A very special interview with the head of school operations at the Hunter ASPECT school- Megan Lloyd

For regular updates and recaps of episodes, please keep and eye on our Facebook or instagram page

If you are wanting to support this podcast, please subscribe and follow our podcast.

Mummel Road Community Programs is a registered charity offering adolescents on the autism spectrum the opportunity to engage with their community in a meaningful way. To learn more about our charity or donate please read more here

Mummel Road Members get weekly support session with Emily, our advanced positive behaviour support practitioner. Learn more about our members hub here.

If you are wanting to share your story with the Neurolicious Community, please reach out to us at info@mummelroad.com.au

Transcript

Unknown: 0:05

Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Mummel Road podcast. My next guest has a really important job. Her job is being the head of school operations for the hunter aspect school. Her name is Megan Lloyd and I feel very privileged to have been able to interview her for my podcast. I know you'll love this interview, and I can't wait to hear your feedback. Enjoy. Hi, Megan, how are you today? Yeah, really well, and we thank you for taking the time to chat with me. Oh, not a problem. You're the one that I need to be thinking. You're a very busy lady. And I've been really interested in having this conversation with you. Because I know I'm going to get a lot out of it. And I know that the parents are going to get so much out of it. So Megan, for the listeners out there, could you please give us a brief overview of your current role at the aspects school? Sure. So I am the Head of School operations at aspect Hunter school, I feel really, really privileged to be in that role. Within such a brilliant school, we've got 200 students face to face this year. And then 25 in our distance education programmes spread over eight campuses in the hunter in Port Macquarie. So we're quite a large school in terms of special schools. That means that my role has quite a strategic focus nowadays, as we've grown since I've been here, we've grown from about 140 to 225 kids. But as well as that strategic part, my job satisfaction depends on me having day to day contact with students, and kind of supporting them through their day and supporting staff to do a really, really good job aspect is a charity and I've got a therapy and an adult services and as an education component across New South Wales, and Victoria in South Australia. So I feel really blessed to be part of an autism specific organisation. And I feel really aligned with the values of the school as well. Just hearing your job description almost gives me goosebumps because it sounds really huge and and really important that I know that there's nobody else that could do that role like you because of your personality and your knowledge. A huge part of your role, like you just touched on is to support families who have a child or an adolescent, or even an adult on the spectrum. This is a really complex role. But it is such an important one. Can you give us a brief insight into the different ways that your school support families, particularly the families who have a child, and for this part, maybe focus on those younger children who may be transitioning from preschool into a school setting? Or though the younger children who may have just recently received a diagnosis of ASD? Could you just give us a brief overview of that role? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a real passion area of mine and our principles as well. Aspect runs a what we call aspect, comprehensive approach, which kind of gives us guidance in a bunch of different areas about how we work and one of those areas is for around family engagement. Because all of the research says we have to work in partnership with families to get the best outcomes for our students, which is obviously what we're all here for. And we know that's what families want when they come to us. So we're really committed to formalise that partnership working. But I think one of the greatest things about working at this school is that that partnership, ethos is really embedded in everything we do. So we have all classes are set up with a communication app where families get almost daily snapshots of what's happening in the day, and updates or questions and that kind of open communication. We're really proud to just be able to meet with families whenever we need to I had a meeting this morning, a family raised a concern on Friday night about a difficult social interaction their daughter had had and so we just arranged to meet this morning and just talk through it. We're really committed to having that kind of nipped in the bud approach that we want to be on top of concerns on top of celebrating successes as they come up. So I really, I feel like if we have that part true partnership Open Door working, then hopefully no big challenges ever arise. The formal structure for our partnership working is twice a turn twice a year we have individual plan meetings to formally review goals and check in more generally, particularly around if a student is transitioning into into our school or out of our school. And our kindergarten orientation is a huge part of what we do in term for so all other year groups because kids start with us at all different points in their education, but nowhere near on the scale of our kindergarten orientation and enrollment. So all other groups want to run a bespoke transition plan for what suits the family and the student. So for instance, the She next year, we're welcoming into external year seven students who have really different transition plans based on their individual needs and their experience of school so far. But the kindergarten orientation is a huge piece of work. We run because a lot of those families are relatively new to diagnosis or relatively new to being part of a special needs community. We run as in depth, parents support and family support as we do child support. So we have workshops. Unfortunately, this year, they're all on Zoom, but workshops with families focused on a bit about how their school works, but also a lot around what we know about autism and how that shapes how we work with our kids. The workshops are also really focused on connecting families with each other. Because we feel like that's, that could potentially be a lifelong support for other families to have to connect strong connections with other families who are in the same boat. during that transition, as well. We want to involve external specialists, or really anybody who has knowledge to share about that child. So we've we've often run transition meetings with aunts and uncles and neighbours, or anybody else who's got real insight that will shape what we're