Hello, this is Anna Kennedy, we're talking all things autism and I'm still in my office when not back in Covent Garden I was just chatting to a friend this morning thinking how much I miss going to Covent Garden that was my little bit of me time but hey no still in the charity office on my own and my PA Lisa is working from home. So what have I been up to? Well I've been sent this amazing magazine for Down Syndrome and it's one of its kind and they're launching of it and it's going out to hospitals, NHS trusts, support groups, schools across the country will be available for purchase and subscription on the charity website. It's called makingchromosomescount.co.uk and it's £3.50 per magazine. Lots of information in there, really lovely colourful magazine. Still working with and collaborating with Mood Bears those lovely amazing squidgy soft hoggie bears absolutely love them. I've been working in collaboration with this particular company and they're just amazing and they go into hospitals, they're for schools, they're for speech and language therapists. So if you want to check them out that's www.moodbear.co.uk. There's lots of different bears, there's Hope Bear, there's Glad Bear, there's Love Bear, there's I Love Happy Bear. Happy Bear is just so lovely and it's a beautiful yellow and the world is getting too serious for you. There's even Giggle Bear so check them out www.moodbears.co.uk and if you type in Anna in capital letters OBE you will get a 10% discount and also 15% goes to our charity which is www.anakenadyonline.com. Keep checking the charity website, we're updating it every day. Check out the latest news and our events and our resources pages has lots and lots of useful information and if you feel that you might like to write an article for us please contact the charity website and we would love to share some of your articles online. Now talking about online our children and adults who are autistic are finding that they are finding themselves online trying to make friends and what's happening is that's been shared with me with a lot of families and autistic adults that they are being bullied online because they are vulnerable and they are being verbally attacked and I have also heard from a group that some of the adults sadly are like even considering suicide so what I'm saying to you is please don't suffer alone. Please tell somebody or even come off social media for a little while and I just wanted to give you a few tips because I know that some adults that I have spoken to have actually gone to the police because it's that serious. So a reminder if you are being bullied on social media here are some tips and advice for you if you've experienced in any offensive material. So if it's made references and made it to race disability basically what you need to do is firstly contact the social media platform and then report the matter and ask them to take action. Contact the police this can be done online but better if you can go into the police station with copies of all relevant documents, tweets, posts and get a crime number and ask the contact details of the officer who will be assigned to this matter. When you contact the officer be polite but be persistent the police have the means to identify persons making posts. There are a range of actions open to the police against persons who post such material. They can serve them with a harassment warning notice or if the harassment persists or in serious cases the person involved could face prosecution. Please be kind everyone why is that bullying going on online I just don't understand it. I was chatting to Katie Price because poor Harvey has had some horrendous bullying online and what's been happening is the police have been getting involved now and one of the people that posted absolutely I'm not going to even tell you what it was about but it was just horrendous they have been found and they are going to be prosecuted. If you feel that you might need some help there's an organisation in the UK called Shout and it's free if you feel that you're in crisis. So if you text Shout capital letters S-H-O-U-T and the text number is 85258 when you're in a dark place this service is absolutely free and it's 24 7 and you will speak to a trained crisis volunteer. And the last thing I just wanted to share with you is our hero wards. We have so many nominations that have been coming in especially in the last few weeks. So if you feel you might like to nominate somebody who goes the extra mile it might be a mum, it could be a dad, it could be a carer, it could be an autistic individual. Please check out the charity website on the Autism Hero wards. The closing date is in September. We have 7 judges that are going to have the difficult decision of choosing 3 finalists for each category. There are 12 categories. I'm so glad that I don't have to choose the finalists and then hopefully fingers crossed in November the finalists will come down to the Chelsea Harbour Hotel where they will have a 3 course mail and then the winners will be announced and usually we have celebrities there and there's just lots going on and please bring your tissues if you are going to come along because you will be shedding a tear or two. So my guest today is Sarah Kyle and Sarah is part of the Petra Place Centre and the Foundation and she has been involved in it since 2017 and was instrumental in setting up the Place Therapy Centre. So it's in the location working on the design of the centre and the recruitment of staff. Welcome Sarah. Thank you. Nice to be here. Oh thank you. So please for our listeners, who is Sarah? I am, well as you've said, I'm the Ops Director at the Petra Ecclestone Foundation and I oversee the Petra Place Therapy Centre which was opened just over two years ago. We have a great team of staff there and we'll obviously talk more about that but on a personal level I am a doll house then. It's never a doll moment. It's definitely been a hectic last 10-12 months. So yeah, that's me. I live in Wharton on Thames. Yeah, we've just got a dog before Christmas which has added another bit of chaos to our lives but in a good way. And we've got a calver poo which is gorgeous. She's like a fluffy teddy bear. Very affectionate but the potty training is almost like having a baby. So the toilet is like potty training. So yeah, so we've got a busy