As an advisory teacher for autism I am regularly giving out advice on how to support your autistic students in the classroom. However, autism friendly practice is good practice for all. Our understanding of autism is forever changing, and many more people are now being identified as autistic. This means that most classrooms have someone with a diagnosis of autism and potentially several more who may go on to be diagnosed. In an ideal world we would not need to wait for an autism diagnosis, and the medical model of ‘diagnosing’ would be replaced with a more social model of identification (however that’s a whole different article for another day!).

Some classrooms tailor the learning based on the set profiles of their students.  However, this can mean that they are not meeting the needs of the student.  For example, if a teacher is waiting for an autism diagnosis before they offer autism friendly strategies, this can provide a barrier to inclusion. Therefore, a truly inclusive approach would be to offer autism friendly strategies to the whole class and those who would benefit from them can choose to opt in. This prevents the common problem that teachers often raise: “they don’t want to look different”.

So, what are autism friendly approaches in a mainstream classroom? The recommendations generally come under three main areas: adapting your communication, using visual supports and making small changes to the environment.

Let’s go into those three areas in a bit more detail.

Adapt your communication

Adapting your communication often sounds simple but can be one of the hardest ones to implement.  Research has shown that autistic individuals generally process visual information more easily than verbal information. This means that talking at great length in a complicated way can be difficult to process. The English language is full of idioms and metaphors, saying things we don’t really mean. This can be difficult to navigate if you find it difficult to socially interpret communication using body language and context cues to infer meaning. When you communicate expectations, be very clear of the start and end point: how you will know you’ve finished and what time scales are involved? Many autistic people report feeling highly anxious when they’re not allowed to finish a task.  Yet how often in the classroom do we instruct everyone to pack up and move on because it’s time for PE (even though we haven’t all finished yet)?

Using visual supports

As mentioned earlier, information presented visually is generally easier to process than spoken information, therefore you should try to support any verbal communication with something visual. This can be a handwritten list on a post-it note, something on the whiteboard, photographs or symbols, or even gestures and hand signals. Colour coding counts as a visual cue. Some students report that they find written communication such as via email or text easier to process and then organise their thoughts in response than when speaking verbally. Thinking of ways you can incorporate these different preferences into a classroom environment is important. For example, could partners communicate through typing on a shared laptop, taking turns to write questions and responses? When you ask the class to start an independent piece of work, could you write a checklist for the steps required to complete their task?

Visuals would also include preparatory resources. Before going on a school trip in (this will happen again!), what could you do to prepare your students for this new experience? We’re lucky to live in an interconnected world, meaning we are able to access 360 degree tours of many museums and other attractions before we are there. A quick Google search will soon bring up many photographs of the outside and inside of buildings including video tours on YouTube and Google Maps also allows you to experience parts of the journey before the day. This will all help to increase predictability and therefore reduce anxiety.

Changes to the environment

We all process the world around us in different ways in terms of our senses.  Many autistic people report that they are over- or under- sensitive to different sensory stimuli including noise, touch, taste, light, smells, body awareness and sense of balance.  Completing a sensory audit of your school can be a really useful way of gaining insight into the potential challenges that someone with sensory sensitivities may face. Think about the visual input.

• What do your classroom walls and displays look like?

We’ve all been there… it seemed like a great idea to have all of those jungle animals hanging from the ceiling the start of the term however could those be providing a distraction or even a sensory irritation rather than inspiration?

• What is the lighting like in the room?

Are you able to turn off the lights? Try to have a lamp or natural light wherever possible in case some students are sensitive to the strip lighting that many schools have.

• Think about your own sensory input: what kind of colours do you wear? Do you wear strong perfume?

• Are you located near to the smelly Dinner Hall?

Obviously, some of these things cannot be removed completely but you may be able to provide the young person with something that can help them to manage this assault on their senses.

• Could they have a handkerchief with some essential oils on to smell when the overpowering smell of boiled cabbage starts to creep into the room?

