EP 63: School Attendance Challenges with Chrissa Wadlow

Episode 63

Join us this week as I am once more talking with the fantastic Chrissa Wadlow from Sunshine Support as we unravel the complexities of school attendance for neurodivergent children. 

From personal trauma to sensory overload, we analyse the reasons behind school avoidance and the essential trust between parents and children that must be preserved to prevent long-term psychological harm. We delve deep into the education system's outdated punitive measures surrounding attendance and the harsh interpersonal and societal impact on families they penalise.

We also remind parents of key legal protections for their children in school that they may not know about, like the fact that you do not need to provide medical proof of poor child mental health and the 15 day rule. By encouraging early recognition of individual needs and equipping parents with the knowledge to challenge systemic barriers, we aim to prevent disengagement and its far-reaching consequences for future generations.

Link to Sunshine Support
Mental health guidance - DfE

PDA Books:

Understanding PDA in Children – Phil Christie

The Educators Guide to PDA – Laura Kerbey

 Collaborative Approaches to Learning for Children with PDA – Ruth Fidler 

 PDA in the Family – Steph Curtis 

 PDA by PDA’ers – Sally Cat 

www.sendparenting.com

Transcript

Dr Olivia Kessel: 0:06

Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade. In this episode we will be continuing our discussion from last week with Chris Awadlo, warrior, neurodiverse mom and founder of Sunshine Support. In this episode we will be unpicking and exploring the topic of school attendance and avoidance and what your legal rights are as a parent. So welcome back, chris. It is a pleasure to have you back on the Send Parenting Podcast. Your story last week was so impactful and I know that our listeners really got a lot of value about what you shared and also what you're doing in the Sunshine Support.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 1:21

But this week we are going to tackle another topic which is really apropos in the news right now about school attendance, about school avoidance and what kind of our legal rights are as a parent. I mean, my daughter goes to a specialist independent school and I've been called up by the deputy head because she's not attending enough and I'm like, are you kidding me? And actually in my case she's been sick and sometimes she just needs a day off school because it's too much. You know what I mean and I'm okay with that. We have an agreement at least one or two days a term. If she needs to take a day off, she can take a day off. The world is not going to end, but you know, school system does think it's going to end. School system does think that you should be prosecuted. School system has a very different view on it. So I'm really excited to learn from you, for myself and for my listeners, to really understand where we stand, what our rights are as parents and what we can avoid.

Chrissa Wadlow: 2:22

Absolutely, and I think you know, going back to the reasons why a child might struggle to attend school, that is where we need to be placed in our focus as a system, as a society, because at the moment the focus is on the punitive, fines and punishments, but there is no research to support that works. There is research that shows that it works for a term because of the fear, but actually, long term, all that does is fracture relationships in the home, fracture relationships between home and school, and actually, if the relationships are all fractured, what is the outcome that we're achieving? Terrible, it's a terrible outcome. So actually, mental health disaster, absolutely. And what you tend to find is you know, you've got a parent who's received a fine unless, say, their child can't attend for mental health reasons.

Chrissa Wadlow: 3:18

Okay, because I'm quite well-versed with this one. First things first you kind of have a go at school Excuse me, A finding me because my child is too unwell and then they start to put the pressure on and you think, oh my God, I'm actually going to be in trouble here. So then you say to your child can you just try and get in for me, can you just try and get? And then the child is thinking you were meant to be my safe person. I thought I could trust you. Now you're backstabbing me and telling me that I'm not unwell. All this time you've been saying to me it's okay that you're feeling this way, it's okay not to be okay, let's have a duvet day, let's recuperate. Now, all of a sudden, you're pushing me into this burning building, as a lot of them call it.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 3:59

You know, and so we need to take that trust is broken, then yes, you know, there's a huge trust which is the most important thing you can have with your child.

Chrissa Wadlow: 4:07

Absolutely, and that can be. You know that stripping away of that trust is very, very traumatising for everybody involved in that and it can really have long lasting impacts. But if we take a step back and look at you know what is school. Let's call it school attendance difficulties. What are school attendance difficulties? Well, quite often they are, and they become established because the parent knows that they exist. The teachers know that they exist, these difficulties, and so does the child, so it's not alarming to anyone. It's not like oh, where did that come from? It's something that builds up over time quite often. Sometimes it can be very, very sudden and there are other reasons for that.