household. So how has lockdown affected your life and your household? And talk to me about homeschooling because I speak to so many parents that they're pulling their hair out because they're finding it difficult and some of the children are saying I'm just not doing it. I can't do it. I find it really hard. I need to have someone sitting next to me. I can't do online learning. So how has it been for you as well as having four children and various different ages? It's been really really difficult. I don't think there's anybody that hasn't felt it. I mean, I'm lucky that my 12-year-old is at that age now where she can go off with her computer and have lessons. They're doing live lessons but my other three it's been quite tricky because my nine-year-old, he needs a lot of structure in his life. He suffers with ADHD so he finds it very difficult to focus but he loves routine, he loves structure. So being away from the classroom and not having his friends around him and not having his usual support network has been very very challenging for him. I think it's a very different environment for all children. They learn from each other in class. They may not have the confidence to put their hand up but their friend might ask the question they want to ask and I think when they're online and you know they have to speak on a microphone, it's really amplified that they maybe are not understanding the subject or they don't want to feel stupid and I know for my son he's found it really difficult because he's felt nervous about putting his hand up on the computer so that everyone can hear that he doesn't understand. Whereas in a classroom it's more subtle isn't it? You can put your hand up as the teacher walks over. It's not obvious to the other kids so I think in terms of learning it's really really tricky for them and of course my six-year-old she's had to be dependent completely upon me because although her school have been fantastic in providing resources online to help parents, she's not of an age where she can independently sit there and work her way through it. So I'd say overall it's been really really difficult and we were hoping obviously that when they went back in September that they would stay there and that hasn't been the case for everyone I know but you know just the kind of choppiness of stop start stop start I think is also really tricky on their mental health as well because you know as much as they can hear the news and know about Covid and everything that's going on in the world it's a big thing and I think it's quite a lot for them to take on you know at such a young age what's going on in the world. I mean or just being a little bit more anxious and did they ask you questions about Covid or anything they might have heard on the news? I mean in the beginning I think they're a bit more relaxed about it now I think they understand and you know they understand the reasons for being at home and people trying to protect one other but I think in the beginning particularly my six-year-old I think she was five at the time and she kept saying to me mommy are we all going to die you know and I just thought this is awful you know because you have to reassure them that you know obviously for children it's you know it's less dangerous according to statistics anyway but of course children can spread it so it's just about you know everyone trying to protect each other and do the best they can and I think they understand it a lot more now but I think it's just the change in their routine the change in you know not being able to see friends not doing all their usual extracurricular activities in sports and you know the things that are really good for mental health I think is is the trickiest thing I would say. Okay so have you noticed um if you don't mind me asking a change in them? Absolutely yeah I mean not my two I mean my two daughters um the eldest and the one who's the six-year-old because I'm talking about my two daughters because my other one's so she's probably completely oblivious to what's going on in the world yeah um but they've cooked reasonably well with it I mean they do ask questions about it but I'd say it's my son that's struggled the most because he has anxiety anyway yeah and and I think you know it's just very unknown when's it going to stop when am I going to be able to get back to see my friends when can I go back to playing rugby mommy you know it's all those unknowns and you can't really give them answers to it. No do they contact each other do they have WhatsApp groups and things going on chatting to each other or whatever however they want to contact. Exactly that's the tricky thing I think and I think this is the same for most parents is you know you've spent your life trying to tell them that they can't keep going on their iPads and they need to be on there for schooling but then also it's their only form of communication with their friendship groups yeah so for example you know after they finish their school day they obviously want to they can't chat with their friends like they would in break time or lunch time so they want to go online with their friends and for boys that's often like playing games together more chatting about you know what they're into music or whatever but you know I think it's a different type of friendship connection online but I think you know it's really really tricky because you don't want to take them off their electronics because that's their only form of of having communication with their friends so what we try to do is just try and limit it so we will say to my son for example you know okay once you've done all your homework that you need to get out the way and you've done your reading then you know you can go online with your friends and play some games and he's you know that really kind of encourages him to get his homework out of the way or his reading and then he will go and chat with his friends and you know I think that's really important for them at the moment I think we're just all going to have to deal with the repercussions of that later but I think everyone's got enough to worry about at the moment thank you for giving me a little snapshot of how things are for you obviously it's quite personal but if people like to listen to see because they might be thinking oh I might try that or you know things that you might may have