• Could you offer ear defenders to help them to block out some of the background noise that could be painful throughout the day?

An autistic recently told me that when wearing ear defenders for the first time, they felt like they were sinking into a delightfully warm bath.

• Could you offer a wobble question or chair for the young person to sit on instead of sitting on the carpet?

Sitting cross legged on the carpet is often a position that gives the least sensory input and can be difficult if you are craving additional input.

Final thoughts

Take some time to reflect on the behaviour of your students.  Behaviour is always a form of communication and as Andrew Whitehouse himself says, those children who need your attention the most will often ask for it in the most difficult ways. It’s your job as a teacher to try and interpret this behaviour, but don’t go it alone. You will need input from parents, the school SENCo and hopefully the young person themselves. Try to spend some time together (or virtually; we are all going to be whizzkids at online resources after this….!) to problem-solve behaviours as you all have a small piece of the picture.  Then allow yourself to deviate from the planned expectations. For example, if assembly is traumatic for this young person, do they really need to go? Look at each situation and try to strip it back to the core purpose and targets of that part of the day. If assembly is about giving the young person information and a thought for the day, can it be delivered in a smaller group outside of the big school hall? Always remember that at whatever stage you are in the child’s life, you are preparing them for adulthood. That is the end goal. Think about these situations and question whether they are important skills for them: as an adult, will they be regularly sitting on the floor with 100 or more other people for half an hour?

The most important thing you need (and this is free and you don’t need to wait for delivery), is kindness, understanding and willingness to be flexible.

Please do connect with Rebecca on

Twitter @rebeccaduffus and

Instagram @theteacherwhocametosee

Andrew Whitehouse

Andrew Whitehouse is a specialist in neurological diversity and behaviour and provides interventions for professionals, parents and young people with Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and related conditions.  Andrew has a number of roles including training, strategies and therapies for education professionals in schools and colleges, observing learners in the learning environment and providing practical solutions to help them achieve their potential, both social and emotional and academic.

As well as running networking day courses across the UK for SEN, Andrew provides short courses for Bishop Grosseteste University and holds a number of UK and overseas contracts. Andrew delivered a TEDx Talk “From Disability to Superpowers” and has an extensive conference profile.  Andrew is also a Forensic SEND Consultant and acts as an expert witness in SEND related court cases.

Andrew recently delivered the prestigious Bamford Lecture at the British Academy of Audiologists National Conference and has a prolific conference profile.

Keeping it Real: Home Schooling and Voldemort

Thank you very much to my great friends at Special Direct and TTS Online for inviting me to write this blog post.  We certainly are in unprecedented times and despite the fact that many of us are getting time off work and school, we cannot go out and we cannot ignore the fact that many of us are or, are going to be very ill.  This can lead to tetchy times all round.

So, we’re all home schooling…   what does this mean?  Goodness only knows!  I have four children – 2 boys 13 and 15, and two girls 7 and 16.  The boys seem to be doing work set from school in the morning and watching telly in the afternoon.  And the girls?  Well, eldest daughter is doing her best to help youngest daughter maintain a learning ethos.

And what about the parents out there?  Well, if you are working from home.  And, many of us really are, you probably really are struggling to do anything else!  In my case a constant stream of emails and Skype calls from confused and concerned people certainly manages to fill my day…  and I know that there are a million variations of the home scenario out there, after all, families come in all shapes and sizes!  In short, we are all having a vast and varied experience.  However, it is not all doom and gloom and there are things that you can do to make things a little easier.  Here is my take on a few hints and tips, based on questions from my colleagues at Special Direct

What would you say are your top tips for keeping children happy and healthy while at home?

• Try to maintain routines. Visual timetables are great for this, you can make one as a family the night before with everybody contributing.  And try to stick to it.

• Stay clean, have regular showers, get dressed. Get up at regular times and go to bed at regular times.

