Page 12 - Issue 112 May-June 2021

12 Sensory vaccination clinic for adults with learning disabilities Students and their parents and carers at Share Community, a Wandsworth-based charity supporting adults with learning disabilities, attended a COVID-19 vaccination clinic. Getting the jab can be a stressful experience and many people struggle in a traditional clinical environment. Working in partnership with local GPs and NHS Wandsworth, Share hosted the clinic in their immersive learning space, a special interactive room to create a tranquil atmosphere using projected images and playing restful music. New SEND funding calculator Staffordshire County Council is planning to implement a new education banding tool for allocating funding accurately for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The tool captures each child or young person’s holistic needs in a consistent and evidence-based way. Funding can be revisited as and when needs change, ensuring that each child or young person is awarded the funds they are entitled to. The calculator is expected to launch in February 2021. Lessons from Covid: “Happier in his own clothes’ Researchers from the University of Sussex examined the experiences of parent carers of children with SEND and of the children themselves, during lockdown and returning to school. The report identified schools’ achievements but also exposed some of the significant limitations in the English education system - not least in meeting the fundamental needs of children with SEND, but also in enabling them to thrive. ‘Happier in his own clothes’ was a positive comment by one parent about the lockdown, but one that also indicates how school could be improved for children with SEND. The report, written by Dr Jacqui Shepherd, Claire Durrant and Dr Christina Hancock, makes recommendations based on the learning from the positive and negative experiences of the last year, for a more reflexive and recalibrated school system which works better for all children. How social media affects teenage sleep Sleep psychologists from the #sleepyteens research group at the University of Glasgow have developed a new tool which helps measure young people’s ability to disengage from social media before bed. The researchers have developed an “Index of Nighttime Offline Distress”, or iNOD, and believe it is the first psychological measurement tool of its kind, which reflects the realities of how young people interact with each other in an online world. The 10-point questionnaire will equip clinicians, teachers and parents with accurate measurements of the impact of late-night social media use on sleep. However, it also takes into account the importance of friendships to the development of adolescent brains. As young people move away from their families and begin to strike out on their own, staying in touch with friends becomes more important. Phones and social media give an unprecedented ability to extend the feeling of face-to-face connection, and iNOD is designed to provide a truer sense of the trade-offs young people make between social connections and night-time social media use, and to draw a clearer demarcation of the points where it can begin to impact on young people’s sleep. Dr Heather Cleland Woods, senior lecturer at the School of Psychology, Glasgow University, said: “Young people need quality sleep, but they also need the interactions with peers that social media provides. Much of the previous research on adolescent use of social media has focused solely on the amount of time young people spend in front of screens, without considering why they choose to do so. iNOD provides a tool to understand adolescent attitudes to staying connected and following etiquette, a valuable insight which was not previously measurable. News deadline for next issue: 15/5/2021. Email editor@senmagazine.co.uk SEN112 senmagazine.co.uk SEN news