suggested so let's talk about the Petra Place Centre and the foundation so tell me a little bit more about it why was it started and why did you get involved so my involvement came because I've known Petra for about 10 years and I've worked with her previously on another business so my background was never in autism it was in kind of senior management roles and she asked me if I could help out on this project the foundation because we just worked together before and she felt that I was able to do the operational job that she needed and so there was myself and the managing director and we worked together to initially set up the foundation which was in 2016 that was established in 2017 we started looking for premises because her vision was that she had lived in America and she had had some problems with her daughter in times of speech delay and so she'd gone to various different places in LA and found the help there fantastic you know these centres that are everything under one roof speech and language ABA OT all under one roof and you could just go there you know you'd get your child assessed they'd be able to offer you all the support in a kind of bespoke program and when she relocated back to the UK she tried to find something similar for her daughter to continue the sessions she was having in LA and she was surprised with her means that she couldn't find something on the same on the same level the same quality of care the same kind of blended approach all under one roof and so she decided actually I think this is what's needed in this country I would like to set up a foundation I'd like to put in the seed money to start something up and so that's what that's how it all started in 2016 right and then in 2017 we started looking for premises and we found this amazing location on Fulham Road which is just opposite the Chelsea Westminster Hospital okay I know it and we spent about 10 months just redeveloping that site so it has a it's on the main road and it has a front therapy centre and then behind that is a a large hall and a small playground which is now the nursery of the centre okay so that opened it took about 10 I'd say about 10 months to redevelop it and we had a lot of input from interior architects and you know people who are specialized in making sure that everything is very autism friendly okay from the terms of the colour palettes the types of paints we used you know the the lighting system the ventilation system you know everything was with considerations of how if it wasn't done correctly it could impact the children negatively okay so there was a lot of thought that went into that and we finally opened the doors in October 2018 so that's not that long ago really long ago no and it started off initially as a therapy centre and we then decided based on the parent feedback that actually let's plan to open a nursery as well because we had a lot of parents coming along you know where they'd had problems with their children before coming to the to any kind of speech and language or ot session and being kind of very nervous very clingy with their parents not wanting to go to being almost the opposite the parents having to always kind of drag them out of there because they wanted to stay which was great feedback for us because it meant that the centre felt very warm and you know personable and they didn't feel like a therapy centre it didn't feel clinical and the parents were saying to us gosh I just wish I could leave my child here for longer because they love it so much here it's a shame we can only come for an hour so the parents would often sit and chat in the reception have a coffee and wait for their child to have their session and the parents would always a lovely like parent network that would always chat and you know sit there and say to us you know wish we could wish we could leave them here for longer still love it so much here and we started thinking actually maybe we should offer a nursery to this centre because you know then we have the opportunity to say to the parents look we've got a nursery here that we could you can bring your child along they can have a longer period of time here you've got staff that are trained in special needs but also if they want to have their therapy sessions they can do that whilst they're on site okay got you and so that was how the idea of the nursery started so it was always still keeping with the ethos of the early intervention so you know the ages of the children are between two and five right we have a couple of children that are slightly older if they you know they haven't started school yet because they're not ready for school is it just autism only it's no it's mainly autism that children with autism that we have but we have you know children with more severe needs we also have children with just developmental delay right i would say most of the children that come to us you know generally is autism but and is it just from full and only or can people travel in from different local authorities they can travel in from different local authorities so we do have children who are outside of the you know some of them have ehcp's and they've managed to transfer that across to our borough so yeah we um you know we have children from various different areas actually that with us at the moment and we the nursery originally was planned to open spring last year and of course when covid hit all of those plans had to be stopped yeah and we did get our offstead eventually which took a long time because it was delayed and then eventually got the offstead in august last year we opened the nursery in september so the nursery is still in its kind of infancy at the moment but it's doing very very well we've got about eight children in there at the moment it's a it's a 26 place nursery but okay so people are interested in thinking oh i like the sound of that where can they find you and what do they need to do so if they i'd say the first port of call is to go on our website because it's really informative it's got everything on there and you know and that address for the website is www.petrusplace.co.uk okay and on there you'll find lots of information about the approach how we have a blended therapeutic approach and what we do in the nursery with the children and this you can see who our team are the people in our team read about their you