SEND Parenting Podcast

EP 142 Saying yes until she failed changed everything

• Dr. Olivia Kessel

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Burnout has a way of making even the smallest task feel impossible. We open with a lifeline for parents raising neurodivergent children, then sit down with campaigner and founder Agnes Agyepong to trace how postnatal depression and isolation became the spark for two powerful vehicles of change: the Glow Mama Awards and a research-led movement tackling maternal and SEND inequalities.

Agnes shares the surprising role social media played in her recovery—authentic posts, wry humour, and micro-moments of solidarity that made her feel seen. That insight grows into Glow Mama, a people’s choice awards platform celebrating the creators who keep mothers going at 3 a.m. From there, Agnes dives into the Black maternal health crisis and the environmental factors that stack the odds against families long before labour begins, culminating in the Black Child Clean Air Report and cross-sector partnerships. The throughline is clear: these are public health problems that show up in clinics, classrooms, and on our streets.

We dig into SEND inequity with lived experience. Agnes talks about being treated with suspicion when her son was self-harming, becoming a school governor to be heard, and the way adultification bias and rigid behaviour policies fast-track exclusions before support arrives. We challenge the outdated, industrial model of schooling and argue for personalised education that works for every brain. Practical guidance runs throughout: why a Year 3 screening won’t secure legal protections, how an Educational Psychologist’s report unlocks exam access and durable support, and how to build an evidence trail that proves whether a school can meet need.

If you want clear next steps, we’ve got them: back petitions so policymakers see the data, write your MP so SEND rises in local triage, connect with specialist groups for Education Other Than At School pathways, and join community networks that share tactics without gatekeeping. Neurodivergent thinkers are not problems to be fixed; they are the innovators we need. Subscribe, share with a caregiver who needs hope, and leave a review to help more families find real tools and real change.

Join our growing community of Warrior Mums inside the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station

— your space for support, connection, and calm.

Dr Olivia:

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. You've read the books, you've tried the strategies, you've held it together when it felt like everything was falling apart with your child. But lately you feel like you're running on fumes, and it feels like your patience, your energy, and even your hope as a mother are slipping away. You're not failing, you're just burned out. That's why I created the ADHD Warrior Mom Recharge Station, a space designed to refill your energy, rebuild your confidence, and give you the tools to support your ADHD child. As a founding member, you'll receive a one-on-one private coaching session with me, Dr. Olivia, to help you get the most out of your journey. You'll have access to weekly group coaching, monthly Q ⁇ A's with ADHD experts where you can ask your questions and self-care sessions. But most importantly, a community of moms who truly get it because they're living it too. You do not need to carry this alone anymore. It's time to recharge and reconnect and rise again. To join, go to www.sendparenting.com forward slash join, or click on the link in the show notes. In this episode, I am joined by the incredible Agnes Ajupong, founder of the Glow Mama Awards and Global Black Maternal Health Group. Agnes turned her own struggles with postnatal depression and also her struggles with the SEN system into powerful movements for change, from celebrating mothers to influencing parliament. Today we'll be exploring her personal journey, the inequalities in SEND, and what we can do as a community so every child can thrive. And super excitingly, you can also hear Agnes speak live at the Recharge and Connect Send Parenting Summit, which is going to be in Henley on Thames on November 11th. Details towards that are also in the show notes. So welcome Agnes. It is such a pleasure to have you on the Send Parenting podcast today. And I'm super excited that I'm actually going to be meeting you in person in Henley on November 11th for the recharge. And Connect Summit. It's good, you know, I mean, gosh, to see people in actual in the flesh. But this is like a little taster of kind of your experiences. And I have to tell you, you are so inspiring to me because you have taken some of your darkest moments in your life and you've turned them into positivity and inspiration, not just for yourself, but for others. And I think that's a huge lesson that all of us can take. So I am really looking forward to exploring your story with our listeners because you went through quite a journey with postnatal depression and three young kids. And then that led you to founding Glow Mama and looking, you know, creating Global Black Maternal Health Group. Tell us a little bit about that journey.

Agnes :

Yeah, so it was really, really um challenging. Just motherhood. I feel like everybody prepares you for the baby, but nobody prepares you for the new version of yourself that comes after that, right? Um, and so I really struggled with that, but I didn't know I was struggling because nobody was really talking about it. Um, so I really uh got to one of my lowest ebb, um, and I put a trigger warning for anybody listening, but to the point where I was pregnant and suicidal. And that was a real wake-up call for me because normally I'm the life of the party, I see myself as a lifestyle and so forth. And I thought, wow, if I could feel like this, first of all, imagine all the other um women who um who are going through this and we don't know each other. Um, but equally, I need to get well for the sake of my children. Like that was really, really important. Um, and so I self-medicated, and I would say self-medicated on social media.

Dr Olivia:

Which is such an anomaly, you know. Like most people, like when they watch social media, it sucks the life out of them, you know. But you took it a completely different take on it.

Agnes :

I self-medicated because I didn't really have anybody that was speaking about um uh maternal mental health. This was like circa, so I've had children in 2012, 2017, and 2018. Yeah, so just for context for your listeners. And so around that time, I didn't really hear anybody talking about maternal mental health, um, prenatal or post. A lot of actually I did hear the term like postnatal depression, but also um having that kind of depression anxiety during pregnancy. And I feel like we don't even talk about that as much because I was pregnant carrying my baby and how I felt during pregnancy. Um, and so because I couldn't have, I didn't really have anyone to talk to, I kind of, you know, was spying on everyone on social media, you know, scrolling down people's pages at 135 weeks in, trying not to double tap and all of that kind of I was a big FBI and I was just seeing all these other mothers and all these other women from all different backbones, from all across the world, taking motherhood and really just being authentic with it. Yeah, so I'm not talking about the kind of perfect archetypal type motherhood, but people who were really just sharing their authentic stories on social media, and that really inspired me.

Dr Olivia:

So, were these stories like if you could describe them, were they stories where like mums were struggling, or were they stories where mums were achieving it?