Chrissa Wadlow: 4:50

There's enormous amounts of reasons for any sort of school attendance difficulties, but we need to be looking at the why. So when we look at school attendance difficulties, it could be a child has experienced a one-off trauma, you know, a death in the family. That's really tricky. They want to feel connected to their family. They want to stay at home. It could be that they're being bullied at school. It could be that if we look at neurodivergent children, they find, in fact, one of the neurodivergent children we support helped us to develop quite a lot of resources around this because they described it as going into a burning building, because they said everything about that building makes my body feel like it's on fire.

Chrissa Wadlow: 5:37

I can't cope with the lighting. The lighting burns my eyes. I cannot cope with the smell. I don't understand why it has so many smells in a school, and if you think about it, it really does. Whether they're good or bad, they're all really different. Every bit of the corridor you go down, every lesson smells different. You know the layout of the classrooms. It can be good in one classroom, really bad in another. Thirty kids in a classroom, the hustle and bustle of corridors, particularly secondary school, doing that after every single lesson. The bells, the bells, yeah, the noise. You know you think of all of our sensory systems, and there's not just the five. You've got the inter-reception, pre-reception. That's why I couldn't get there.

Chrissa Wadlow: 6:20

But all of that I'm not on OT, I'm not a specialist, but when you're looking at all those things then they're going to become affected by the school environment. So actually that is considered by the body as a form of torture or abuse. And when children are put on a part-time timetable for that, it makes me laugh a little bit. If it wasn't so serious. I'd be hysterical Because we're saying, oh, what you're saying is oh, I appreciate that you don't want to do six hours in the burning building, burning building. What about an hour instead? Well, no, it's still a burning building.

Chrissa Wadlow: 7:02

You've then got communication differences, you know, and a lot of children. Just because they can speak and they look as though they're keeping up, it doesn't actually mean that their communication style suits whatever is happening in their peer group or in the classroom. So you've got a wide range of reasons that it could be. Like you said, if a child has got a physical disability, it could be that they're attending a lot of hospital appointments, it could be that they just can't manage it some days, and on mental health grounds as well, I mean in the workplace. I know where we work. We prioritise mental health. So if somebody is having a real tricky time, we will adapt what is happening in their work in order to meet where they are. And guess what?

Dr Olivia Kessel: 7:48

They're loyal, they work hard, they value where they work, they feel like they're part of a community, and that certainly doesn't happen in a school, and I probably what's also interesting is if we look in the commercial world where, you know, with airplanes, with hotel rooms, with you know they commercially try and will come up with, you know, solutions dimming the lights, you know. But we don't do any of that in the school. We just expect the child to adapt and suffer and that's okay, you know.

Chrissa Wadlow: 8:22

Absolutely the fact that you just mentioned that, if we look at, everybody says that the education system is archaic, but nobody ever goes into detail about that, and so it ends up that nobody listens. The government are not listening when we're saying this is not fit for purpose. They don't. I don't know whether it's that they don't care, I'm not going to speculate, but they don't understand what we're actually talking about and one of the reasons for that. So if we pick another industry so you've just said there about commercialized industries let's pick retail. So back 20-something years ago, when I started my journey in life as an adult, I started work at a very fantastic, well-known big chemist Boots the chemist, Absolutely loved my job there.

Chrissa Wadlow: 9:16

However, the training was absolutely phenomenal. So I do feel like that set me up for life. You know, the training was absolutely out of this world. However, was it neurodivergent friendly for me at the time? Absolutely not, Because even as a customer, if I come to this as a customer, I have to stand and talk to somebody I don't know at the checkout as I sign my name on the back of a receipt and then my name gets checked and then there's the pressure of, as my name worn off the back of my card, are they going to accept my purchase? Has it gone through? Oh, there's all this stress and a human is going to deliver this news to me Very, very pressurized.

Chrissa Wadlow: 9:59

We used to accept checks back in the day and if the card machine broke then you'd have a little manual card machine that would take over If we had returns. You know, somebody said all these nappies are a bit dodgy. We would have to return them and then we'd have to go through a full investigation writing down all these different things about the product and then we'd have to package it all up and it would go into the work. Everything was very manually done. The environment, it was a one size fits all. You know you come in boots is. Everybody remembers what boots look like. It looked in a certain way. It was always the same. Every store looked the same.

Chrissa Wadlow: 10:39

Now, fast forward to now. If I go into boots, I don't get served by a human. I don't have to wait to sign anything on a piece of paper. I pay with my watch you know it's a quick transaction and I'm out of there. I don't even need a receipt, Everything signed up via email. I have to take no paper with me. I'm nice and light. I don't have any bags. The only thing I've got is whatever I purchase, Everything is digital. Everything is neurodivergent friendly.

