|
Send us your ideas, articles, stories and concepts. We will place your story on our web site and will consider publishing
the work for if we and others are interested.
Innovative Inclusion
-
Accept do not judge
We met Carley and Denise in Lancashire. They work in Children’s Centres but have the wisdom of life experience.
What does it take to engage with those who people say are hard to reach?
Nothing about judgement all about acceptance!
Listen to them and watch them on this short video....
-
Including Samuel
Before his son Samuel was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, photojournalist Dan Habib rarely thought about the inclusion of people with disabilities. Now he thinks about inclusion every day. Shot and produced over four years, Habib's award-winning documentary film, Including Samuel, honestly chronicles the Habib family's efforts to include Samuel in every facet of their lives. The film also features four other families with varied inclusion experiences, plus interviews with dozens of teachers, young people, parents and disability rights experts.
- The Spirit of Inclusion
Watch this intriguing YouTube Video. You will need to watch it twice!
- Everyone has a Song
Read this story of an african tribal song that celebrates individually, gifts, identity and inclusion.
- Heading for Inclusion
Submission to the 2007 review into Primary Education. Heading for Inclusion is an organisation of education leaders dedicated to the principles and practice of inclusive education. Heading for Inclusion welcomed the opportunity to contribute to a discussion on the future of Primary Education. 'Our simple message is that all children have the right to receive a world class education at the heart of their own community – in a fully inclusive local community school (Even the United Nations shares our view!)'.
Nigel Utton 2007
View
"The Gargoyles
of Change"
Click here to
download the Word file. |
- Teams
for Inclusion
''This is a paper about to be published on the role ofand it draws on over two years experience of the Nottingham City LEA's
Inclusion Facilitation Team. It is meant to be provocative and is saying
that a radical re-think of roles is necessary if LEA support teams are ever
to support schools to become fully inclusive.
Send us your reactions, additions and further thoughts''
- The Big Red Bus
Chris Johnson (dryden) and Lynn Turner, Educational
Psychologists have devloped this lovely process designed to help set up a supportive team around a pupil in difficulty. A team is recruited and roles on the 'bus' agreed to meet identified needs. Check it out!
- Special Education is Not a Place: Avoiding Setting and withdrawal in Inclusive Schools
Paula Kluth 2005
Since the inception of inclusive schooling, teachers have worked hard to provide students with impairments access to both a typical education in the mainstream classroom and to the individual supports and services they need to find success in that classroom. In many classrooms, however, educators are stumped at how to do both resort to pulling students out of the classroom for short bits of instruction, or in some cases, for large periods of the school day.
- Trading Places
Kathie Snow discovers that educators would not like to trade places with pupils placed in special schools!
 Movement Differences
Understanding Movement Differences can be key to including many challenging children and adults who appear very different and may have labels of autism, Tourette syndrome, or severe learning difficulty.
Check out developing radical thinking on our movement differences page >>>
Circles of Friends
- Circles of Support and Accountability for Sex Offendersare an organisation in Toronto, Canada who are building circles of support around sex offenders.
They were not formed to compete with existing service providers. They were formed to assist:
- those considered by many to be the "untouchables", or the most marginalized in our society,
- those for whom there was little or no support
- those for whom there was no support from other governmental or non-governmental service or agency
COSA originated to meet the unique needs of Sex Offenders, because no one else was stepping forward to do so.
Community
- Introducing the Boundaries Clock
We have developed the Boundaries Clock to help people manage their professional boundaries whilst meeting safeguarding obligations and promoting inclusion.
- The Boundaries Clock
Six pairs of competing priorities are set in opposition to one another to form the twelve-point Boundary Clock. Individual case studies or service arrangements can then be placed on the clock-face and the twelve vantage points used in turn to generate ideas for shaping practice in an individual situation. As each of the twelve viewpoints is merely an entry point to the clock-face area, the issues that arise inevitably overlap here and there, but the twelve points frame a systematic discussion.
The Boundaries Clock brings together the triple imperative to safeguard vulnerable people, maintain professional boundaries and advance social inclusion. It does not provide easy answers, but rather provides a systematic way to consider the issues and arrive at a defensible position. This paper applies the Boundaries Clock to the Community Circle demonstrating its utility, and assisting readers to develop sufficient fluency to apply the approach to new settings.
- Thinking About Professional Boundaries in an
Inclusive Society
- Asset Based Community Development
Mike Green, who has worked in a strength - based approach to community development throughout North America, 'Asset Based Community Development' , shared with us in Toronto 2007 a number of very fresh innovative and deep approaches to change and facilitation.
New Ideas
-
Growing Relationships Intentionally
“The heart of successful inclusion is relationships.”
Sapon Shevin, 2007.
We used to think we could drop any pupil into a mainstream school, setting or community and they would just make friends and everything would be just great. We now know this is not true. For inclusion to be a reality we will often have to work intentionally to create the conditions in which relationships can flourish and grow. The more complex or challenging the young person is, the more planning and preparation will be needed. Read more here
-
Developmental Steps - only go so far!