Agnes :

Do you know what it is? It was just it was little things. So sometimes I'd see a mum, and you know, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but she literally looked like she had like 10 children and she's baking a cake, and I'm like, I need to not even get out of bed with my free, the heaviest woman is, she's all got a type for baking cakes, right? Or I might see another mum and she's just making jokes out of things, so she might be like, you know, um try to leave the house and how the baby's like pooped and there's poop all down the back, and it wouldn't relate to that, and for me, whereas when it was all in my head, that felt like a really big thing, like I just wanted to leave the house and how the baby boo and all, you know, watching this other mother maybe like just make a joke out of it, yeah, and find humour in it, that helped me to feel seen. So it wasn't like people were doing these big, grandiose type statements of I'm really struggling and that's it, but it was people just doing a little micro, I don't know, aspect of their life, and me seeing that and seeing that this is a like wow, I can you can do it. Um, and other people having groups like motherhood groups, because most of my friends hadn't had children around that time, people that I'd grown up with. Um, I didn't, where do I go with my babies? You know, I I still want to listen to Beyonce and say, I don't want to just talk about pampas and nappies. And so I started seeing other people create like brunches and lunches and so forth, and I was like, oh, I can not only am I on the screen, but I can actually go to these places. And so I had this idea to create something called glow mama, and for context, glow mama was my affirmation. So whenever I used to feel down, and I'm talking about, you know, seeing the sky, the sky is blue, and I'll just start crying. There's no reason for me to cry, but anything would trigger me. I would say to myself, glow mama, glow mama, meaning keep glowing. Come on, come on, Agnes, glow, glow, glow. Like I was talking to myself. And when I felt a little bit better, I said, I'm gonna create an online platform for all these mums who, unbeknownst to them through their content, are inspiring other mothers like me to keep on glowing. Because that's what I that's what I felt. And that's how the Glow Mum Award started. We had eight categories. Funniest Mama was in there because you know, I had all these mums that were making me laugh, and everybody was like, How can you have a category called Funniest Mama? Like, that's a bit, which is actually eight years on, it's our most popular category. Um we started with eight, and now we've got like over 20 nomination categories, and it's just expanding and growing, and it's now the largest award for um mums on social media.

Dr Olivia:

Wow, and do people uh do they do you put yourself up for an award, or does someone else put you up for an award? How does it work?

Agnes :

So when I it's really interesting because when I first started, obviously I had a you know um I'm a mum of three very small children, so I had no money, no budget, no nothing. I had a phone, my laptop wasn't even working. Yeah, it's one of those laptops that you press A and then you had to look at it and wait five minutes for the A to appear on the screen. Yeah. Um, and so at the time I said I need a really easy way for mums like me who are overloaded, who didn't need anything quite big and grandioso to be able to nominate. Um, so we had the philosophy. Uh I say we, that was me.

Dr Olivia:

Me myself and I.

Agnes :

Yeah, me myself and I, my different personalities. Um, we we um created uh it was a platform, it was kind of looking at kind of X Factor and Britain's Got Talent type thing, and it was like you nominate, you vote, you decide. That was like the mantra. Okay. Um, and so initially you nominated by sliding into the DMs, that's what I said, because I didn't want people to know I couldn't afford a website. So that was at that time, we've we've grown a lot since then. But it was you nominate, and then once we had the nominations come through, the people with the most kind of nominations and so forth went on to vote to the voting stage. Okay, and then at the actual awards was when you now found out who won the different categories.

Dr Olivia:

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant and amazing to just do it, you know, while you're still managing those three children as well. Yeah, yeah.

Agnes :

And you know, it's so interesting because you know, I know there's this saying, like, you know, when you have your babies and your babies their whole life and so forth, but I actually don't subscribe to that. And what I mean by that is I need to have a part of me that still felt seen and heard and you know, validated outside of that. And what Glow Mama gave me was that. So when I'm breastfeeding in the middle of the night, I'm trying not to move so that the baby doesn't wake up and I'm tiptoeing out, you know, and so forth. That phone in my hand to say, you know what, let me make an asset, you know, or a social media post and so forth, that kept my that part of the brain that was just for me, that was nothing to do with the kids alive. Um, and so yeah, I feel like that helped me to actually get out of that quagma that I was in.

Dr Olivia:

And that darkness that you were in as well.

Agnes :

Very, very dark, dark mode, yes.

Dr Olivia:

And I think you probably have have helped and continue to help a lot of mamas who are in that kind of situation to look at life a bit differently.

Agnes :

Well, I well, I hope so. I think when I did the first awards, I I I I can't have anything like just feel the fear and do it anyway. And I think we spoke about that offline.

Dr Olivia:

I I say this actually, you have inspired me, and I think you've got to tell the listeners about this because I say this to myself because you know, I'm doing this live event in Henley, I'm scared I haven't done it before, and I I use what you said to me. I'm gonna keep going until I fail at it. And I think that's brilliant. So, yeah, share with the listeners because you said it much better, but you play in my head.

Agnes :

So when I started Global, because of how low I was and feeling um, you know, suicidal and so forth. For me, that was like the lowest I could ever be. I didn't see any lower than that. I had this thing and where I said, I'm gonna walk into a season of saying yes, yeah, um, until I fail. Yeah. Because it's that thing of, you know, what's the worst that can happen? I'm already, I feel so low that I'm suicidal with my baby who I love inside of my womb. Yeah. So there is no worse a failure for me at that point than that. Yeah. So I need to start saying yes to things and yes to things and yes to things until it fails. Now I'm trying to say no to things because my ear. But it was that power of the positive energy that when you start saying yes to things, even when you don't know how it's going to work out, perfection needs to get in the way of saying yes to things. Because I would think, well, this is not like this, and you know, I haven't got that, and what if it looks bad? But actually, anybody that's ever built anything has had things that were not perfect. We might not even know that it's not perfect or there was mistakes here, but that but the the success is predicated by your failures and learning from them, yeah. Right? So that that's I said enough with failure, basically, and knowing that failure is the route to success. And actually, when you when you do succeed, you don't look at those things as failure, you look at them as learning, learning curves. And that's what I found with Glow Mama and obviously the other organization that I then went on to build.

Dr Olivia:

Yeah, tell us about the other organization as well, because yeah, it you you you have gone from success to success, you really have.

Agnes :