doing and how we work with the child. alongside those parent workshops, we have visits for the children and there's this year, they'll be five, once a week, once a week, five visits, which we're lucky to be able to do within the restrictions. And then if if a child within that needs an additional visit or need some specific support, it's a really bespoke individualised approach because it's really we're really passionate about everything we do being person centred, and driven by the different range of needs and strengths and interests of the child. Part of that orientation as well as a an opportunity for the family to meet the teacher, and hopefully that aide who will be that person's teacher and aide next year. And they craft what we what we refer to as a five point star, which is really just our framework in five different areas to best understand the child. So it's things like how they best communicate, what their real passions and motivations are, what their sensory needs look like, and so on. And we really want to gather all that information from families and specialists, and anybody who can help make give us a really clear picture of the child. So we can structure our support around that, as a parent myself, knowing that your school will be able to offer those families that targeted and specialised support is just amazing. I remember very clearly myself receiving my son receiving his diagnosis as a three year old. And just craving somebody who could enlighten me to the ASD as a as a as a disorder. I don't like to use that word, but you know, the diagnosis, and also somebody that could really help me understand his strength and his needs, because the two are very important. So I've just briefly mentioned the fact that my son, Charlie has a diagnosis and previous interviews, and I've spoken with other people at length about this, but you actually know my son, Charlie, pretty well. And he knows you pretty well, I think. And you're aware, you've touched on the fact that you guys are specialists in connecting families with the students in the school, you know, that our family have always tried to focus on Charlie's strengths to engage with him, but also for him to engage with his community setting that's been so important to us. I think as parents, we sort of focus on that as a bit of a protective measure as well to see that he does have something to offer. And that's great. So if this doesn't nest, I talk about strengths a lot. And it does not mean that Charlie does not have challenges as a parent. For the listeners out there. Charlie has a he does have challenges. He's fine motor needs support. He's communication does need support. But we always focus on the strengths. So Megan, can you please give us an insight from your perspective on on your and touch again, on your understanding of FASD, but a bit highlight the fact that with the right support, individuals can have their strengths highlighted, and they can flourish in their own individual way? Yeah, that's that's such a wonderful question to talk about. And I really, I really admire how you're openly talking about the fact that there are real challenges having autism in Euro typically driven society. And that's definitely how aspect thinks about it. Our purposes, is a different brilliant, because we are so committed to focusing on those strengths and interests. And that doesn't take away from the fact that there are many challenges. But so many of these are presented by a society that doesn't accommodate the uniqueness and the Amaze serve our students and people on the autism spectrum. So I really like the balanced approach we have, we have had families who are having a particularly difficult time, take issue with the different brilliant kind of push from us because it hides the fact that there are some really tough days. And there are some real barriers to students accessing their strengths and interests. So we don't shy away from any of that. But our underlying principle is, people on the autism spectrum can can flourish in their own way, which is such a lovely way to say it with the right support. So there's a really exciting movement in disability education over the last decade or so about empowering individual voice. And this this kind of mantra of Nothing about us without us. And that's something that really highlighted for me, when you were when you were asking the question that flourishing in their own way, and the right support, wherever possible, were really, really committed to making that student lead. And for some students, like Charlie, he can probably he can definitely tell us a lot about what makes him happy, and what makes him really excited to learn and what motivates him. For other kids, you've got to play a detective a little bit more, and dig into when they're really balanced and settled, are happy or excited and when they're not. So we're really committed at Hunter school, to empower that student voice wherever we can. And it's actually one of our school improvement goals for the next little while to really build that into our individual planning, making sure that students opinion is front and centre of all of these conversations, I think we were really proud to be in autism specific setting. And we know obviously, we know a lot about autism, I think it like you, you touched on Emily as well, all individuals have a unique experience of autism. So we can't we've kind of got big themes around. We know what the research says about the thinking differences on the autism spectrum. But we do again, that person is the centre of our planning. So so the kind of ideas that I'll talk about around how to harness those strengths of autism, really, it's a unique experience within that for the individual. One of the examples that came to mind when I when I heard your question was around the thinking difference in autism around being really detailed, focused and about how what a strength that can be if it's harnessed. And that's such a neat example of how with the right supports the right encouragement to build on that strength, because a lot of people on the autism spectrum might have a challenge working out the whole picture, but they can find details really, really well. That's such an asset to have in mathematics as an example, with the right sport with the right opportunity. Suppose the deficits of the autism spectrum can really be turned around and harnessed into a strength. Another example, I thought I was having seen Charlie's social motivation. And that's such a strong driver of so much of his day, in my observations, I've really admired how your family have used that strength to engage in an activity and kind of sneaking in other learning using that motivation. And that's really how our teachers think about it as well, you find something that's going to motivate someone to to be involved. And