Chrissa Wadlow: 11:06

As somebody with ADHD, some people think that I love to socialize and I do. I do, but I do get quite stressed out by situations that I'm not in control of, and transactions at the till was one of them. I've really, really struggled. So, knowing that I have the option now to not even go into a shop, I can do it all online. It's a very adaptable world and I control how I buy something from boots. So we can see there are stark differences in those 20 years. We are now experiencing retail in a completely different way and if that had been overnight we would have all been like whoa, this is really different. But it's been done over time and gently so and we've all adapted to it and we all I would like to think we all much prefer it because it's our family needs. I mean last week I was talking about I have a very busy family. I'm a mum of four and I work, you know, insane hours, so doing my shopping online really helps me.

Chrissa Wadlow: 12:05

Now let's look at education. When my child goes to school, that education is identical to the education that I received. The textbooks are the same. The way that they teach is the same. It's still a class of 30. There's no deviation away from that.

Chrissa Wadlow: 12:19

So, yes, okay, we could make mainstream schools a lot more inclusive by changing the way that they are set up. But essentially, on the face of it, if we're looking at the generalised mainstream school, it's identical to the school that I went to, however many years ago that was several decades. It looks the same, it feels the same. A lot of the teachers are the same. My daughter goes to the same school as I did my sixth form qualifications in, and a lot of the teachers recognise her because of me. She looks a bit like me and so they're like oh, you must be Chris's daughter, yeah, and you're probably no offence teaching in the same way. They were actually very good teachers, the ones that she's got, but some of them are still stuck in those archaic ways, and you can see it because you can see the type of feedback that we are hearing from parents, which is archaic.

Chrissa Wadlow: 13:12

You know we're not going to change the way that we teach for the sake of one child. We get that all the time, or last week it was oh no, we don't do dyslexia screenings anymore because they don't, it doesn't exist. What, Okay, really bizarre things that we hear. We have to have a little giggle. But things have changed and society's changed. So our kids are used to shopping in the way that suits them, experiencing the world in the way that suits them, and also things like holidays. You know, you've got the sunflower lanyards, you've got the areas of the airports that are bespoken structured. Even going to our local shopping centre, they have a sensory room. Everything is geared up for the differences in society, apart from education.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 14:04

Yeah, where all our kids spend most of their time. Do you know I mean? It just boggles belief. Do you know what I mean it really does?

Chrissa Wadlow: 14:12

And how this is such a baffling scenario for politicians and people in power to get their head around. They're clever people. This is very new.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 14:24

And then we say well, you know what the you know the environment has to be good and fit for everybody. And you know what we're going to punish you if you don't send your child to there, no matter how much trauma we're causing you know it's on you as the parent to force them into that school, absolutely.

Chrissa Wadlow: 14:39

And I think one of the most damaging things to have come out recently was the Department for Education's campaign to get them into school. Yeah, publishing all those memes and pictures and stuff and we were being shared. They would be shared with us all over, but it was, you know, little Johnny, who are not a little Johnny. Johnny was feeling like he had a bit of a tummy ache this morning, but he got over it and went into school. Well, Johnny probably had a bit of anxiety this morning. Did anybody could have still gone to school? But did anybody approach that situation with the love and care and validation that Johnny needed for his poorly tummy?

Chrissa Wadlow: 15:15

But also, you know, one of the things that we do as adults is focus on well being. So they're constantly drilling into us. Go for all these checks at the doctors, go for your tests, Tell your, your, your boss, you know if you need a little bit of time out or, you know, have reasonable adjustments within the workplace to adapt to what your health needs are. But in school you just got to get in. Just get in and we'll sort it out when we get here. What they don't appreciate is we know that a child's brain is not going to function cognitively if they are feeling distressed when they go into school, and that distress can come from feeling physically unwell or emotionally unwell. But until we actually validate them and understand what's going on for them, they're not going to learn anything. So, yes, somebody said to me recently, sending a child to school in that sort of scenario is the same as just throwing marshmallows at my head and calling it eating. Yes, that is exactly it.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 16:17

And well, and then you send them to school and you know, if they are neurodiverse and they're having trouble, you know, accessing the curriculum, they're having behavioral outbursts because it's not meeting their needs, then we throw them into an isolation room or exclude them and we, you know, which we wouldn't be allowed to do in our homes, where they're safe, but at school, why not? Why not, you know, and so it's not, as you, as a parent, don't feel it's a safe place, really, you know, to send your child in when they are feeling that way, you know.