Thank you so much. So so for so from doing Glow Mama, um, and kind of I'll kind of piggyback off what you said, and then obviously I went off on a tangent. Um, when you were asking about saying about so many women feeling inspired. So when we did these first awards, it was um an organization that basically gave us their space as a like as a charitable type, um, because I was like, I ain't got no money, please. We're trying to help the moms, we're trying to help the mummies, like be good. So, but when we when we did that um and we announced the winners, women came up and started crying, and their speeches really, really moved me. And I remember having um uh another friend there who's a b businessman, and he said, Agnes, I don't think you understand what you are creating here. Marketers, brands, and so forth, they be big organizations create products, but they cannot get people to follow an emotion towards that. In what you've created, it means so much. You're onto something here, well done. And from there, I think that's when I started understanding how important Glow Mama was, but also how much other work there was to be done. So, Glow Mamma, as I said, is a People's Choice Award. You nominate, you vote, you decide, and what we do is we kind of facilitate that process. But something that was also going on around that time, um, I shouldn't say going on, it's been going on for a very long time, but something that I became aware of was the black maternal health crisis. And that was um here in the UK, and then I found out about what was going on in America and then global, and for your listeners that may not be aware, so this was around 2019-2020, black women were five times more likely to die in pregnancy than white women, twice as likely to experience a stillbirth, um miscarriage, you know, a whole host of other reproductive health issues, postnatal depression, which obviously I I had experienced. Um, and in America, it's it's it's a myriad because in some states it's up to ten times more likely, um, in in some states, especially in the southern states. And that really um that really shook me. It was very shocking because my third child, I experienced care that was woefully inadequate. Um, obviously, I had my own kind of depression in pregnancy and so forth, but I never once had thought that that would have been because of the colour of my skin. You know, I'm born and raised in Southeast London. I would say, like, you know, I used to have friends who were Italian, who were European, who was Irish, who was, you know, that was just London, you know, and it was it was great because you know, go to one friend's house having Chinese food, you go to another friend's house, you have Italian food, they come to over to mine having joloff, like it's London best place, you know. I'm friends with you, but I'm really friends with your mama because of the food that I'm gonna have when I go over to her house, right?

Dr Olivia:

So about the food.

unknown:

Exactly.

Agnes :

We're all being cheeky together and so forth. So when you kind of grow up in an environment where there is really, really diverse, you're not thinking then that when we all now go off to have children, that me who's born and raised in the same country, being as cheeky with you, with you know my whole network, growing up, I'm gonna be more likely to experience anything. Yeah, and that was working. So I set up another an another organization which I wanted to be focused specifically on at that time, Black Maternal Health, called Global Black Maternal Health. And that was a research-led organization that was about putting research back into the hands of black communities as leaders and change agents, but looking at uh not just what happens in hospitals but the environmental factors that contribute to black maternal health inequalities. Um I was really, really, really intrigued that you know, you don't just rock so some of the leading causes of death at that time were things like cardiovascular heart disease and so forth. And I said, you don't get cardiovascular heart disease in nine months, you know, like this is not like what's going on in the communities that are making us more likely to enter pregnancy thicker, right? So we produced something called the Black Child Clean Air Report, which was a quite um a big report. Um at the time I didn't know it was going to be that big, but it was a report that um basically looked at the experiences of black women towards air pollution um and just what their knowledge was around that. Um we were endorsed then by the Mayor of London, um, we were one of 10 organizations that was also um endorsed by Beyoncé's Be Good Foundation, and so when Beyoncé came to do a renaissance tour, um, and a whole host of other, like the um Royal College of Spectrum in Gynecology and so forth, kind of just endorsing and saying actually this is a really important factor that we don't look at that women are entering into pregnancy. This is not just a maternal health issue, this is a public health issue, right? Um, but from there we had to change our name. So from global black maternal health, we've now expanded to global child and maternal health because we started doing work around send, send equity, um, and we started expanding our work globally. So, again, saying yes to things, I was like, oh, let me just do this one project. Every minute it was like, okay, well, yes to this, and yes to that, and yes to this. And now we have Glow Mama, um, which is we're about to enter our eighth year, um, and Global Child and Maternal Health, which is a research-led organization that's produced two major reports um and worked with a host of different organizations in the UK and internationally, that is about um about equity, basically.

Dr Olivia:

And that's that is so well said. And you know, your your life is just one yes, I think now. And part of the reason that you went into send, I think, is because of your own experience with your children, which a lot of my listeners and your own experience with yourself as well. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey with your daughter, yourself, your son, how you've become a neurospicy mom like the rest of us? Neurospicy.

Agnes :

And and you're right, and I and I really want that that's again to what we were talking about about saying yes until you fail. Um, and then you get an inbox like mine, and then you're like, uh. But everything I've done, as you can hear, so Glow Mama was about my own kind of postnatal, and that's become a that that's become a national uh platform. I say I don't even I don't even own it anymore in a sense that it's it's it's the public now. Um Global Um Black Maternal Health, which is now Global Child and Maternal Health, um, you know, the Black Child Clean Air Report, that was rooted in the fact that my daughter's asthmatic and she got really sick. And um at that time I didn't know about environment, air, pollution, and all of that kind of stuff. And what had happened was I found out that you might know little um Ella Deborah Kissett, she's basically the first person in the world that had air pollution linked as the cause of death, and I lived in the same borough as her in London, southeast London. So either that work in terms of maternal health, I said if this is what's gonna happen to a child, my daughter's sick, being sick as well, what can happen in uterine? So that's how my whole kind of interest in environmental um the environmental lens and maternal health kind of converged. Equally, again, with my children, so saying yes, um, I have two out of three of my children um have a diagnosis of dyslexia, um, autism, and and another one's waiting for an ADHD um kind of profile specimen, sorry. And again, all of the that whole process was first of all very exhausting, and I think every single one of your listeners will be like, you know, we we have the book. But also, so with my son, um I would say one of the biggest reasons that I kind of really pushed forward for him, because I thought my son would get taken away from me, and my my fear was social services. And I say that because from when he was about one to he started really severely banging his head, and to the point where like he literally had a permanent kind of like unicorn type thing on his head. Um and the age difference between my two youngest children is is is 18 months. So there I would be going to nursery, I'd be holding one, sort of drop my daughter off. She's like in year one, so they're still very young children, and the nursery would always say, Oh, so where were you when he was banging his head? And where, you know, like always asking me these kinds of like in in suspicion. It never was like, you know, like I was coming like, How can you help? Always thought in a very like suspicious way. And you know, to be fair, with three children, I did probably look like the hell. I was not turning up looking cute, I can tell you that for free. Yeah, so they're probably making a judgment of me, tired mum, carrying one, like but it is sad that they're going that way before they're thinking. And that's what I'm gonna get to, and that is exactly that point, right? Um, asking me the questions, not in a I did not feel that that was coming from a position of helping me, from a position of stereotype and judgment. Yeah. So um, once they started asking me that a few different times, and like, mmm, and I had learned that you know, when they're asking those questions, they usually have to go and do a report at the end of the day. Is there any safeguarding concern and so forth? Interestingly, at that same time, they had a um like a voting for school governor. So I ran to go and put my name down and I became a school governor.

Dr Olivia:

You can't beat them, join them.

Agnes :

Join them because I was thinking, like, obviously, I'm tired.

Dr Olivia:

I'm tired, I'm looking like I mean you got all this going on, but hey, you're gonna become a governor now as well.