then you might sneak in a bit of math learning, and then they, they're not realising they're doing this, because they're so meeting their needs to be social and to engage with others, and so on. So yeah, I think that's such a incredible strength to have a social motivation. So to use that to learn is just wonderful opportunity. I'm thinking as well about the involvement of external specialists and families with this question, because we're so proud of what we do. And it's all very evidence based, but we don't pretend to know everything there is to know about autism, and certainly not everything there is to know about an individual. So again, that partnership, working with families and external specialists is is really crucial to make sure that right supports provided. Another example I wanted to mention from a previous question was, when a student is having a difficult time managing their behaviour, we've got a structure called the complex situation review. And because like we chatted about earlier that the challenges and particularly around emotional regulation are unfortunately often inherent in the autism spectrum, as people try to cope with a society that's perhaps not built for their way of thinking. So in that process, we it's it's really just an intensive kind of case conference approach where we meet with families, at least monthly and external specialists, and really interrogate everything we're doing and the family how the family is working with the behaviour or the challenge, and make sure we're all on the same page. Because the so many individuals seem to fall through the cracks in other settings where their behaviour is so challenging, that they're almost written off and their ability to learn is massively sacrificed. And we don't want to work like that. We want to dig into how we're best supporting that flourishing and that and that learning opportunities. I think we think if we can't do this really, really well, who can we're autism specific. We've got a great ratio of staff. We've got an amazing parent community and good connections with external specialists. So the bespoke, personalised right support for these individuals means that our student outcomes are really really strong. Again, inspirational Sitting to speak. And again, I want to refer back to the fact that I'm listening to you as a parent, obviously, of a child on the autism spectrum. And I want to touch on the that comment that you made about the fact that there are challenging days, there are really challenging days. And I know we have them in our house a lot. And it's really interesting, when you mentioned Charlie out in the social setting, he, he never forgets the name, he'll go, my other children won't talk to people downtown, but he knows everybody's name, he'll go and have a chat. And people always come up to me and say, t, he's going so well, he's so great. He's such a great member of the community. And that's what they see of him. So they don't see the challenges necessarily, I guess people downtown have such a different perception of him because they see his strengths. He finds writing his name difficult. But these people don't know that because they see this really beautiful, strong part of his skill set. So it is really interesting to navigate all of that. And I also really like the fact that you, as a school and as a community don't rest on the fact that a child is presenting with some challenging behaviour, therefore, that's it. That's it, because you investigate, and you never give up. And that's the thing that I feel that parents will take out of this. When they're having those challenging days. They think, no, I'm not going to give up. We're going to work on this. And we'll work together. And we can we can, as a team produce the best outcomes. That's it. It's really amazing. So Megan, are there any other comments after this conversation that you want to add, just to build on your point around the team, I think that's that's such a great message to take away from for any parent who's new to diagnosis or new to school or in a school setting or changing settings, is we feel really passionate about creating a support network and fostering that support network for our families and our children. And as we've we've grown to have you 12, for the first time this year, that's become an even bigger priority for us to make sure there's a really strong support network. Because of the benefit of collaborating, which is obvious, you know, you you have rather have lots of experts in the room on an individual then then just one person dictating the plan. But also, it's a real really protective thing to establish for a child. So the more connections you can have with people who are ethically aligned to how you think about your child and about autism, and people to provide all sorts of different input is a real, great thing you're talking about with families. Emily, I think that's brilliant. The only other thing I crossed my fingers earlier to remind me to say was, there's an organisation called Positive Partnerships that some of your families may be in touch with already, but I couldn't recommend highly enough. They're really committed to being evidence based and only presenting ideas and concepts backed up by research. There's lots of free resources on there free online modules for families, for extended families, for specialists for kids on the autism spectrum. So dig into those resources as well. It's a great little hub. It's a terrific website. And that's a really good recommendation for the parents out there. Megan, I know you're very busy woman app. And I really appreciate your time today. I can't tell you how valuable these conversation has been to me, but no doubt the listeners. So I'm going to say thank you and let let you get back to your very, very important job. And hopefully we get to do this again. I would love to thank you so much, Emily, I really admire how you're working with to boost the outcomes for families, particularly at such a vulnerable time when the news diagnosis. So really grateful for the chat. Thank you. I loved my conversation with Megan today. As a parent of a child with ASD, it was great to be reminded of the fact that each individual on the spectrum have their own strengths and their own needs. And when these are catered for, that's when we see them flourish. I hope this conversation has been useful to you specifically for parents who have a child who was recently received a diagnosis of ASD, or possibly for parents who have a child who is transitioning into the school system. If you have questions, comments or want to revisit a topic that we spoke about today, feel free to jump on to my Instagram or Facebook page at MAMA road. I'd love to hear your feedback. Remember, I'm here to help you and every road starts with small steps. Until next time, bye