Chrissa Wadlow: 16:50

And again in the workplace. If somebody came to you and made a protected disclosure that they are mentally unwell, if they start to struggle and if that's like they've kicked off or whatever, they are protected. You can't just exclude them in the same way that school would. So why are we allowing it to happen in school? The laws are not matching up.

Chrissa Wadlow: 17:12

Fortunately, our children are protected by laws for exclusion, but headteachers don't understand them, and I've had this personal battle just recently where there is a piece of case law for anybody who wants to know more about exclusions. There's a piece of case or 2018, cnc versus a local school governing body where a child, basically, was being punished for a presentation that manifested from his disability. So I believe, reading the paperwork, he had PDA Pathological demands and he'd been physically abusive towards a member of staff and verbally abusive, and it's all there. You can see it online, you don't have to pay for access for it and it's fascinating stuff because it actually formed case law that if a child's behaviour manifests from their disability, then they're pretty protected. So you know, it's not a blanket approach, but it's something that really protects children in terms of disability, discrimination and the Equality Act. So but that, yeah, exclusions is a very specialist area and there's some brilliant books out there for parents to read as well on that.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 18:20

You'll have to. You know what we great Chris is, if you can give those to me and then I'll include them in links for people to access because that gives back some power where a lot of schools that are, you know, tough on crime, tough on school and you know, if you're struggling as a child, it's on the onus, is on the child to change to this tough on education behaviour policy and it's not possible.

Chrissa Wadlow: 18:47

And that's exactly what I mean. I think, if we go back to what I was saying about the reasons why we then have to meet the child there, what we can do is say the child is operating at this certain level, a level three or something, but we need them to be at a level 10. So we're going to meet them at a level seven and then berate them and punish them because they've got four levels missing. Well, that's not how life works and it baffles me. It baffles me that people who've studied child development and they've gone into this as a profession, as a vocation, and they don't understand those very basic things. So when we look at the why, it helps us to understand how we make that scenario better. Sometimes it is a case of building the child's resilience in certain areas to reintegrate them back in other times. It's just not going to work. It's not the right environment and understanding that is really, really tricky.

Chrissa Wadlow: 19:42

I do quite a lot of webinars on this topic and I've got quite a big course on it as well, where I talk a lot about the school climate. Now, the school climate is not just about how the school feels. It's about all of it, how it all functions. You know whether it's a connected community, whether children feel proud to be part of that school. Do they feel included? Do they communicate well with all staff, not just teachers, because actually we hear a lot about dinner staff and things like that as well. So it's all you know. Is everybody on the same page? Do they all feel connected? If staff feel connected and part of the community, it encourages the children to feel connected and part of the community. And by feeling connected you've got to appreciate where that child is coming from, where they're at. So it's that level of fairness, that level of equity that the children do feel, even if they can't word it in that way.

Chrissa Wadlow: 20:38

Things like the state of the school, the physical state of the school. Is it run down? We're seeing a lot of problems, obviously, with school buildings at the moment, but you know what is the physical state of the school, what is the physical temperature of the school. You know what are the sensory environments. Is it clean? Is it somewhere where everybody feels proud to be? And there's layers and layers and layers. There's five main parts of the school climate, but there's layers within it.

Chrissa Wadlow: 21:07

Things like ambition. Now the school might be super ambitious and the child might not be. So that's a mismatch. It could be the other way around, you know, and that's a mismatch. And I think, one of the illusions that presents itself when we say we've got autistic children, people assume that they're either super brainy or have no intellect whatsoever. I have no idea where this comes from. You know they all people assume that if they go to a specialist autism school, that they're there because they have low level of knee, low level of intellect, and it just couldn't be further from the truth.

Chrissa Wadlow: 21:45

One of our specialist educators at Sunshine Kelly. She ran a school that had autistic children, lots of them with the PDA profile, and she was head of the school and she encouraged them and empowered them and many of them went off to Oxford and Cambridge and you know. So it wasn't that going to a specialist school held them back. In fact it pushed them forward. So there's lots within the school climate and what we always say to parents is if you can fully understand that we've got free resources on our website to do with school climate but if you can fully understand the school climate by going in and looking at it yourself, you can almost assess it like a quantity surveyor or something, going in and doing it yourself, just having to walk around having a feel of the place. You can then go through things with your child and say how does it feel when the teacher speaks so quickly about maths?