Agnes :

Because it was a bit like um, I'm gonna quote a powerful um philosopher called Jay-Z, allow me to re-introduce myself. Like that was really what it was, yeah. So when I became a like, they were shocked, I remember when it was like, oh, Agnes, uh, you know, I don't want to say my son's name, but so-and-so's mum is the like parent cavernar, and I'm like, hello. Um, and they very quickly then started understanding that whatever perceptions they had had of me, obviously meeting me in that level, they they kind of understood, but that changed a lot of things because it meant that um they started coming to me to my pediatric appointments, like in a helpful way, so that we had a joined up approach between what's going on at home, what's happening obviously in nursery and so forth. We started working together. But that really incented me that look at what I had to do in order to be seen, and that could have gone a very awful way for me. You know, we all know as parents, if you go to a doctor's, what's the first thing they say? Are you known to social services? It's the first thing that they say to you. Yeah. Now I'm not saying that social, you know, social services actually can be helpful to some but I at that point, the way that I was being questioned, I did not feel that I was being, I could have been referred for helpful reasons. I thought that it was more from a place of judgment. And how often was it? Child safety instead of child safety, exactly, as opposed to like, you know what, maybe this mum is tired, and so for obviously once they started coming to appointments, they started realizing that my son literally could be talking to you like this and then just start banging. So by the time I've got him, he's already would have banged his head about five times, unless I'm permanently holding him, you know. There's nothing I can there's nothing I can do. Um but that became a class issue for me, it became a race issue for me, it became an issue of migrant parents who don't have the same agency because you know, even being a school governor and having time to go to meetings, that's a power and privilege. At that time, I was a for want of a better word, an unemployed mum. I had time to be able to go, but some parents might not have the time to go.

Dr Olivia:

How many parents, because their children are displaying signs, have been referred to social services as opposed to being supported from the from the institution, and also getting the the kind of the diagnostic assessment that's needed to understand why the child is having these problems. You're not getting towards the problem.

Agnes :

You're you're we're not getting toward we're not getting towards the problem. And it's funny because the teacher that kept on kind of looking at me and asking these questions, by the time I left, we became like, you know, he even said to me and said, You know what, Agnes, um, I really admire the way you've advocated. I've learned so much from you, you know, and so forth. I became a case study, but look at what I had to do for you to learn so much. But then it wasn't about me. So I created the in the area that I um I lived in, it's a very kind of very ethnic, heavily like an ethnic minority, migrant area, you know, in under kind of social deprivation indexes, it would say, you know, from a very socially deprived area and so forth. And I was just really looking at, I can really, really see how a lot of these parents are being failed by a system. We all know early years, um identifying a need early is the most important thing. But actually, a lot of parents are being criminal criminalized at that process, and the parents themselves don't know. Maybe if you're a migrant parent, maybe you've come over from even Europe, you don't we don't even need to go as far as Africa and and so forth yet. But even from Europe, you don't know the British education system. You don't know um how you need to see a pediatric and an educational psychology and so forth. Even that knowledge is is one that you only find out as you're going through. It's not something that you you're not given a booklet when you're when you have to make it.

Dr Olivia:

You probably don't even know what neurodiversity is. I mean, I know I speak for myself. I'm I you know I lived in England before I became an American accent-speaking person. Came back here. I had no idea. The school didn't tell me. I had no idea. I didn't know what neurodiversity, I mean I was just like I was dyslexic and I didn't even understand what neurodiversity was because I hadn't really connected those two points together. But you know, so you can imagine someone who's new to this country, language is a barrier, worrying about getting kicked out of the country, the general feeling towards immigrants in this country.

Agnes :

Immigrants at the moment. Exactly, exactly. And then you can imagine people who actually are on zero-hour contracts. Maybe they don't have time to um to kind of, you know, you're just dropping your kids off, getting to running to work and picking them up. So I learned a lot by being um a school governor. I remember one meeting to kind of speak to your point there, they were doing an exercise and they were giving um free case studies. And one of the case studies was about uh what if you see a parent that kind of comes in, they never kiss their child at the gate and they always kind of rush off. And it was um and I it was very interesting the answers that a lot of the senior leadership were giving, and it was like, you know, yes, they would make a note of that down and they would be quite concerned and so forth. And I I I made sure I spoke last. And I said it's really interesting that you all say that because my mum was that woman, and my mum was that woman because she was a cleaner and she had to drop me off, and she her worry was about being on time to all the places that she had to be on time. Didn't mean she didn't love me, but there is a power and privilege to be able to even stay at the school gate when your child is having a tantrum for another half an hour and say, you know what, I'm gonna stay with, you know, I'm gonna stay with the kids for a little bit longer because you haven't got somebody that's gonna sack you from your workplace, yeah. And obviously, if you're in areas that are very like socially deprived and people and a majority of your children's parents make up that kind of cohort, you as an institution need to know that, yeah, because then you won't misread those signs as something else, or I'm not saying that you should completely ignore those signs, but you will have context to what is actually happening. And then if your child has got a send need, you might be thinking, well, look, you know, this child um has challenges transitioning and the parent has to has to go off. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't talk to the parent about that, but you might it's good to understand that actually the the parent is trying to really navigate a child who may be displaying some sort of sensory need and making sure that they have a roof over their head and and understanding that context. So as a result of that, we had done the Black Child Clean Air Report. We launched Black Child Send, which was a kind of a reset, well, not kind of it was a reset that was looking at the experiences of Black Heritage children, their parents, around access and send support. And we spoke to both professionals and parents, you know, and the results of that was was startling, um, not surprising, but even professionals had said that parents from black and ethnic minorities, they as professionals thought they were being treated differently, you know. Um, and so for me, it was learning that the system is broken for everyone. So I'm not here to say to any of your listeners that there is um there is a good system and people are um experiencing great care. That is not what I'm saying, and I want to say it a bit louder just in case anybody is picking that up. I'm not saying that this is um send is a black issue. I'm saying that the system is broken for everybody in the UK, and we're feeling that up and down the country. But what we do know from an equity issue, just like the women's rights movement, that is men are being felled in the in the job place, then by default, women are gonna be felt even worse. Yeah?

Dr Olivia:

Yeah, like worse is it it's even worser. And I mean, even even as far as like kids of colour are are being diagnosed incorrectly by clinicians being diagnosed incorrectly and how behavior is being pleased.

Agnes :

Yeah. So you might have a so, for example, like my son, he's banging his head. Shouldn't your first thing be I'm concerned about the child, right? That should be the first thing. Let's try and get to the the the the the

Dr Olivia:

Root cause.

Agnes :

Root cause. But what you're looking at is his behavior, and obviously the parents must be in the wrong. Obviously, this must be a parental issue.

Dr Olivia:

And I have to tell you, with with white people too, that's the first, that's the first point of call. It is the mother. Must be doing something wrong.