• Try to have at least one family meal together each day, even if it’s only toast and tea.

• Don’t binge on food, try not to eat between meals and if you do, have planned, arranged snack times.

• Watch screen time. Try to limit and time it – there’s a lot of scary stuff online at the moment and it’s easy to be sucked in.  I personally am struggling to stay off twitter and Instagram.

• Try and do one family activity together every day. Even if it is only five minutes.

Any activity ideas you could do at home?

• Clean something, build something, repair something – every day do one thing.

• Build on what you do best. If you are a family who likes to play board games, do that.  If you like computer games with the kids, kicking a ball around, riding a bike (once a day whilst maintaining social distancing), whatever you do normally – or wished you did.

Any tips for parents and their own wellbeing …

• Make a bit of time for yourself/selves. Have an hour once the children have gone to bed where you can read a book, listen to some music, watch a film – any distraction to get out of your understandably worried state.

• Look after your health and wellbeing – don’t eat and drink too much. Try to move about.

• Try to accept that you are doing your best and that these are uncertain times – you are not failing your children!

How much of your day should be ‘home-schooling?’

• You are probably not a teacher… and if you are you are probably busy teaching (remotely or otherwise) somebody else’s children. Do your best and don’t try and force the issue.  You will only end up in a confrontation.

• Some children take comfort in learning. This is ok too

• Your key objective at the moment is to stay well and try to help everybody else in the home stay well too (both physically and mentally).

What things should they be learning? How do you decide what to teach?

• This depends on you and your child/ren. Some may prefer formal teaching methods, others more discreet and subtle.

• Maybe integrate maths into cooking, gardening, games etc.

• Keep a lockdown diary.

• Get older children to read to younger siblings.

• Take advantage of the vast array of online and television resources available at the moment.

Do you need a timetable?

• In my professional opinion… yes!

Should you give rewards? If so what for and how?

• Rewards are definitely better than sanctions. But there are a few do’s and don’ts.

• Things at the moment change very quickly. Consider short term rewards, little and often for small achievements.

• Make sure that they are rewards that they actually like.

• Remember, different children are able to do different things, differentiate appropriately.

• Do not take rewards back as a sanction

Most of all, do what you can and stay safe

Your good friend

Andrew

Andrew Whitehouse MSpEd CPSE (PGCert)

BAHons QTS

SEND Consultant (Forensic)

www.peoplefirsteducation.com

andrew@peoplefirsteducation.com

Join Andrew on twitter @AndrewWSEN

See Andrew’s TEDx Talk here: https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_whitehouse_from_disability_to_superpower

See Andrew’s Bamford Lecture here:

https://andrewwhitehouse.co.uk/a-selection-of-strategies-and-interventions-to-enable-autism-friendly-audiology-clinics-by-andrew-whitehouse/

Testimonials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ6FNQx-5ls

Welcome to get involved number 4

A project in which I have invited some incredible people in education to write blog posts colleagues and professionals to talk about

Today’s guest post is by Daisy J – Real Life Autistic Person and Teaching Assistant – I’m sure you will find Daisy’s story as moving as I did.

Happy Reading

Andrew Whitehouse

Daisy J is 24 Years old and is a 1:1 Learning Support Assistant for a child with Autism. She was diagnosed in July 2018 with Autism following a lifetime of feeling disconnected from the world. She was brave one day and wrote an eloquent description of herself to a TV production company and her role in Misfits Salon began. Since appearing in the program her story has hit many areas of the world and now she finds herself surrounded by people in the same position as her. She talks about her diagnosis, the ups and the downs and her experiences of being an Autistic person on her instagram @earthtodaisyj

I wanted to call my blog post – my first ever blog post at that! – ‘Flying Under the Radar’ because it feels weird writing about  “what it was like growing up with autism” because I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 22, I just grew up being a bit different. As time goes by, I’m beginning to question more and more how my life would be different now if I’d have been diagnosed when I was a child or a teenager.