Chrissa Wadlow: 22:35

I said this to my daughter the other day and she's got an ADHD profile and she said to me I understand it all, but I need her to say it twice or three times. But she thinks I'm stupid. And she says then she'll say you're not stupid, you shouldn't need this to be delivered to you several times. And she'll say it's not that I'm saying I'm stupid, it's that I'm not quite clicking with it the first time. So I said to her well, maybe we could ask for visuals, because then she's not having to say it yeah, that would work as well. That would work as well. Or some kind of a period yeah, exactly, just be an age where we've got so many different things to record on.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 23:11

So this, but no, that wouldn't be allowed in schools, would it?

Chrissa Wadlow: 23:16

Health and safety come out sometimes, isn't it? But I think that it is really, really important that we adapt the way that we're delivering things. But I think, going through that school climate with a child who's struggling to attend I appreciate that I'm using a very generic terminology here because you might have a four-year-old who's struggling to attend, but the most common age for fully established school attendance difficulties is age 10 to 11. So it's that year of them going up to and preparing to go up to senior school having that big jump, because it's so different. It's so different and I said one of my children has just gone up to senior school last September and she said she got her grades back from the first term and she's a September baby and always been top of the class. She just doesn't struggle intellectually at all. And she'd actually scored as bottom of the class and actually falling short of where she needed to be, so way below average. And so we sat down and she burst into tears and she said I have no idea how I've let this happen. And I said you haven't let it happen.

Chrissa Wadlow: 24:21

Let's have a little think about what happens when you move up to senior school. What are the similarities between the schools and she's like not many. Yeah, so that's what you've been focusing on. You've been focusing on processing the differences in the environment. Now that you're starting to get settled, you'll probably find those grades come back up and she feels so much more validated. But she started to feel tense towards the end of term. Understanding those things and delivering that kind of education to children is vital for them to understand the world around them and not feel judged. You know, she feels like their self-esteem. Yeah, yeah, she's got bags of that and I don't like it being knocked because she is really fabulously. I wonder where she gets that from. I love you. No idea, no idea at all, but yeah, so I think going through that school climate is the biggest piece of advice I can give. Someone is looking at that school climate.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 25:17

I imagine, like you know from what you're saying as well, that also it's realizing that if the climate isn't right, for whatever reason, then finding the right climates for your child and not having those stigmas of specialist schools being for the cognitively challenged in the world. Realizing that it's or you're, preconceived where you thought your child was going to go. I'm governor at an all-girls school and it would be where I dreamt my daughter would go. It would be the worst school ever for her. I had to let that go. I had to have a cry in the bathroom and let it go because you know what she would die there, ok.

Chrissa Wadlow: 25:58

Yeah, I get it, I absolutely get it. And I think one of the realizations I think as parents, is looking at that school climate. And number one can it be changed? Sometimes it can, but it's a big job. It's a really big job. Is it going to be done in time for your child? Probably not.

Chrissa Wadlow: 26:18

So you can highlight these things it might fall on deaf ears, I don't know, but all you can do is focus on your child and also focus on what's in your circle of control. You cannot control a school of 2,000 kids. You know that's a big ask for even the head teacher. So actually maybe we need to shrink what is surrounding the child. And I think one of the biggest things for everybody teachers and parents alike is when they get to that point of the process where they have to accept something different is needed and that this school is not going to work out.

Chrissa Wadlow: 26:53

Removing the ego is really hard. Removing that preconceived, like you said, my daughter's going to go to school, it's a good school. Removing that is really, really hard. And maintaining that there is no blame, because one of the things that we find is the blame game is enormous in school attendance difficulties. You've got the school system blaming the parent, the parent blaming the school, then the school having to go at the child, then the child blaming the school, then eventually the child blames the parent because they're like well, why are you not doing anything like that?

Dr Olivia Kessel: 27:35

You're supposed to protect me.

Chrissa Wadlow: 27:36

Yeah. And so there's huge amounts of blame that's circulating and research shows us that when we talk to the children, they say it's a problem with the school. But if you go into school quite often and you say the child is struggling to come in, they'll say there's a problem at home. However, if the child was clinging on to the school at the end of the day saying I'm not going home.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 27:59

I don't want to go home.

Chrissa Wadlow: 28:00

Don't send me home. It's horrible. There's like a burning building. They'd have child protection in there like a flash. So it's always home. Home always gets blamed. Whether it's a problem with school, problem at home, it's always home and parents that have blamed.