Agnes :

The gender side of that as well. Um exactly, it's a gender side. So there's that that there's this there's these different layers. And so I was really interested in looking at specific, obviously, the community that I come from, and and and and kind of understanding the different lenses. But there's two sides. There's the system side, which we know is failing everybody. Um, and we know that again, there's an adultification bias that often happens to um black children and and so forth, but also the cultural aspect. So, you know, I when I said my daughter, so I spoke about my son, but my daughter's dyslexic, and I used to say this to some people within my community, but don't say that, God forbid, don't say that word. And I would be like, Dyslexia, you know, I said that again. Um and it but it was this kind of thing of you know, within the community as well, feeling like these words are deficits. So if you're saying this about your child, but that your child is autistic or maybe autistic, or maybe dyslexic, or maybe you have an ADHD, then you're saying that child is less than or something. You know, that those kind of so conscious. So it was a lot of work from through our report and through our findings about how do we also embolden the community to understand the different layers of that, you know, and so forth. So that's how the kind of um Black Child Send um report came about, and then the work that we're doing now. So that was last year that that was launched, about having that equity debate or equity conversation within the sense as the send system hopefully gets rebuilt in a way that takes into a need all different parents, fathers, mothers, people from uh I don't want to say people for who are from working class background, whatever you want to uh say it, the cultural lens is included in that too.

Dr Olivia:

Absolutely. And you've you've recently been in the rallies in London and talking to members of parliament. What kind of things were discussed and where do you see that going?

Agnes :

So with Parliament, I'm trying to see if I say a PC or I'm very disillusioned.

Dr Olivia:

You don't seem like a PC person to me at the moment.

Agnes :

I seem like a PC person, but I am, I am, I'm I will be honest, I am very disillusioned with politics at the moment, just in general.

Dr Olivia:

Yeah. I think that that would, you know, everyone kind of feels that way.

Agnes :

Everybody is, and I feel like it's very unfortunate then that things like send an education is becoming politic politicized or political issue. Um I'll say uh I'll I want to caveat that. Still, though, I've been in a position where I can still make sure that our voices are being heard, you know, at these kind of at these decision-making levels. And so a lot of those conversations are around A, um what's happening to our protected rights that we, the little rights that we have already, what's happening to those, um, B about that kind of cultural lens, because you know, there's a lot of children that we're supporting, some as young as six, who have been kicked out of school and they're in pupil referral units. And that is because, as many of your listeners will know, um, behavioral policies in school kick in quicker than um the sen support or the sen diagnosis. So, you know, a behavioral policy in school from September to December, your child could be excluded. Yeah. How nice would that be from September to December if you've got all your paperwork and you know, let's come through?

Dr Olivia:

It's the wrong way around, isn't it?

Agnes :

It's the wrong way around. It's the wrong way around. So a lot of my conversations is around that's an unjust, um, that's an unjust system, which we all know. It's also how do we ensure that our parents our children are getting timely um support? How do we ensure that then even if it's written down in paper, that the school has the capacity or the or the institutions, because it might not be a school, to be able to implement that? Because all well having a, you know, okay, your child needs a scribe in their exams, but actually there's not enough teachers to be able to ensure that your child actually has that scribe or or has that additional one-on-one support and and and so forth. Um, how do we make sure that there is enough money within the education budget to be able to, yeah, just ensure that there's enough um capacity. But also the big thing, and it's a petition that we that we've got out at the moment, is how do we join up these agencies? Because at the moment, everything is in silos, and this is why I get disillusioned with politics. You have education, he's got their education budget, he's talking about what they need to do within education. You've got health, who've got their 10-year plan, and so forth in terms of what they want to do. You've got the treasury sitting somewhere else who's like, don't knock on my door, there's no more money. But actually, what we know is that we need all these agencies to work together. And what we saw in COVID is when COVID happened, there was an emergency task force where they brought together business, they brought together education, they brought together health, they brought together every single industry together, every single thing that was affected by COVID, and obviously at that time it was everything together to be able to look at how we can work together to re-address this kind of global health problem. And I believe that's what we need to do with Send. We need to bring together and create a multitask force where we have health, where we have education, where we have the treasury and sort of together to be able to solve these problems. At the moment, I feel like no matter what we say, if education in terms of okay, we're not going to do this, if it's not working together with health and it's not working together with treasury, it's more lip service. And during that lip service, our children are being failed.

Dr Olivia:

It's so true. And but it's so hard to bring those different organizations together. What are your thoughts on how you know I've I've I've been in this with with health care and social care, because that also needs to come together. And I'd say that actually adds social care into this as well, because it needs to be a unified approach. And it's it's so difficult because they're so siloed.

Agnes :

They're so siloed. Is it hard or is there political will? And and and that's that to me, that's the question because as I said, with COVID, with COVID, there it was possible, and that's why I always use the COVID, and that's irrespective of whether people, you know, what people think about COVID, but the the fact that there's a template there on how quickly the government could act when they thought that was an emergency of bringing together different task force and get and getting to work. Of course, there's lessons to be learned from there. So I'm not saying that everything that happened there was perfect, but there was a template saying, listen, today, within 48 hours, we are calling together this department and that department. We're coming together, and this is how we're gonna work, and this is what we're gonna do. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. So learning the lessons from COVID and looking at the fact that SEND is the SEND system right now is in crisis, there needs to be an emergency task force, right? And and bringing until I see the government even trying to do that, I can't even say then it's difficult or not, because I don't see, I don't know why it's taking for parents like us to even suggest this.

Dr Olivia:

Yeah.

Agnes :

Why are they what why why are they not? That's what they're there to do. Like this is an emergency.

Dr Olivia:

Yeah, and and and and it really has become an epidemic in its proportions.

Agnes :

It's an epidemic, and it's and and also it's about the future that we want. Children grow up to be adults.

Dr Olivia:

They're gonna be looking after us when we're old and dribbling.

Agnes :

They're gonna be looking after us, but also what we are doing is we're pushing the can down the line to a massive adult mental health crisis.

Dr Olivia:

Not to mention the prison population, too. I have to do that.