As a kid, I was always the quiet one, cracked on with her school work with the occasional request to quieten down, I grew up going to a small town school, everyone knows everyone, you go to secondary school and college with the same kids you went to primary school with.

I guess looking back, I’ve come to realise I never really belonged in a specific group of people, I was always on the edges of groups. Interestingly enough, I was a total perfectionist and was often described by my primary school teachers as being anxious. I’d cry every time I couldn’t get something right or didn’t understand the concept of something (this would ALWAYS happen in maths!)

My interests as a child, especially in primary school, were always a bit different. My interests focused a lot around Ancient Egypt – even to this day I can easily reel off an extensive fact sheet about Tutankhamun off the top of my head! – the obsession was so big that It reached a point where my dad took me to Egypt on holiday in the hopes it would make me stop talking about it so much…that plan totally backfired and I just talked about it even more. By the end of primary school I had started to be bullied for being the weird kid and therefore I was beginning to realise that not everyone found my interest in Egypt cool and I guess I learned to tone it down a bit and hide it. I tended to talk about it more at home and try not to talk about it when I was at school. I now know that these interests weren’t “weird” and are what I now know to be a “special interest”.

I think I began to realise that I was a bit different from others when I started secondary school. One main thing was that I had language processing difficulties which therefore means I take a little bit longer to process instructions or questions, this had a knock on effect in class as I would struggle to fully understand what had been said to me or what I was supposed to be writing down. Alongside this though, I found myself clinging onto friends from primary school who weren’t in my form group or classes, I tried to make new friends, but they always stayed as more of an acquaintance than a friend. I eventually made a small group of friends who I stuck with for pretty much the whole of my secondary school life. I did however begin to realise that people would form groups around me but always assumed that because I didn’t live in the same town, I wasn’t invited because they knew it would be difficult for me to get there and back? Or maybe it was just because their parents said they could only have two people staying over. Looking back now, it was probably more because I didn’t fit the “clique” of the group.

I soon enough began to copy the behaviour of the girls around me, find ways of being interested in the same things as them and then I slowly began to fit in. Half of the time I didn’t understand most of what was being spoken about but I knew enough to put comments into conversations enough to blend in, I managed to do this with a few different groups of people and slowly began to feel like I was fitting in a lot more. All of these new interests were ways that I could learn to blend in with the crowds more. I was able to learn appropriate mannerisms, how to show an interest in clothes and try to fit in with the new fashion, learn about new music and listen to that type of music enough to be able to have a conversation about it. At this point however, I was feeling the pressure of not being able to keep up with school work and struggling with my difficulties, yet again, I managed to hide these difficulties because I still managed to complete enough work for teachers to be content with and never had the confidence to be able to put my hand up and say that I didn’t understand what I was being asked to do.

The more I managed to copy and blend in with others, the easier life became for me. I found a passion for music – I’m not musically talented in the slightest, I can’t sing or play an instrument – and I can remember song lyrics after just a few times of listening to the song. I found a new band I liked which soon evolved into becoming my new special interest, my life again began to revolve around this and although it wasn’t a band many people listened to, I still managed to fit in because liking boy bands is a typical female thing to do.

I began to get bullied, I’d been bullied in primary school, but it was nothing to the extent of what I experienced in secondary school. I was targeted for being fat as well as for my taste in music amongst other things. Now I look back at this and realise that everything they said to me was totally false, but these types of comments stick with you, especially during teenage years when everything can already be a bit difficult to handle.