Chrissa Wadlow: 28:14

And these children are sort of dubbed as difficult to teach, difficult to reach. Well, no, it's not that case at all. It's that you've only been taught to teach in one way. These kids just need a different way. It's not difficult to find. They're not difficult to reach, they're not difficult at all. They're different. And we need to change that diff word from difficult to different. But yeah, so there's lots of reasons why.

Chrissa Wadlow: 28:43

And we have to do the digging, because the reason I focus on this is that it won't get better Even if you move to school. You're going to keep coming up with the same problems if you can't identify the needs. So I always talk about having like a three-part plan. So you look at the here and now, the short-term plan how are we going to get through this week? And it's about offering your child lots of validation and literally putting those doors up between you and school and going no back off. I will keep in touch with you, but also swallowing your pride a little bit as a parent and saying do you know what? They're really annoying me, but I'm going to have to keep them on side so that we can get through this and I'll just smile and wave and it'll be fine.

Chrissa Wadlow: 29:23

So, picking on that person that you have a good connection with, even if they're not the right person, and saying I get on really well with you. Is it all right if I just pin you a message and keep you updated? And quite often they'll go. Yeah, of course. So keeping them in touch with the school, but also focusing mainly on the child and also registering whatever you can with the health service, with your GP. Now, department for Education produced a brilliant piece of guidance last February Again, easy to find and I can give you links that states that you don't have to give medical evidence if your child is struggling with their mental health. A lot of schools have it written into their policies that they have to have evidence that your child is struggling with their mental health, but the guidance will trump that policy. So always look at the guidance and remind the school yeah, so you don't need that. And again, I can give you the links to that.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 30:14

And that's super important because with CAMHS and just getting any of the evidence is years three, four years. So it's a moot point. You can't get it as a, you can't help your child in the here and now. So that's yeah, that's very powerful.

Chrissa Wadlow: 30:29

Some GPs were finding that there was such an enormous demand for a quick like sick note for children that they're now starting to charge for that as a service. So some parents are being charged 60, 70 pounds for a letter just to keep the school off their back, but actually, if you look at the guidance, that's not needed. So in the here and now, all we can do, validate, validate, validate, look after our child, do what we need to do and keep them protected. Stage number two is how do we get them through the next couple of terms, and that's where we need to be doing a little bit more of sort of investigative work digging deep, going into the school ourselves, doing this school climate work and speaking to the person that we know there, taking our resource, because it's a brilliant resource. I normally have it printed off at the side of me, but you can print it off or you can order them through the website, but it's a great little resource and you can show this is what the research says and we quote the research on the resource and you can also say look, this doesn't come from me as a parent, I'm not making this up. This is actual stuff that people use to show the suitability between the child and the school.

Chrissa Wadlow: 31:38

Working on those things, but also working on, you know, let's understand the child's profile, can we get some assessments done, you know? Have we had occupational therapy? Have we had speech and language therapy? Have we had physiotherapy? Whatever the child needs? Educational psychology, have a little holistic view and if we've been really serious about it and we've not got one in place already, going forward for a long-term sealed deal, so to speak, getting that EHCP in place, requesting that is absolutely vital, because that way we're going to get the assessments and we can ask for the specific assessments to be done, undertaken, and then we, you know, in a perfect world, you get the child's needs assessed, they're documented, the provision is written. Well, it was your uncle. Great, wouldn't that be nice if that was that straightforward.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 32:26

But that's how it's meant to be.

Chrissa Wadlow: 32:28

But that way we've got a far more long-term, protective, legally binding document that is there with the child, which is the best way of doing it. But I think that, like I say, we have to remove egos from all of this, we have to remove pride, we have to work together. The key in all of it happening is and having some good outcomes is, remembering the child's at the middle of it, and so we have to work together as adults, even if we hate each other. We have to work together for the sake of that child, because the outcomes are never going to be very positive if there's like bickering and blaming going on. And as somebody who has done all of that, I can speak from experience. I got it really, really wrong, so don't do what I did. But yeah, in terms of the law, a lot of the law is on the child's side, you know. So the.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 33:20

But what's interesting is the disconnect between the law and then what is policy in schools, and sometimes the local authority actually trains the schools in terms of what they believe, which is not law. I've had some legal experts on this podcast who have highlighted that. So you, as a parent, really need to educate yourself about the law so that you can, and what their policies are at school, so that you can challenge them, and sometimes it's. You know why wouldn't the educators trust the local authority? And they don't have any. You know they don't need to understand the law, but you kind of have to understand it to be able to navigate it as a parent.