know their backgrounds and also there's a contact page and a contact number so if anyone would like to ring up and they can book a virtual tour we're in virtual tours so i'm just going to say because everything's virtual tour now it works quite well to be fair so um yeah it's going down well we've had quite a few recently new inquiries and it seems to be working well and i think it's great because obviously although we are open and we're very we've done huge amount of risk assessment and we're very covid secure there we do staff they do tests twice a week to make sure there's nobody infected we do temperature checks with all the children and parents when they come in and you know as much as we can we make it a secure environment but of course if you can limit the amount of times you come on public transport or you know obviously a virtual tour is perfect because then you can get a feel for the place and although there's loads of photos and information on the website i think it helps sometimes to kind of see the setting yeah okay so um can you talk through a typical day so if your child was to is it morning and afternoon sessions or can you do an all day how does how does it work you can do all day if you want to i mean it really depends on your child as to what you think um they can cope with because for some children eight or four is is a long day um so it really depends we offer morning sessions uh which start at eight and run until about half past 12 and the children will have lunch around 12 and then get picked up by their parents at half past okay we have a shorter afternoon session which starts at one until until four so that's three hours in the afternoon um we do have children that do all day sessions um because they're able to do that and it works quite well okay they also go across from the nursery to the therapy center right so you know if for example a child's having speech language in at yeah puts them in for a whole day they can have their time in the nursery can have lunch and then maybe after lunch they might go across for their sessions across to the therapy suite which is just at the front of the building so it's all very familiar to the children quite often we have the therapy staff come into the nursery work with the nursery nurses and you know give them trainings and get involved with the because so the children always feel familiar with all the people that they meet okay so the therapies that you offer is it for children only under five or can parents um book uh for older children um so how how is that what how does that work yeah i mean as i said we're not doing them we're not saying it's only two and so five i mean we have had some children i think probably the upper limit we've had is probably about eight years old okay um i mean to be honest you know the benefit of at the moment currently we can offer zoom sessions as well so i suppose if if there is a parent that wants to have some sessions for their child right there's no reason why we couldn't deliver that online for them okay it's just that within the center within you know because we're offstead registered our setting is a kind of preschool in early intervention center um but we have helped families with children who are older and we do have one child that's she's almost seven and she's been coming to us for a couple of years now okay so how's Petra's daughter doing now she's absolutely fine in fact i mean um you know her she had some early intervention yeah and she you know it was mainly just speech delay and the speech and language she really helped her and and she's doing fine now and she didn't have autism but i think it just it kind of feels Petra's passion for trying to set something up okay help parents who have these issues and you know need the help and you know i think it's kind of an area that's not kind of i think for most parents that you speak to they say they feel quite frustrated because when they can detect something's wrong with their child they often go to their doctor and the doctor says oh just wait a while you know it could be this it could be that and i think a lot of time can be lost in that process of waiting waiting and then actually the diagnosis stage and all of that and i think she felt quite passionate about getting to children at a very early age so that they had the best chance of kind of helping them in the long term so out of interest um because obviously you um start this project a few years ago um what have you learned about um say children with autism or the struggles that they may have the struggles that the families have because it sort of opened your eyes a little bit to the special educational needs work and i know that your son's got ADHD but obviously everybody's experience is different yeah absolutely i mean um i really feel i mean i think that the last year has been the toughest for most of those families who have children with autism without a doubt um but it really has opened my eyes to it i mean i mean my experience with it was was quite little before i helped out on this project but i you know being there from the beginning i actually saw families come through the door um over two years ago with their children who were non-verbal um had very you know kind of wouldn't say they were they were not really low functioning but they were you know very very delayed and to see their development within the space of two years just from having some early intervention was unbelievable and i just thought you know we had one child that came and she was um she was non-verbal and she her mom was really kind of struggling with her and struggling mentally with the whole situation and she came and two years later she had her fourth birthday at the center with all of her friends around her and a birthday cake and she was smiling and she was making eye contact and she was saying words and for the mum i think you know it's great to see the child developing that way but for the parent you know it's such a huge thing you know to see your child um come that far you know by getting the right help and getting the right advice from people that's the thing i think when you've got a child with um special educational needs and when you see the progress that they make it's absolutely huge for that family and somebody may be looking in who hasn't got a child on the spectrum or with