The secondary school I attended had a terrible approach to children who needed support, I was actually on the SEND register for the entirety of my time there, however it wasn’t until 6 weeks before I sat my final GCSE’s that they decided to test me to see if I needed extra time in exams or if I needed any extra tutoring. I was very lucky to only just get 5 C Grades, the rest were a mixture of D, E’s an F and even a U in one! I did however still manage to get into college to study Health and Social Care, to begin with, this was amazing, until the realisation kicked in that I was never going to be in lessons with people I knew well, that my breaks didn’t match up with those people I already knew who went to the same college as me. This made it increasingly more difficult as I had come to realise that it wasn’t as easy as secondary school was, I didn’t have a group of people I knew well. I made friends with a small group of girls, but I was still always the totally different one out of all of us. I was the one with bright orange hair, I was always quiet in class, only putting my hand up if needed or answering a question if I was made to answer it. I found myself withdrawing myself from everyone and everything around me. I dropped out when I’d passed my first year & opted to do an apprenticeship in childcare instead which eventually led me to the job I’m in now.

It was so easy for me to “fly under the radar” because I appear to be so “normal”. I regularly get the comment “I never would have guessed you were autistic.” Nobody guessed that I was autistic as a child or teenager, no one linked my obsessive interests, my anxiousness and the need to be perfect at everything or my lack of processing skills to be a trait of autism because there are so few examples of autism in females. I flew under the radar because I could copy everyone around me and become a carbon copy of others. I flew under the radar because of the misconceptions of how autism can be presented in people and because the stigma still surrounds autism. I can all but hope that one day those stigmas do not exist, and young people can thrive without any labels attached.

#GetInvolved Blog Post By Emma Griffiths – Lego Therapy Specialist

This is a great post by our good friend and colleague Emma Griffiths about Lego Therapy in the home.

Just the thing!  Check it out…

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?u=e9a3ead0ce8872a123e52ce20&id=6fae0fff18

The following article is based on some of my observations in schools and colleges.  Please feel free to share.

Andrew

Entry to school:

Try to avoid giving the same instructions multiple times to children on arrival.  Doing this can cause confusion, create time slippage and look disorganised.  Ways to avoid this:

• Make sure that children are aware of routines and expectations well in advance

• Allow for quiet entry into the classroom, wait until the children are seated before delivering instructions

• Have monitors assisting the taking in of books, letters, lunch orders etc.

Have interesting, non-challenging short activities available on arrival.  For example:

• Kinaesthetic maths activities

• Quizzes

• Puzzles

• Mindbenders

Monitors and the classroom community 

All children benefit from a community feel in the classroom in order to encourage a cooperative approach to their environment.  If something falls on the floor, you want them to want to pick it up.  All children should take a pride in their classroom.  Give them all a job!

Every child needs a role and a responsibility that they can be proud of.  Who is going to make sure that everybody has a sharp pencil?  Who is going to hand out the books?  Who is going to water the plants?  All adults in the class need a personal assistant (PA).  Does the site manager have a reward for the tidiest classroom?

Give clear instructions and use visuals wherever possible

Many children are less predisposed towards listening to verbal instruction, much preferring visual.  In PDA, Autism, Asperger Syndrome and other ASDs this becomes even more of an issue.  For example: “I could sometimes hear a few words at the beginning, but the rest became a blur”, “Of the twenty words you just said, I heard the first three”

Many teachers use too many verbal instructions.  Try to avoid this by using more visual instructions such as:

• Visual Timetables Visual timetables are an essential intervention in every class. Experience has taught me that they are an extremely useful behavioural tool.  The visual timetable should always be in an obvious position in the classroom and big enough to be seen from anywhere in that room.

• Visual timetables to be kept up to date and accurate. Visual timetables should usually be put up by the most vulnerable and in need of routine/preparation child/children

• Visual timetables should always be vertical, reading from top to bottom.

• Many children with SEN have difficulties with peripheral vision so vertical is always best.

• The timetable should look like a list, not a sentence.

Remember; visual timetables don’t need to be about a daily structure, they can be about anything.

• Now and next boards

• Timetables within lessons (I.e the breaking down of sections within sessions – possibly supported by digital timers

• Facility within the dojo system to reward individual targets

• A spaced out, controlled, differentiated system of awarding dojo points

Gross and fine motor hyperactivity

Many children present with gross and fine motor hyperactivity.  You need to observe and be aware of this.  This hyperactivity comes in various forms.