Any one reading this who has any involvement with children with autism will know how challenging the learning process can be.
We say ‘ assume competence’ - make no assumptions about what the child knows and don’t expect typical developmental stages!
In fact expect to be surprised! Deliberately teach across developmental stages. Don’t wait for spoken language before introducing reading. Do no wait for reading before introducing writing and spelling. Do no wait for handwriting before introducing typing.
Young people across the world who have benefitted from facilitated communication - usually supported by someone who really loves them - are constantly underlining this. Expect much - be creative - offer physical supports to overcome movement difficulties - do what it takes.
Young people communicating wonderful poetry and prose by supported typing - who cannot use voice to speak - are changing our world. Are we ready for them?
They are blowing developmental staging posts clean out of the water!!
Colin Newton
-
The Power of Imitation
“Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society” (Montessori, Circa.1905)
Maria Montessori as far back as the 1900s was one of many educationalists who have argued for natural opportunities for children to learn from each other knowing the power of imitation. Adults should prepare the way but then step back and keep out of the way in her view as servants to masters. We could learn much from this perspective today in the traditional ‘special needs’ world that has grown up with all its dependencies, low assumptions and restrictions.
This is why educating children in mainstream schools makes so much such educational sense quite apart from the human rights dimension. Children learn from each other by copying. Let us give them a great range of role models to help them develop communication, learning and social skills.
In my experience children learn 80% of what they learn by imitation.
In the previous chapter we outlined why we must not be confused by notions of intelligence and fixed potential. Such ideas limit our imaginations and sense of what is really possible.
Colin Newton
-
Compass of Anxiety
Its hard to find your way around the whole area of anxiety in children, adults and yourself. So here is a useful compass to help you.
Some days the compass will spin, on others it will stay in one place and feelings and behaviour will go into extreme mode.
This compass was inspired by work with people of all ages with autism who know the world of anxiety only too well!
The increased activity area is probably the healthiest and most educational area if you have to be somewhere on the compass.
People do things for a reason, not just because they have autism, behaviour labels or whatever.
Anxiety is very often the reason for all kinds of behaviour that we can struggle with.
Colin Newton
-
4 Questions: Jack Pearpoint and Marsha Forest designed The Four Questions exercise to help families, groups and organizations to get out of the trap of negative thinking. For example, an organization kept asking the people they work with to tell them what was wrong, so they could improve. But the people told them everything was really OK. They knew some things weren’t right. Jack and Marsha suggested they ask a new set of questions.
- What are we doing well right now?
- What could we be doing better?
- What could we be doing differently?
- What can we do now (within 48 hours) to start doing things better and/or differently?
- Seeing Movement
Read this article about how our perception of movement and sensory differences can change our perception of people diagnosed with autism/PDD and other related disabilities.
- The Problem with IQ...
Read this paper written by Colin Newton about IQ and the implications of still using IQ scales to measure 'intelligence'.
- Revolutionary common sense!!
Check out some great
articles from Disability
is Natural
"Disability is a natural part of the human experience."
When we internalize this belief and merge it with our common sense,
we'll create a new paradigm of disability. People with disabilities
aren't broken, and they don't need to be fixed. When we change the
way we think, speak, and behave-instead of trying to change people
with disabilities-the world will change before our eyes.
-
Philip Awofesobi's Rap
This remarkable young man has been employed as a Learning Mentor
by the Nottingham City LEA's Achievement Team. He has spent most
of his life looked after in Public Care. He has been there. He turns
out to be great at including adolescent young men living in Community
Homes, supporting their communication and reattendance at school.He
is also a great trainer and friend of Inclusiove Solutions! Read
more about Philip in 'INclusion Now' Vol 5, available from Alliance
for Inclusive Education
-
PRUs Are they good or bad?
Check out the arguments in this paper by Colin
Newton and Derek WIlson which draws upon DfES policies as well as
research.
- Undercover Teams Bill Hubbard, New Zealand
A low-intrusion restorative approach to bullying.Undercover Teams are a restorative adaptation of the influential and far-sighted work in the early 90’s of Barbara Maines and George Robinson of the UK. They labeled their support group approach to addressing school bullying as “No-Blame”. At the time and for years later, some people believed that this process was the single answer to school bullying that everyone had been looking for. Undercover Teams represent a unique tool that fits within the family of 'restorative responses'.
Undercover Teams are a 'targeted approach to - repairing relationships.
Viewed using a restorative perspective, Undercover Teams (UTs) may not be regarded by some practitioners as ‘fully restorative’ because the victims of bullying and the offending students are not brought face-to-face as part of the process however this fact alone should not undermine the worth of UTs. Rather, UTs can represent a niche process for supporting young people who may be fearful at the prospect of participating in a restorative conference situation. For students who have been bullied for much or all of their school lives, this can often be the case.
- Understand the logic of snoezelens?