special educational needs it probably doesn't seem that big to them but it's huge for the family and it's also huge for the school or the nursery or wherever they may be at the time because obviously they've been working hard with that child um so i i can totally get what you're saying about you know the the party and the four-year-old party and the big steps forward that they make and i know sometimes it can be steps forward and three steps back but that's just what happens and how it presents itself sometimes so um what about uh support for the parents themselves um do you offer support for them or um do you have workshops for them or do you do workshops for parents that might want to you know um join in i'm not quite sure because obviously i don't 100 know what it is that you do there so what type of support do you offer for parents um i mean we are planning to do workshops actually we've done um a lot of our staff have done pax training parental training for autism right that is something that we're planning to do in the in the spring actually and if we can't do it in person we'll offer it remotely because that's something that we feel is really beneficial to the parents but in terms of general support what we have been doing is we're very much like you know whenever we meet a new parent we spend a lot of time with that parent discussing the child's background how the family unit is you know how the parents are coping and throughout the whole journey we you know we have regular meetings with the parents and we're always there to support them however we can yeah i think sometimes it's just about being a listener near sometimes because they feel quite isolated or they haven't got the support of their extended family they can talk to friends but sometimes it's not the same when they haven't experienced what they are experiencing so it's good sometimes just to have to like either vent or just just for someone to listen to them and appreciate what they're going through absolutely and i think another thing that we noticed um that developed after we opened the centre was that as i say before we introduced the nursery we got the offstead parents had to stay on site with their children because you know they were coming in for like an hour or maybe two hour session okay parents would often stay on site we've got quite a large kind of front reception area with nice sofas so we would always make the parents very welcome we'd get them tea and coffee and we get some pastries and that actually in itself became almost like something the parents would look forward to because if they were coming on a regular weekly basis they would sit there and they'd see some parents who they met the week before and they'd sit there and i think just having other parents that they could talk to about the struggles they were both going through and then someone being able to relate to that and how difficult it was and it kind of built a real network a real community network of parents and in actual fact one of the parents who was with us right from the beginning her son came through the centre and now started school last september but she is actually one of our staff members now because she felt so passionately about everything that she'd gone through and being you know the support network she had there and the people she'd met and how well her son had developed that she said you know i'd really love to come and work for you and she's one of our staff members in the nursery now and she's amazing because she has a background in local council working with the local authorities and and helping people with their ehcp so she completely gets how difficult and how much support each parent needs in different ways and you know the whole ehcp process can be really tricky and unlikely time consuming as well and so she's got that expertise and she she's a massive support network for the parents who come to the centre that's great to hear that because um i think the parents obviously will obviously associate with them more as well because obviously she's been through that journey talking about speakers anna kennedy online is going to be holding their expo normally we'll be doing it at brunell university every year we hold our autism expo there but obviously last year we couldn't do it so we did it online and again we're going to be doing it online so if you check out the charity website we have six speakers possibly seven and we're hoping to have clinics as well so that will be at the end of march so the details will be going up any day now so please check out the charity website for our autism expo so you can either book one day or you can book do two days it's up to you so please check out the charity website and also don't forget we've got our youtube channel where we've had workshops online where we've spoken to people like kari grant who has got children on the spectrum and with various other disabilities so we've got kacey endsworth as well who's one of our ambassadors she talks about living with her husband on the spectrum and also her son we have got lots of different speakers on there so if you're interested all the information is up on the anna kennedy online website just check out the youtube and you'll see all the chats there it was also children's mental health week and we had lots of children and siblings talking about how they're finding it difficult at home and maybe some tips and advice and some of our young patrons were chatting as well about what they're doing so um i just wanted to read you just a couple of little snippets but you can find them all again on the charity website so hi i'm lochen i'm 13 years old and my brother has autism he's called oscar and he's seven and for me lockdown has been difficult because i cannot see my friends what we were just talking about or go to roller roller hockey practice but i also enjoy it and as well because i don't really like going out i like being at home so home learning has been really hard for me because sometimes when oscar is not at school he can get very excited and he can be loud so i cannot focus my relationship with my brother oscar is good he comes to get me if he needs help and if he ever wants to play and he won't wait when mum is working and oscar needs something i might need to step in and help though there are some things i need my sister's help