Chrissa Wadlow: 34:03

Absolutely. And if your child is out of school for 15 days and that doesn't have to be on the trot, but if your child is showing signs that they are needing more and more time off and that it's 15 days, so 15 days is the rule they have to provide another type of education. So parents don't know that. I know, I certainly didn't, and last week I was speaking about this and my daughter was out of school for 18 months. She wasn't provided with anything. Had I known then what I know now, she would have been provided with some kind of education.

Chrissa Wadlow: 34:31

So remember, you know that your child is still received. The school is still receiving funding for your child, whether they're there or not, so that funding still belongs to your child. Now we can't go in and sort of say, where is the funding? How much is it? I want it. You can't do anything like that.

Chrissa Wadlow: 34:46

But essentially the law says your child needs an education. So you know whether it's a physical ailment or mental health, emotional based difficulty, then they still. You know the law doesn't discriminate one against the other. It's on your side and again, this guidance will show you that. And if anybody needs any particular specific links to anything, they can contact us and we can show them. But it's fascinating how much children can receive it's in place, but nobody knows how to get it, nobody knows that it's available, nobody knows what the laws are. And of course, another big thing as well and I think this is really really important with the HCP, the assessment process, a lot of teachers are told by local authorities and therefore pass the message onto parents that oh, if your child's not in school, you can't have any HCP. That's a myth. They often then say well, if your child's not in school, we can't assess them, so they can't get any HCP.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 35:46

I was told that during COVID, because you know, yeah, that she had to be in school for at least a term.

Chrissa Wadlow: 35:54

It's strange, and you know, the COVID thing that highlighted a lot to us, because all the things that apparently we couldn't do, all of a sudden we could do in COVID.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 36:04

So you can't. And then they've gone back to ground zero again.

Chrissa Wadlow: 36:08

It's just we've learned nothing from the process. You know, I just recently saw now in our school policy that it says, you know, and I think this is blanket across the board with all schools with attendance, it will be marked as unauthorized if you decide to take your child away on an educational trip. And I'm thinking, if I wanted, like my children are really into World War II, they absolutely are fascinated by Anne Frank. So my husband and I said, you know, when they're ready, we could take them to Poland, we would go and visit Auschwitz, which is, you know, incredibly impactful. We could also go to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam and do the tour there and, you know, get to sort of grips and really get into the nitty gritty stuff of the stuff they've read and the stuff that they've watched.

Chrissa Wadlow: 36:51

Now that would be an unauthorized trip, yet they would learn so much more on that trip than reading a textbook at school. So it baffles me, because in COVID we were trusted as parents to deliver that education, but now we're being told no, even if it's just for a day and you're going to a museum, that's not considered an education because you're not a viable educator, Regardless of whatever your title may be. And I just find it all incredibly. Number one it's offensive, but they're not going to ever listen to offensive because it's emotional. I just think it's absolutely bonkers. It doesn't add up its inconsistent.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 37:27

And also like there's a rule for them and there's a rule for us as parents. You know I recently my daughter's school went on a ski trip during the first week of term, for the first week, because it's cheaper right, it's cheaper to go when it's not school holidays. So you know, the kids that didn't go on the school trip went to school and then you know they all got to go. You know, were they getting calls about their attendance, like I was. You know my daughter didn't go on the ski trip. You know, shouldn't she get like five free days extra added to her net attendance score Now hit the critical.

Chrissa Wadlow: 38:01

Absolutely Well. We all supported the teachers when they went on strike last year and my children were affected because they had to be educated at home. They weren't educated at home, not in the curriculum. I did my bit with them but they weren't educated in the way that they set out. But you sort of think I said at the time what would happen for the children. You know, the teachers are stepping up and they say our needs are not being met, for whatever reason. Okay, some were saying it was financial, some were saying it's the terms and conditions. Whatever their needs are not being met, every single one of them different. Our children are not attending school because their needs aren't being met. Do we get to strike, you know? And I organized some strikes and ended up amalgamating them into somebody else's strike process as well, so that we could actually make a stand and stand on the council steps but nobody listens.

