started by Rosa Monckton in response to her own daughter’s lack of training and employment opportunities. They now operate a café (Café Domenica) as well as training facilities and work with local employers using a supported internship model. Lisa also spoke of her own journey and why she had been inspired to get involved with helping young people with additional needs access employment opportunities.

Lisa explained the various programs on offer at Team Domenica, which includes a first-year introductory program that works on developing communication skills, social skills and general employability skills. This involves all the young people working in Café Domenica as well as work placements with local employers. This not only helps develop skills around teamwork and problem-solving but also allows the young people to experience different work environments, which helps them identify what types of job role really interest them.

When candidates reach the second year, they begin the Supported Internship Program. This program is based in a workplace with a specialist job coach who works with the young person and the employer. The job coach helps them work on the skills they need in their new roles which might also include how to manage their time in the workplace or travelling to and from work. The “end goal” of the Supported Internship Program is to move the young people into paid work. The success rate for doing this is very high and the team are justifiably proud of this. However, it’s not just about finding each candidate paid employment. It’s about finding them a job that they enjoy within a supportive and positive work environment.

The support from Team Domenica does not end once a young person has found paid employment. The support continues and then focuses on helping the employer deal with any issues that may arise in managing the young person at work. Lisa talked about the high numbers of young people who having completed a supported internship program and found paid employment are not in that paid role after 6 months. Lisa suggested that a reason for this was often to do with a lack of understanding when things “don’t go according to plan”. The young person may be struggling in the work environment and the employer may not have the knowledge or experience to manage the situations. To help combat this issue, Lisa and the team at Team Domenica, continue to provide long-term support for each of their candidates long after they’ve completed their supported internship.

Team Domenica has developed a very successful model for training young people with additional needs. This is clearly down in part to the focus on ongoing support for not just the young person but for everyone that is involved in helping that young person keep a job they enjoy and feel valued in.

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Podcast Episode 46. What happens to young people with additional needs when they finish full-time education? How will they find employment? How will they cope on their own throughout adulthood? One organization helping to provide some of the answers to these questions is Invictus Enterprises based in New York. In this week’s podcast, we hear from Alison Berkely co-founder of Invictus Enterprises about how they are helping young people with autism acquire the work skills they need to get into paid sustainable employment.

Alison talks about the challenges of getting the training program started and explains the benefits of basing the training program in the culinary industry. The first product launched was No Bones About It dog biscuits which have proved to be a commercial success with the profits being used to fund the training of even more people.

Alison talked about the need to teach both hard and soft skills. Invictus Enterprises have a support team with a variety of professional backgrounds and they help support the individuals physical and sensory needs in a way that enables them to learn effectively. When it comes to making the dog biscuits, for example, participants are shown how to follow a recipe, use the cooking equipment and develop the stamina required to be on their feet for a large part of the day. They also focus on developing their skills around teamwork and social communication skills.

Alison also explains the importance of technology and she describes it as the real “game changer” for the organization because it opens up the world of work for many young people who otherwise would not have an opportunity because they are not able to communicate verbally. Alison has even created a digital cookbook curriculum that takes students through the entire baking process using touchscreen technology.

As Alison says we all worry about what the future holds for our children. But there’s no doubt this worry is amplified when the child has additional needs. What Invictus Enterprises is doing serves as a reminder of the importance in aspiring to the future and finding new and innovative ways to help our young people find and keep paid employment. This will make the question how will they cope on their own a lot easier to answer.

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Podcast Episode 47. The job of a parent is to be there whatever and whenever for your child – those are the rules! That certainly applies to Claire Sutton, this week’s podcast guest. Claire shares her truly inspiring, but sometimes heart-breaking, story. Her daughter Jade, who is now 14 years old, has ADHD. The road to getting Jade diagnosed was drawn out. As Claire put it, Jade “slipped through the cracks of the education system.” Her early school years were a struggle and it wasn’t until year 5 that she was formally diagnosed. Claire and her family moved across the country and enrolled Jade in a much smaller school that was better equipped for Jade’s needs. Unfortunately, even though Jade seemed happier, her struggles continued.

By the time Jade started secondary school, Claire had discovered the heart-breaking news that Jade had been self-harming for over a year. Jade had managed to hide this from her family, and when it was discovered Jade was adamant that she didn’t want any external help. This is when Claire realized that she needed, as she puts it, “to be the light”.

Claire talks in depth about what being the light really meant in terms of listening to how Jade was feeling and hearing some things that parents never want to hear from their children. She talks about the need to stay calm and not get drawn in to what she calls the darkness. Although a lot of the things Jade talked about were quite dark and upsetting, Claire knew she had to be her rock, so she couldn’t let emotions get in the way of that. Claire was determined to be the light in her daughter’s life and get her through the darkness.

Claire talks about how she would constantly reassure Jade that they would get through it and that there was light at the end of the tunnel, and they were heading for it no matter what. And slowly Jade began to gravitate towards her mother’s light. Claire’s ultimate goal was to help Jade see the value in herself again.

Claire talks also about the need to shift the focus to something more positive in situations like this. Jade was a fan of pageants, and although Claire had her concerns, she soon realised that modern-day pageants are less about physical appearances and more about showing off the beauty inside a person. Jade loved the idea of competing in a pageant and Claire talks about these as a key part of her daughter’s recovery.

Being a contestant has also meant that Jade had to do a lot of charity work, and give back to the community. So Jade began focusing on a new project that helped other kids her age who struggled with similar issues. She went and talked at assemblies in local schools about her experience with ADHD and depression. This project is now growing, and Jade has appeared on television in the UK, talking about her life and how she has come through the other side. She has now become an identifiable role model for other young people going through similar challenges in their lives.

Finally, Claire talks about the three main areas she focused on with her daughter to bring her back to a more positive, happier place in her life:

1. To value herself again
2. To set inspiring goals
3. To give back

These 3 things have helped her daughter not only come to the light but also to be a light for other young people struggling with the same challenges she has faced.

Both Claire and Jade are inspiring individuals and remind us all what love and perseverance can achieve.

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