with and she also helps me a lot so there's lots of different bits in there that um lochen's finding a bit difficult but also how he talks about how he can help his brother so we've got a sibling here and her name is caden so she says seeing my brother so upset and seeing the impact of him being deprived of all his external support is heart crushing it started off as a few difficult days which then became a constant battle to give caden the things he needed in his day to day life now i've spoken to this particular mum and they're living in an apartment and there's three of them and two of the children um are on the spectrum and so it's you know obviously it's quite difficult because they haven't got a garden or anything like that so he's saying she's saying that my younger sister bonnie is four and she also strives on routine and structure around the time of the first lockdown she was coming to the age where she could see the differences in her needs in comparison to her brother this meant that often they were both becoming stressed and upset at the same time growing more and more angry off the back of each other as they couldn't handle each other's noise as well as their own feeling so being the eldest she was able to see and to understand the pain and the stress that the whole family were affected especially by me the mum i felt helpless that there was nothing i could personally do to help how my siblings felt and all i wanted was for everything to go back to normal and i've heard that so many times from families we've tried new schedules new toys methods to help caden but we simply couldn't fill his needs for sensory input and for um this young lady's one of the siblings to get a little bit of peace she went to stay with her nana for a little while because she was just finding it overwhelming so it is hard for a lot of these families and it is hard for autistic adults but then on the other hand i have spoke to some autistic adults who've said it's no different for me you know i'm usually on my own anyway at home i like being on my own i've set up my own business i'm working from home so it's not any different for me so back to sarah so sarah tell me a little bit about the involvement with professor baron korn who recently got knighted for services to autism so tell me a little bit about what your involvement is with professor baron simon baron korn yeah so he is the head of our clinical advisory board what that means is that we have everything that we do at the centre we make sure it's been benchmarked it's been properly researched we try and integrate a kind of blended therapy program where we are informed by different methods whether that be esdm which is a thought process of early start denver model or jasper we've kind of taken elements of different programs that have been researched and proven under his guidance and use those those findings to develop our own kind of blended programs with the children so he will regularly meet with us and have meetings and talk about new research or how we're getting on with the programs we're working on at the centre outcomes of the children you know anything that we can kind of do some studies on and he also has a couple of doctors that work with him at cambridge university are also on the advisory board with us and it's just fantastic to have someone of his kind of experience to guide us through that process and he's been really invaluable since the beginning to be honest sounds that sounds great we've got any future projects planned for the future with the support of professor barron coe well i think um the next step for us is to do more published research so um we've been kind of you know there's always a process of having to have enough data to be able to analyse and you know you have to do that it's no good doing on a small group of children it has to be on a larger number of children so i think the next steps for us would be to do some kind of published research looking to the outcomes with the children that we've had at the centre for maybe the last 18 months to two years um so that would be that would be good to see okay um so tell me a little bit more about um the future plans of the foundation where where can you see it in five years ten years time what how do you want it to progress and how does some uh petra uh would like sorry not petra tamara would like it to yeah yeah how would how would she like it to progress what sort of ideas have you got she well i think her her plan was always to start the foundation and you know seed the whole project from the beginning to be able to open up the centre um and then i think you know the vision for petra's place is to become a centre of excellence and then once that is a centre of excellence which you know hopefully won't take too long because we've had a little bit of a setback with covid in the last year but you know we've recently opened the nursery we've got a really great team of therapists and special needs nursery nurses so i think you know the plans for the future are to build on the expertise have a kind of gold gold standard centre and then hopefully open more centres i mean i know that that is something she wants to do long term is to keep working with the foundation and funding these centres and you know hopefully eventually one day maybe five years time having you know several centres in different locations different major cities in the uk and i know that is something that you know is desired by people because we get lots of people on our social media saying do you have anything in my area i live in the north of england and you know unfortunately we can't be everywhere at the moment but i think you know as much as we can support people online and through our social media often advice and tips you know that's we can do that at least for now um what i was going to ask you as well is with reference to staffing because i know um speaking to other schools that sometimes they find it difficult in finding speech and language therapists occupational therapists educational psychologists i'm not sure what therapy you provide at the centre do you find it difficult finding staff and how do you find your staff yeah i mean it's not easy and i think um to find really good stuff is tricky but we've um we've been quite lucky and we we use the next medium really i mean we advertise through