Chrissa Wadlow: 38:53

Our children, I mean we've seen in the last couple of weeks where we've got local authorities standing up and saying why are these children all of a sudden popping up everywhere? They're such a drain on our resources and some people have had to step down from their jobs as MPs because of it and you sort of think, but that's how you really feel, isn't it? That's how you feel we're a drain on society. Yet they're happy to celebrate these children when they achieve something. So, you know, if we have our little Rolls Royce is very local to me, so we have a lot of autistic engineers nearby. They're all celebrated because guess what? Rolls Royce brings a lot of everything to the city A lot of people, a lot of money, and it's all down to money. And so those autistic engineers are really celebrated, but when they were in school they weren't counted, you know. And their children now? Because, of course, guess what autistic adults have autistic kids and they marry autistic people and have more autistic children.

Chrissa Wadlow: 39:56

Absolutely, absolutely, and so you tend to find that those children now aren't having their needs met. But yet if they got into Rolls Royce and made the next big engine for some kind of airbus, then they'd be celebrated, and we need to stop that. We need to be looking at individuals, and I hope that the impact that we're making now as parents will impact the mental health system later on. I'm hoping that you know there won't be such a drain on the mental health system because we're doing the work now. The criminal justice system is another one, because you know you watch any of the An education is a pipeline to the prison system.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 40:34

Do you know what I mean? We cause that problem?

Chrissa Wadlow: 40:37

Yes, we do, we do, and this is why we're trying to get to that root cause and prevent it from happening. And you know one of the things I always say with school attendance difficulties the longer it goes on, the longer it will go on. So the longer a child is out of school, the longer they're out of school, out of college, out of uni, out of life, out of employment, and guess what? The same happens to their children. I was sat on a school governing board and I was asking about one particular child who was at zero attendance and I said you know, what can we be doing to support that child? Does anybody have eyes on them? You know what's going on? And one of the responses I received was well, their locals, his dad was the same, and that was it.

Chrissa Wadlow: 41:23

Nobody wanted to break that cycle. So, of course and I see that that's like red rag to a bull for me I'm like let's break this cycle. I can't wait to break this cycle, but it does. People don't realize that the longer a child's needs are not met and they feel a burden on society this is a little trickly trail that we're going on here the longer that that happens, the worse they feel their self-esteem hits the ground. They can't do things then. So it's gone from they were able to, but not having their needs met, to that they're physically and mentally not able to do things. And then, yes, okay, they could look like a drain on a society, but had we gone in early on, that would never have happened. So, yeah, something I'm very passionate about, ha ha ha.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 42:09

Well, I think you know it's been really valuable and we'll have the resources for all of parents, if there's top. If there were top three tips that you could give to parents who are maybe struggling out there with attendance, what would be the top three things that you would say to them?

Chrissa Wadlow: 42:23

I would say document everything. So get a diary that is just for this topic. Document everything, absolutely everything, including who you've spoken to about things and any action plans, everything. Get this anecdotal diary set up. So that's number one. Number two arm yourself with the law and all the guidance, because without that you are not gonna stand a chance against this system at all. And number three look after yourself, because you cannot care for your child, you cannot fight the great fight if you're not looking after yourself. And so you know, wellbeing doesn't have to be expensive, it doesn't have to be luxurious, it can just be making sure that you get that time to have a coffee and peace and quiet in the morning. You know whatever it is to meet your needs and understand your wellbeing, your own wellbeing, and where that is at. They are my top three tips.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 43:19

Those are great tips. And then you know your Sunshine Support is also an area where parents can go to get more information and support as well and not feel so alone. Because for those who haven't listened to the first episode that we did last week, you run maybe. Let me just tell a little bit about the Sunshine Support and how it could help parents who are struggling with this right now.

Chrissa Wadlow: 43:40

So Sunshine Support was set up in 2017 and we have a lot of specialists within the team. So we've got specialist educators, we've got a legal team and lots of supporting people around that Nearly all of us are either send parents or we are the send kids who grew up despite the system, and so we have that lived experience to be able to offer empathy and validation, along with the expertise that we have as well. But we offer lots by way of webinars, courses, on-demand courses. We've got like a little Netflix style channel where it's, you know, like a subscription based channel, but we also offer advocacy and also a nice safe space, online or in person, to come and have a chat with us so you can offload, have a cry, have a whinge, scream and shout and then feel ready again for the fight.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 44:37

I think we all need one of those in our life. You know you need to find the people that you can do that with. You know whether that be friends, family or your dog, you know. So we just find in your tribe.

Dr Olivia Kessel: 44:49

Well, thank you so much for doing these two-part series. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the Send Parenting podcast. Thank you for your time. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening Send Parenting Tribe. If you're enjoying listening to the podcast, please rate us in your preferred platform so we can continue to reach the ears of other parents out there, wishing you and your family a calm week ahead.