PaCC and Autism in Schools (AIS)

Autism in Schools

PaCC is working on the Autism in Schools project in Brighton & Hove, as part of a national programme to try and improve the experience and outcomes for autistic children who attend mainstream schools. The project is running in three local schools; Cottesmore and Woodingdean primaries and Cardinal Newman secondary school.

Here you can read more about the project and the details of PaCC’s involvement.

PaCC distributed a survey to parent carers whose children attend the three schools taking part in the project. The survey asked parent carers how working together with schools could improve inclusion and access to support services for families.  We used the feedback to shape the content of the coffee mornings we are running for parent carers in the three schools.

We have run five coffee mornings so far and have a further six to run up until December when the project closes. The impact of the project and any future developments will be evaluated by a final closing survey, which will be sent to parent carers to complete once the project has ended.

The overall aim of the project, alongside improvement of communication and access to services, is to set up and sustain whatever parent carer-led activities are needed at each of the schools. We are helping to create a parent carer information pack for each school which will contain information and templates to support the running of coffee mornings as well as information to support parent carers with their caring role. We hope this model can be replicated in other schools too.

We will provide another update at the beginning of next year, after the first year of the project has ended.

PaCC and Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS)

PaCC has also been involved with a new project called the Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS), a national programme that aims to support the education and health needs of neurodiveregent children in schools through a partnership approach, working with local authorities and parent carer forums. The project is like Autism in Schools but has a focus on all neurodivergent conditions.

We have been working with representatives from local authorities and health from across Sussex as well as East Sussex Parent Carer Forum and West Sussex Parent Carer Forum to plan the PINS project and how it will look in each local area.

There are nine schools involved in the PINS project: Aldrington, Brunswick, Downs Infant School, Fairlight, Middle Street, Mileoak, Our Lady of Lourdes,  Patcham Juniors and  Westdene. So far we have surveyed parent carers in all nine schools around their SEN support needs and collected feedback. We are now in the process now of engaging in meetings to discuss the feedback with the SENCOs and headteachers. We’ll be arranging 18 coffee mornings before the end of the year, to consult with parent carers around the challenges and changes they would like to see take place to improve inclusion for families with neurodivergent children and young people. 

We will provide a more detailed update on PINS in our next PaCC newsletter.