our website um on social media but we also have gone to agencies specialized agencies and you know we've just been lucky to find really good people who've got a you know great background great experience and who are really passionate about helping children i think you know it's really apparent when you meet people when they're passionate about something and i would say all the people we have at the moment in our team are very passionate about helping children and you know that is kind of seen in the fact that you know the therapists who work on the one-to-one programs for children are really keen to get into the nursery and help the nursery nurses and help the children in the nursery so that there's a really cohesive approach between the two sides of the of the center so yeah it's not easy it's not easy finding the right staff but you know you just have to persevere i think and if you know what you're looking for you'll find the right person eventually yeah it's because i know that um you know when we set up both schools one particular school it was easy to find speech and language therapists but it was really hard to find occupational therapists and then in another area where the school was in Kent it was vice versa so um it you know it um you just and it's hard to find the right staff as well that are going to suit the team um and also that are going to stay on board as well um do you offer training um so say for example somebody might be interested and they might like to work with you do you offer training or apprenticeships or anything like that yeah i mean we do a regular training with our staff anyway so we would do um regular training with them we have lots of kind of insect days with the staff where we make sure um they have a career opportunities to you know do any training that they want to do as i said we had um we had Connie Kasari come over and do some jasper training with the team from she came over from america that was a couple of years ago so what is jasper so for somebody listening in that might have a child that's just been diagnosed so obviously it's a bit of a minefield um when your son or your daughter is diagnosed on the spectrum because there's all these different acronyms and various different therapies that you think well what is that what is that so listening this and what can you explain what jasper is yeah i mean jasper is just one thought process in terms of how to help children with autism autism and it stands for joint attention symbolic play engagement and regulation and it's been developed by doctor Connie Kasari at the would take from her training and you know implement it in the centre in different programs that we've developed ourselves and the same with esdm is another method which is early start denver models so that's another thought process and another research behavioral therapy for children um that kind of focuses on play joint activities you know it's encouraged children to is to boost their language and their social and cognitive skills so you know it's not that we would take we offer our staff lots of different trainings but we wouldn't necessarily just take one school of thought we would take elements from different you know different people and and with Simon Baron Cohen's guidance develop those programs to suit the children so every child that would come to us with a specific need there wouldn't be like one fits all obviously every child would be very different so it would be taking that child after an assessment deciding what is the best program for this child where are the strengths and where the weaknesses and where do we need how do we need to help them and how can we do that so there's not kind of one one thing fits all children you know it's a very kind of bespoke approach to the children and even in the nursery you know we have a one to three ratio now nursery which you know compared to other nurses and i mean just to say we are an inclusive nursery so for example we had a parent come along with joint with kind of joint needs because she had twins and one child was autistic and the other child was neurotypical so she really wanted both of them to come to the nursery because she wanted them to stay together as siblings and we are fully inclusive you know we said you know we're happy to have you know the sibling there and you know that if that's really important to you and the child you know the obviously siblings being together is really great for their social development as well so you know we i think the thing is it's not you know that there's not one program for one child it's like everything is very bespoke and unique to the child and in the nursery as i say we've got one to three in our ratio which i think most nurseries have between the ages of two to three it's a one to four ratio and then after the age of three it becomes a one to six ratio so you know the fact that they're getting the one to three ratio throughout the nursery means that they're getting more attention and they're also having the input from the therapists um so you know it's great because we have all of these trainings and it's really beneficial to all the staff members you know to to kind of learn all these different approaches and techniques so that they can adapt them to how they how they need to brilliant thank you for that um i just also wanted to share that uh for people in the special educational needs world there's a fantastic magazine that i've been getting for years and it's called sen and it stands for special educational needs and they have a quarterly magazine that comes out and it's got so much information in it so in the january february edition they talk about autism and Tourette's um they talk about research there's just it's absolutely packed and also if you're looking for a might be looking for a nursery you might be looking for a school you might be looking for a secondary school you might be looking for a college there's lots of information in there and what i noticed because i am asked often about um books on ethnicity and culture and um i have seen this book and it's very very good it's called autism ethnicity and culture and the author is a lecturer in autism and also the project lead for the black and minority ethnic community project at the national autistic society he has worked with families affected by autism from diverse