Agnes :

And the prison population. And the prison population. Like you you you you said it all. And a lot of the work that we do, especially leading up with um Black Child Send, is actually linked into the whole school-to-prison pipeline and so forth, um, the adultification bias. And a lot of that is actually when you look at prison, you know, uh I can't remember it's like so like 80% of prisoners have a literacy rate of like 11 and under, you know. Um when we're looking at um, you know, again, we know that we're not saying, or we're not saying, we know that it's not to do with if you're if you're autistic, you're gonna end up in prison. That is not what I'm saying at all. But it's a fact of the lack of support for young people and pushing them into crisis. Exclusions and exclusion. Um I was at an event last year actually, and it was with one of the head of the um prison service, and they said a quote, and they said, the moment you the day that you exclude a child is literally the day that you're putting their prison number on them, if that makes sense. So when you're linking up to the fact that send children are more likely to then be excluded, and you correlate that with that quote from the man in charge of the of those of her or his majesty's um prison, then you can see where we're going. So this is you know, when we're talking about send, and and a lot of the times it's it's it's made to look like we are particularly mothers, and I'm not again fathers, we're not saying that you're not involved, but I'm just talking about how you know the majority we know what it is. When we're looking at parents being neurotic and emotional for their child, and you know, we're trying to get support. I saw a um a newspaper the other day, a headline that you know, we're just trying to do it for advantage for our children, um, exam to pass exams and so forth. Some of the teachers are saying that that's why we're doing it and so forth. What people are not looking at is that this is not a sm a send issue. If you support us as parents and support our children now, what we are actually doing is creating a kind of an environment, a future where we have healthy adults who are able to be productive to society. That is what you're doing. Yeah. And we know that that is like building a house. The foundation of a house, if it is not, if it's not um strong and you know, built properly, that house at some point, when the wind blows too hard, will fall down. And so what we're saying is support us, support our sense children in having strong foundations so that when they get into adulthood, you know, they're less likely to kind of you know crash out or fall down.

Dr Olivia:

And the data supports this so much. The research, the evidence supports this that if you support a child, first of all, their issues don't become big issues, and second of all, they can go on to be very successful people and lead very productive, and actually, some of the world's problems, they need neurodiverse people because we think outside of the box. And thinking outside of the box is going to be super important in the future. So we need to support these children, these thinkers who think differently, who do things differently, they need to be supported. And I would argue actually that they are leading the way for actually neurotypical children, because frankly, our education system isn't working, I don't think for anybody. Um, but but our neurodiverse children are bleeding right now. Um, and I completely agree with you that, you know, the the hype on social media and the hype in in terms of what people say, oh, everyone wants to be diagnosed, oh, everyone wants to, you know, get better grades or get their schools paid for, you have not walked a day in the shoe of a neurodiverse mom's. Um you know, I would, you know, it's not easy.

Agnes :

Yeah, it's not easy. Just today before I um joined this podcast, you know, I was on a call with um with my daughter Senko, you know, um, you know, speaking with them about, you know, how her kind of school passport is going and all of and so forth. You know, this is not something that you necessarily want to be doing, but you have to. You have to, you know, we have to advocate for our children. And all we're saying is that we want equity for all of our children, number one. And I think the point that you've raised is one of the most important points about the education system, right? The education system has been built on an industrialized Victorian type system where you are creating children to serve the industry. We are not in that system anymore. Yeah. Um, we're in a kind of more of a digital type system and so forth. And I think education hasn't caught up because really, actually, the the ideal would be that actually you don't need um kind of special um measures or different measures for our send children. Actually, you have an education system that is for the needs of each individual child and is able to be like personalised care. Exactly. Personalized education, like personalized healthcare, is where we should be heading, is where we should be going, which means that each child is able to thrive. I always like to use the kind of um African, traditional African model. So back in the you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago, if we're talking, um, what used to happen is they used to look at the children and see how each child could be of value to the village. Yeah. So you might have a child, and from early on they could see that child's gonna be an excellent scribe, or this child's gonna be an excellent midwife, this child's gonna be an excellent hunter, this child's gonna be so there was nothing, there was no kind of deficit child. So indigenous communities never had deficit children because they looked at the child and where that child could add value, maybe this child's gonna be a creative, maybe this and they go into, you know, uh when we look at the caves uh thousands of years later and we see all of the drawings going on in the case, that child would have been picked down and being nurtured, right? So each child thought they had a talent. But right now, we they had their strength, right? So no child thought they were like a deficit. But at the moment, we have this very deficit type education model that is kind of churning children for a kind of industrial um age that we don't actually live in. And so we see children even coming out of education and they're like, we don't we can't work, or we can't this, or we can't that, or whatever.

Dr Olivia:

I mean, if you're not good at English and math, and I swear to you, I as a doctor would fail the English GCSEs. Thank God we moved to America because I would not have passed my high school if I had to take English, because I can't spell, I still can't spell, uh, not to save my life. So I wouldn't have passed. That would have closed all doors to me. Like my daughter wants to be in drama. That will be closed because she doesn't know English and math. It's ridiculous. We don't look at kids' strengths, we don't support them, we don't encourage them within their strengths. In fact, we cut all the budget to anything that isn't English, math, and science.

Agnes :

Yeah, yeah, I know. I completely, I completely agree.

Dr Olivia:

We can talk for hours about this, Agnes.

Agnes :

We can talk for hours about it. Like I'm I'm I'm literally doing this like in my head to be like, let me just give it another 20 minutes. And I know that the podcast is an hour.

Dr Olivia:

How can parents though be part of this change? How can parents, how can we, as moms and and you know, dads and parents, grandparents, foster parents, how can we move towards forcing, you know, this this the system to get at the table together? And I would argue there's so many people that need to be at that table, including the prison, the head of prisons and everything. How, what, what are your ideas and what we can do as as carers for the the next generation, really?

Agnes :

So, one, I would say get behind all the different petitions. So not even not just our one. I'm not even just here to say, you know, we have a petition that's uh that's live on the petitions.gov um site, but there's many others that are on send, and I and I say that because you know, politicians and so forth, they look at data, isn't it? So they will look at okay, well, we want to be voted back in, you know, it's self-interest. And X, Y, and Z amount of thousands of people have said this, and actually we don't want to look bad by not talking. I know that might sound awful, but I've got to put them at their own game. Number two, writing to your MPs. You know, I used to be one of these people that used to think that's a waste of time, but actually, having been now um kind of operating within that political landscape and and listening, what I've heard is that what ends up happening is when you write a letter to the MPs, what they do is they kind of have like a theme. So they might be like, okay, well, 30% of our letters have come around this about this topic, 20% is around housing, so and so. And that is how they then prioritize. Are they triage? Triage how you know what they're going to kind of um talk about or what they're going to um focus on in their local areas. So if in your local area, even if you're talking about it on social media and so forth, you're not writing to your your politicians, even if there's nothing that they can do about it, just for them to know that's another one about that topic, yeah, it will force them to write because they again they also know that that must be an election um you know issue within within their area and and and so forth. So I would say write to your MPs, get behind all the different um petitions. Now, I hate saying this one because I feel like no parent should need to have a PhD and send studies in order to be able to advocate for their children. However, because of a time that we are in, you have to try and educate yourself as much as possible on A, the policies within your child's school, you know, if they are in school, um if you're thinking about homeschooling them, you know, what the what the policies and procedures are. There was a lady that I spoke to last year, and I'm going to paraphrase. So if I if I do say some parts and it's a little bit wrong, I just apologize in advance. But something I found very interesting is she was she said that she had to take her child out because it would child had gone to year seven and it was like a cliffhead. Child had so much good support um in primary school, but in the bigger school, it kind of swallowed their child up, and they could see their child was really um like um is it digressing? Yeah, digressing. And um, so they took the child out, but they were also able to get the money and the budget that would have been spent on their child and able to keep that and then able to utilize that for tutors and and and so forth, so creating that home curriculum and and so forth. And the reason I'm saying that was because there was another mum I was speaking to early on this week, and her child, she's had to take her child out, and she's like, you know, I'm I'm struggling, I'm looking for money for tuition and so forth. And in my mind, I was like, hold on a minute, here's one mum that was able to be like, Well, my child's not going to be in the school. The money that you would pay on that child is also coming with my child, yeah. And is able to then make sure that that stop gap isn't too disruptive, it's still disruptive, but not too disruptive. Whereas here's another mum, a single mum, she was recently widowed, you know, uh a few years back, she's got three children, and she's there, like, how do I get money? Like, my son's just doing nothing and I don't know what to do, right?