• Distractibility and short attention spans in lessons and learning

• Fine motor hyperactivity – , picking, taking things apart

• Lack of engagement in lessons and attention deficit

• Lack of academic progress

• Getting up and wandering about

Some possible interventions include:

• Access to a weighted blanket/collar/pet (for some children)

• Contextualised and interest-based learning wherever possible

• Fiddle toys/blue tack/fidgeties

• Regular learning breaks

• Avoiding prolonged activities – plenty of ten-minute activities

• Vary tasks. For example, don’t have handwriting straight after quiet reading

• Varied tasks include group work (mixed and ability), teacher led, group discussions, group presentations. You do not always have to teach from the front

• Use outdoor learning

Children who call out:

Many children are attention needers and often we may need to address the fact that this attention need often manifests itself in seeking the wrong kind of attention.  Many of these children have the need to crave attention.  A saying that often comes up is “that child knows which buttons to press”.

Children will often misbehave to get the attention of the other children or other adults in the class and then look around to see who saw them calling out impulsively and inappropriately etc.  For example, some children will interrupt the teacher and ask irrelevant questions.  This situation can seem unremitting and can be difficult to manage.

• Bearing in mind that we want to promote children seeking the right kind of attention, we need to get better at ignoring the negative attention seeking and praising the positive, children will then begin to learn that the negative behaviours will not get them the attention they need.

• Be aware of when to intervene and when not to.

• Let’s give them a job or role (see above) and get some of that energy used positively.

• Create opportunities to give children the right kind of attention.

• Regarding calling out, one particularly effective strategy is to give a reward for being the second person to answer a question (the reward will also help with the need for attention).

• Be aware of attention spans. Activities ideally should be approximately ten minutes long

Resourcing:

Good resourcing is good provision and a learning style multi-modal approach is always best.  We all know about:

• Visual

• Auditory

• Kinaesthetic

But how about a few others:

• Tactile

• Research

• Verbal

• Creative

• Leading

• Demonstrative

• Athletic

• Ict

• + numerous others

It is the teacher’s role to find out how to motivate a child and implement good strategies that are well resourced.  Some good ideas include:

• Use of ICT. This includes laptops (sometimes shared), the interactive whiteboard, tablets and iPads

• Keep resources at a high standard. For example, photocopying needs to be clear and readable.

• Be creative: bottle top, buttons, conkers etc. The children will help willingly

• Spoken description needs visual back up – for example, if you are talking about frogs – show a picture of a frog.

• Be ready: make sure all your resources are out ready for the lesson – maybe list them in your lesson plan

• Make sure that anything you write on the board is visible to the whole class – size, font.

• Remember to use tactile resources with maths. Maths teaching has four golden rules: keep everything in context, colour code as much as you can, use concrete resources and remember that some children will struggle with concepts

• if you need to use a certain type or genre of book, investigation is best. Take the children to the library in small groups and let them choose with guidance

Which leads us into…

Differentiation

Make it your mission to find out needs and abilities – right at the beginning.

• Look at last year’s books/work

• Do effective baseline assessments

• Ask colleagues

• Do observations

The classroom environment:

The classroom environment needs to be the first thing you sort out before taking on a new class.  It needs to be welcoming, resourced and stimulating.  Things to consider essential are:

• Stimulus displays

• Reference displays

• Well stocked resource cupboards

• Clear surfaces

• Bespoke areas, i.e.: computer area, time out, reading zones, maths zones etc.

• Are posters relevant?

• Are there unnecessary items on display?

• Visual timetable in place

Keep seating flexible – children should be able to move to more appropriate seating for different activities.

I hope all of the above information helps, please do let me know how you get on.