Are bright lights, perfumed air, coloured bubbles and soft music the answer to the “apartheid” that people who have been described as having physical/learning disabilities/difficulties have been subjected to in Education and Community Living?
Joe Whittaker and John Kenworthy, Bolton Institute for Higher Education explore the logic of SAnoezelens...Is there any research to support their efficacy in special or mainstream settings? Perhaps great for special or mainstream staff or any pupil to relax in, but educational impact?? .....
-
The
least dangerous assumption!
Check out this ground breaking and deeply challenging
concept.Your thinking and practice around those labelled
with the most severe disabilities will never be the same
when you take these ideas on board. The paper is very short
but very powerful!! READ THIS IF NOTHING ELSE TODAY!
Putting this idea into practice will require radical thinking
and action. Check out this American paper as you wonder what
will teams need to really develop inclusion for pupils where
communication is a major issue?
- People First Language
Impairment and disability: a world of difference
Mole Chapman provides some really useful guidance around the vexed area of terminology.
'Disabled people use the term 'impairment' to talk about their medical condition or diagnosis or description of their functioning. On the other hand, 'disability' describes the social effects of impairment.
'Disability' is not a description of a personal characteristic. A disabled person is not a 'person with a disability' as the person does not own the disability in the way that you might be 'a person with brown hair'. Consequently, the opposite of 'disabled' is not 'able-bodied' or 'abled', but 'non-disabled' or 'enabled'.
Understanding the critical difference between these two terms allows us to talk separately and clearly about:
• a named individual = the person
• impairment = their functioning
• disability = society's barriers'
So you might refer to a disabled child, not a child with disabilities...'
Email Mole Chapman to receive your own free copy of 'Word Power - the art of respectful language' info@equalitytraining.co.uk
- Boyz 2 Men...featured in TES
Check out this wonderful ongoing
piece of work in an inner city primary school.This OFSTED
praised work shows the powerful use of drama, art and music
in the meeting of emotional needs.For a fuller
description click here. 
Creative Partnerships works to give school children
in areas throughout
England the opportunity to develop their potential, their ambition,
their
creativity and imagination through sustainable partnerships with
creative and cultural organisations, businesses and individuals.
For more information, visit them at Creative
Partnerships
- The Long View
We must take
the long view in our planning for complex individuals however young
they are.
‘What do you want to be when you grow
up’?
How often have you heard this question asked of typical children?
What was your own answer as a child to this question?
However we so often will not ask this same question of disabled
children and families will often say ‘we dare not think beyond
today’ let alone into the long term future. So we go about
planning for children with complex impairments as if they did not
really have a long-term future and adulthood. We make major decisions
such as placement in a special school or unit without having regard
for the long term implications of such a move. The child when they
do become an adult are greatly at risk of vulnerability and isolation
from the wider community into which they find themselves a part,
or not a part. We live in a society that does not have special shops
or special bus stops…
- The Bugle
What about a bit of blowing our own trumpets? The bugle and its five notes provides a fascinating metaphor.
Simple but powerful. Does it work for you?
- 'Ask the Kids! Gerv Leyden
The
pupils need listening to as much as the adults if change is ever
to occur.
- Roll
of the die
Need a good set of perspectives to help thinking move forward in
a complex situation that is posing an inclusive challenge? Why not
simply roll the die..
Research
-
Circle of Adults
OFSTED name Circle of Adults process as an example of outstanding Practice: Formation of a Circle of Adults to prevent exclusion of a primary age child.
You don’t often get staff meetings like this! The outreach support team invited adults who had contact with the
child causing concern to a twilight session and the whole school staff were there. The headteacher of the
Dacorum centre led a brainstorming session where the adult circle raised issues and concerns and later,
hypothesis, reasons and solutions, in a semi formal setting.
Only one person talked at a time and one person took on the role of the ‘voice of the child’ – his representative.
Comments, concerns and suggestions came swiftly. They felt angry, the pupil was aggressive and there were
complaints from parents. The head of outreach created a large and colour coded ‘graphic’ wall display of the
issues as the session went on under headings of ‘Hot Issues’ ‘Relationships’ ‘System Issues’ ‘Hypotheses’ and ‘Strategies’. Amongst the comments made - under ‘hypotheses’-staff wondered if the pupil felt overwhelmed or
left out or found it difficult to adjust to changes. The remarks made by the voice of the child included “people say
different things” and “people say I am aggressive, but I don’t always mean to be”.
The result, a very clear insight by all into the pupil’s needs and following from this, practical plans and
programmes of work specifically for this child created by the circle and therefore fitting perfectly into the work of
the school. For example, finding a male role model, and a Year 6 buddy, also meeting and greeting each
morning. Their solutions, copied and sent to the school later for reference, to make a positive difference - a
happy child, learning effectively and no longer in danger of exclusion.
Quick step by step guide to Circles of Adults
Friendship
Friendship...
How do you define it?
We have our own ideas and we would be interested in
yours.
Start here 
|
|