Dr Olivia:

So I think And there is that knowledge is is power, and there are places that can really help you. And actually, one of the other speakers who's coming to the event in November from Sunshine Support, their legal woman, Kelly Jarvis, she specializes in those kind of cases because it's really difficult to actually get that proof to get what's called an ETOS package outside of school. But there is so many ways that you have to be clever about how you do it, how you take them out, how you get that evidence and that proof. Like if I could tell every send mom, it's write everything down, get that proof, what things they've done at school, what hasn't worked, why school can't meet need, and getting empowering yourself with that knowledge of how to fight, and it is a fight, but actually get what your child deserves within the system, instead of if you just take them out, then the government will say, Oh, you just took them out, it was your choice, you don't need any help, you know? And there are a lot of places that can really help you with that to give you the knowledge that you don't even have to pay for. Um other moms.

Agnes :

And and and for the listings again, and for me again, it's called Sunshine Support. No, you said that the list. Exactly. Education outside of school. Because what ends up happening is you will be fighting, but you'll be fighting for the wrong things.

Dr Olivia:

Yeah.

Agnes :

Yeah.

Dr Olivia:

And your children, your child deserves that. You pay taxes for your child to get that, you know. So it is, and also what they what what it should be a system towards is because obviously that secondary school isn't working for that child. But I've also seen autistic children who've not, you know, not done well, have burned out, have had mental health crisis, who've come out, have had an Eatos package, gotten over that burnout, found the right school where there's other autistic children who understand how their brains work, has gone back into school, has flourished, has has taken flight their wings, you know what I mean? So it's also about finding the right pathway for your child and getting them to a place where they can fly and can they can find their way in in life, you know?

Agnes :

Yeah, no, I really, really love that. So, yeah, so that's some uh they're some of the things that educated on social media. There are a lot of different um like groups and organizations to follow. So if you are somebody that's on on social media, um there's lots of like community groups, I would say, within your local area. Um, Facebook is a really good way to find out like what's going on within within your area because you don't know what you don't know. A lot of the things that I learned, it will I learned them against my will, but then I was I'm happy to have learned them, you know, because it was just from speaking to a parent, and I thought, oh, oh, I is that what I need too? And then I would go off. But if I wasn't a part of different communities, I wouldn't have I wouldn't have been in those conversations.

Dr Olivia:

And you expect to hear, I thought my school would tell me this, you know, like I was like in the dark, all of my friends' children were doing fine, you know, they're playing violin, reading books by themselves, and I'm like, oh my god, what the hell's going on with my child? You know what I mean? And no one tells you until I started to get into the send world. And then I was like, oh, that mom understands me. That mom understands, you know, when your child has a complete meltdown and you don't know what the hell's going on, you know, and it was like it was like, wow, I'm not alone, I'm not in this dark corner by myself anymore. And you don't know that until you reach out to those and and become part of those communities.

Agnes :

Exactly. And understand the role of school because when your child is in school and your child for the most part is um pleasant as well. I know we're talking about um children who um maybe kind of lash out at school and so forth, um, your child will be ignored. Yeah. And blows especially, because they laugh. So what they will say is, oh, this child is um, oh, your child is pleasant. So my daughter's again dyslexic, and for them, uh, when she was in school, it was like, but she's a good child. She's a good child. She's but she's not writing and she's not like reading as well as she should as I don't want to say as well as she should be in terms of comparative. But at her at her level, and it was like, oh, you know, until I really then started like, you know, educating myself about what my what my rights are and so forth, and then find out that actually I was teaching the school because in the school ended up saying thank you to me, and I was like, wow, if I hadn't of like it's again the wrong way around. It's the wrong way around. But I but on that, this is something that I really, really do have to say about the year-free screening that they have at school, which we kind of call the dyslexia screening, but it's it's more than just dyslexia. Um, but I always feel that parents need to understand how that test does not protect your child legally for their rights. Um and I I talk about Can you explain the test?

Dr Olivia:

Because I'm actually not aware of this test.

Agnes :

So in year three, every child has some sort of screening, and again, the name of that screening has gone out of my head. So year three, your child should be about seven years old.

Dr Olivia:

Which is when around when you can diagnose for dyslexia, yeah.

Agnes :