Stay in touch

Andrew

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ive-been-waiting-14-years-livio-ai-story-isaac-thomson-whitehouse/

I got interested in Pi-Top during a visit to BETT 2017. In fact I was so inspired I submitted and had published a review of the show and in particular Pi-Top in The Week Junior. Following this, I received my first Pi-Top as a Christmas present in December 2017. A rather magnificent Pi-Top Ceed! After a particularly stressful start (in my excitement – I had made a right mess of the set up), I really got stuck in. My first port of call was to get some more in depth experiences of using Python, which I had been using in lessons at school for the past year, but not to any great level of proficiency or detail.  The Pi-Top Ceed certainly gave me the opportunity to take more risks in the coding world. Gaining confidence with Python ultimately led me to explore more of the features of Pi-Top, in particular – Pi-Top Coder.

In January 2018, I visited BETT for a second time. This time I had a mission, to meet the Pi-Top team, to find out more about Pi-Top and to write another article for The Week Junior. This needed confidence… and my favourite shirt, and a smart jacket. Sacrifices needed to be made! My initial contact was with Stuart Swann who welcomed me and introduced me to CEO Jesse Lozano. Jesse was really friendly and talked to me lots about my journalism, coding and love of all things Pi and Pi-Top. We had some great photos together and then Jesse gave me a Pi-Top Pulse and a Pi-Top hoodie and promised me he would send me a Pi-Top 3. For real!

Come Easter, as promised, it arrived -a beautiful Pi-Top 3 – with all the add ons! It was awful! Why! Because it arrive the day I went on holiday and was left in my garage for two weeks! Torture! Going home was all I could think about!

When I got home, whilst everyone else unpacked I built my Pi-Top. Luckily this time there were no mistakes. The first adventure was to watch a SPACEX Launch with my Mum – what a start!

So now, one year in, what else have I been up to? Check it out:

·        Updated to 3b+

·        Upgraded the sound system

·        Built a robot kit

·        Coded and Built Space Invaders 1 and 2

·        Set up two Retro Pi – one each for me and my brother

·        Built a pocket PC for my dad (he loves it)

·        Built a Pimoroni “pirate” radio receiver

·        Created a dog trainer for my little sister

·        Installed Dosbox and installed windows 3.1 from floppy discs

·        Rebuilt my Pi-Top Ceed and set up a music system – again for my dad (at a price)

·        Started a YouTube channel based on Pi to share my journey and tech skillz (Dr Who)

…and loads more fun stuff including a drone building project.

This year I went to visit the Pi-Top team at BETT again and again I was completely blown away. While I was there I was interviewed for the Pi-Top Podcast and given a demonstration of the Pi-Top 4. It looks amazing!

Next steps hmmm…

Not telling yet…

Check out Isaac at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pi-top-one-year-bit-isaac-thomson-whitehouse/

In order to make an audiology clinic Autism friendly one has to consider communication above everything else.  Communicating with a person with Autism needs to be explicit, visual and contextual.  Give your Autistic patient as much information as possible.  Even before they arrive, it will be helpful to alleviate some stress by sharing information about transport, parking, parking fees etc.  Send a clear list of instructions about what to do when they get into the clinic.  A publicly available short video of what happens once inside would be extremely useful as well as another short video about what the examination will look like.   Make all of your facial expressions clear, for example, if you are pleased with a result, make that obvious.

Try to find out about any special interests, this is a great way to make the young person comfortable and foster engagement.  Maybe you could gather this information via a link on the appointment letter?

Most people with Autism have a lack of generalisation skills and many may find it difficult to make conceptual connections.  So, if an Autistic child has visited another audiology clinic before, it may not mean that they will know what to do in yours.  Each experience needs to be approached as new and will require new interventions to prepare.

Noises and other sensory events can be hugely difficult for many autistic children.  If you have several booths and one is quieter – pick that one.  Can appointments be timed to avoid invasive lunch and breakfast time smells?

And remember, wherever possible, no surprises!