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they have this screening, and this screening will say if your child has a profile, um, a profile, not if your child has a profile for dyslexia or or may need further investigation, something along those lines, right? And then if they do, what the school will do is give them the you know the yellow sheets or the red sheets, and what the school can potentially do is give them some extra time, right? So for a lot of parents, they will feel like, oh, okay, well, she's gone through the school and say that she may she or he may have dyslexia, and this is the support that they're getting in primary school, and that's what you think, and you're you're obviously going to think they're going to go to a secondary school, or if they're interested in doing other studies, um, you know, maybe 11 plus or whatever, they're gonna be protected. But actually, it is a screener and it does not protect your your child, but also, more importantly, uh, for me, it doesn't deep into your needs of your your specific child. What do I mean by that? I can't speak French. If you give me those yellow screens and put it over French words, yeah, those words are not they're not magically gonna start the bonjour is the only thing I'm sav is the only thing I'm gonna be able to see, right? And dependent on where your child is on their kind of dyslexia spectrum, even if you put that sheet over, it's not going to magically help them to really be able to construct the word and so forth. Whereas if you have an educational psychologist assessment, what they do is they really hone in to your child's kind of phonological processing and you know all the different aspects of how they um kind of construct and process words and write and so forth. And it means that they're able to give a uh a real profile on what your child needs. So if your child needs a scribe, if your child is a reader, um where your child's strengths are, and areas that um I don't I don't even want to put improvement because it may never improve because that's their profile, right? But it but that educational psychology assessment stays with your child until they're 25. It means that um it's it's protected in law for them. So if, for example, you know, your child wanted to do an 11 plus exam or any exam, this even the SAS exams, and they needed a scribe in that exam, the school would have to provide for that. Yeah, but the dyslexic screen that you have in year three, it doesn't do that. It just says your child may have that profile. Um the reason that that's a I always talk about that, and I thought that that's a big, big challenge is because I've done a lot of parents, their children go into secondary school, their children go to do their GCCs, and it's only at the last minute that the school's really like, oh, you know what? Your child actually probably needed a little bit extra support. And they'll be like, Yeah, but we knew our child is dyslexic, you know, or they've been struggling. And then you get parents two, three weeks before the GCC exam, like, oh my god, trying to get this, you know, educational psychologist assessment and so forth, but the timing is too short, and then you see the kind of I didn't know if I had only known. So that's just something that I wanted to flag out.

Dr Olivia:

So it's such a key point, and also what's so key about these educational psychologist reports is they they don't just look at dyslexia, they'll also look at ADHD, which by the way, 50% of dyslexics have ADHD. They'll look at autism as well. It's it's broad scope, they don't make any diagnosis towards that. But what they also do is they put what the child needs in the education environment they're in. And then you can see, and again, notes, take notes on whether it's working or not, you can see with the school whether or not the school can meet the needs from that educational psychologist profile for your child. And then you have the evidence. So then if that school isn't right, you then have the evidence and the ability to move or to change so that your child can be supported. When you're at GCSC, the ship has sailed.

Agnes :

The ship has sailed, and it's really important because when I was looking at school secondary school for my daughter, I remember one school, I um, because it she would have to do an exam to get into our school. I um said, Oh, you know, she was needless. And they said, Oh, we can't do that because if she came to our school, we wouldn't put those provisions in place because that's not what we do at this school. And so for me That's illegal. This is what they said. They said they wouldn't do they they they they wouldn't, they that's what they wouldn't do. So they tested the children based on what they're gonna receive.

Dr Olivia:

Well, I guess fair enough, because then at least they're not, you know. I mean, I think that's a really messed up.

Agnes :

No, no, I mean, I obviously we didn't even go to the exam after that. But but because I had that profile early on, you know, you were able to know that I was able to make that informed decision to be like, well, I don't want my child going to this illegal, you know, this school that would not cater for for my child's needs. But if I had just had the this the year-free screening and I had just that to lean on, I myself would not have known all of this because obviously uh my child now had a a specific kind of um profile. But the biggest caveat on all that we've said is an educational psychologist assessment is expensive.

Dr Olivia:

It is very expensive.

Agnes :

Um I had to pay up to a thousand hounds for the two-hour um uh assessment. Apparently, before 2010 it was free. Oh wow. I don't know what happened after 2010, I must think there was a change of government um around that time, and that was one of the things that got got got scrapped. So again, this is what we you know to the point that you asked me earlier when you said, okay, well, um, what are the kind of things that I talk about in government? These are some of the things, you know. If if for my child or for any child to get those type of protections, they have to pay up to a thousand pounds for this for this two-hour exam, which is very important. Who then has the power and privilege? Inequality, again. Is it an inequality issue?

Dr Olivia:

And also, why I mean, so it's it's it's it's biting your nose to spite off your face. So you're doing this little screener, and then parents think they're protected and they're not, so it's giving a false sense of security and belief. When really the screener should be a triage, which then those individuals who have shown that they have that they're somewhere on the dyslexic spectrum, then they get put towards an educational psychology. And that's how it should go, right? It's like it'd be like testing kids for glasses and saying, oh, you know what, you don't see the board very well, and you you have trouble with your vision, but you know what? We're not gonna put you to an optician to get glasses, we're just gonna stick you a little bit closer to the board.

Agnes :

And that's exactly that's the best analogy. I'm gonna be stealing that, by the way. Well, that's exactly exactly what's going on at the moment. And I feel like that's why um, you know, the government, um, local authorities and so forth don't necessarily want parents to know all of this. Because then when you once you see, you can't unsee it, you know, and then you're gonna want more, and local authorities, again, I'm not picking on them because I do also understand that they don't have the money to be able to then um pay for all of this. But also, it's not our fault we need to fight for our children.

Dr Olivia:

But if you think about it on that grander scheme of that multidisciplinary task force, right? If you looked at the cost of not doing this. The pipeline to prison, how much it costs to actually have someone in prison versus going to eat down the road, the mental health issues, the out of work, how much it costs you not to support, you're actually costing yourself a lot more.

Agnes :

But this is where politics, I just feel like the standard education should be nowhere near politics when it is public politics. It's so hard because governments are thinking about their five-year tenure. They're not thinking about so if you your chart is fixed, maybe the most they're going to think of as your child from the age of six to eleven because that's their five-year tenure. They're just trying to get themselves re-elected and then they'll say something else in the next five years.

Dr Olivia:

And then they'll blame the people before them, yeah, exactly.

Agnes :

And blame the people before them because that's their interest. Whereas what we need is, again, cross-party, multi-faceted task forces that sit outside of that, you know, which is then looking at it from a public health perspective, just like what I was talking about around like maternal health and environment and so forth, and looking at things from a generational perspective.

Dr Olivia:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I can't believe it that our hour is up, Agnes. I'm not surprised, but I'm so excited that you're coming in November. And, you know, I think that almost we have to inspire that audience and all of the people listening to start writing their letters, start really advocating because there is power and strength in numbers. So this is not hopeless. There is hope. And you inspire me as I started this podcast with, and I'm sure you've inspired all my listeners. And I will be including in the show notes connections to you, also to your petitions and encouraging people. So um, hopefully, everyone can come and join us. And just thank you so much for being on the Send Parenting Podcast today. Thank you for listening, Stend Parenting Tribe. Agnes' story is a beautiful reminder that from our deepest struggles can come the strongest change for our children, our schools, and our communities. You can see all about her work by clicking on the links in the show notes. And also you could join us and speak to her in person by attending the Recharge and Connect Stand Parenting Summit in Henley on November 11th, where we will continue this important conversation. You can click for the link to join the event also in the show notes. If today's episode really resonated with you, please share it with another parent and help us spread awareness and hope. Together, we are reimagining what is possible for our neurodiverse children.