ethnic backgrounds the book is intended to be more an academic overview and is directed at a wide range of practitioners and it brings ethnicity to the attention of those trying to develop person centered practice provided practical guidance to support practitioners the author raises interesting points about issues such as perceptions around development milestones and the role of religion and the fact that the concept of autism is based on western norms this is a well-researched book that provides professionals with more knowledge and understanding to support families from different minority communities and also if you check on our charity website we have information and lots of write-ups on autism and culture because i remember oh must have been about five years ago i was asked to give a talk um in a temple and um it was just filled with women and um i always ask at the beginning has anybody got um a son or a daughter um that might be on the autism spectrum or is diagnosed on the autism spectrum and there's been about 150 women there and no one put their hand up and then um after i gave my talk um one of my charity um volunteers she stood up and spoke about her experience because her mom actually goes to that particular temple and she was asked which she told me about that when her son who's on the spectrum makes noises ticks all that sort of thing and was asked to leave and wasn't allowed to go back to the temple so she wanted to share that story which she did and then um afterwards you know there was some entertainment and as we were leaving both tally and i um about 10 months came after us and said really sorry we didn't put our hands up because you know the stigma here you know there's a bit of shame because you have a son or a daughter on the spectrum but we just wanted to say thank you so much for talking about autism and some of them were actually crying you know they felt like quite overwhelmed and i think it was because they were able to tell somebody because you know kept it to themselves so um we were then asked back and they've now formed a group where mums can go and chat so um i am i am pleased to see that there's more and more information now about autism and ethnicity and culture that is out there and as i've said it's nothing to be ashamed of you know that you have a son or a daughter that is on the spectrum and one of the book um which we had a speaker on women's radio station which has become very popular it's called is that clear and it's effective communication in a neurodiverse world and it's autism inspired tips for non-autistic people and it's been written by um zane gainer kathryn alvios and joe bottler so uh lots of information it's a small book but it's packed with information and for example like getting your wires crossed don't worry i'm only pulling your leg as you know a lot of our children and adults you know take things literally sam's a bit under the weather today so the action items what they're saying is recognize and limit the idioms you frequently use explain the idioms you use for example okay let's get the ball rolling let's start shall we call it a day shall we stop be aware of other figurative language such as similes as quite as a mouse or metaphors you're my rock so lots of little tips like that that you know we might not even think about when we're talking to our children so it's called is that clear and if you check the charity website in the latest news you will see um details about the book so sarah tell me what did you used to do before lockdown to help you relax chill outs for your own mental health and well-being and now what do you do um i've spoken to quite a few parents that are women or men or however it may be that they're not able to for example go to the gym because the gyms are closed yeah what did you do before and um what do you do now so before i used to i used to go to the gym whenever i could fit in and i'd love to do classes especially boxing actually which i found quite therapeutic okay um like a boxing class and um you know different pilates and various different classes in the gym i used to be quite a gym goer but obviously since they're closed um that's not a possibility but i do run outside i like to go for walks with the children at the weekend because we're all doing that at the moment going out for nice long walks i think people are fed up and walking that i think that's why we've got the dog to try and give us an excuse to go out because we're you know kind of exhausted that one so far but um no i mean it's it's different isn't it i used to love meeting up with my friends and having a coffee or you know even if it was just for a quick hour here and there before pick up at school and things but you can't do those things now but i have tried to um keep up some exercise i go running with my eldest daughter she loves to run she's quite an athlete so we go out running together and walks with the family and whenever i can just you know try and take some time for myself as well because it's very important to kind of to be the best mum you can you've also got to have a bit of a you know period of downtime every now and again as well so just you know try and relax or read a book or you know go and have a bath whenever you can really i think you know our lives have changed quite dramatically so you know the things we used to do to relax are quite different to what how they are now but i think um i think you know being outside and getting fresh air even if you had to wrap up is is really good for mental health i think we were quite lucky um you know in the summer when it was first locked down because the weather was so nice and we were able to have picnics we were able to have a walk and then now because it's so cold you know and i think people has just thought we've had enough now type of thing but we just gotta keep going you know it's one day at a time we're getting a little bit closer you know things are improving with the vaccine and uh absolutely i think that's the thing i think on saturday we were all a bit like you know gosh you're going to do this again you know it's like every weekend but actually when you once you get out and you you know it was cold but you know it was bright skies and we just all went out as a family with the dog and i think all of us we were out for a couple of hours we all felt so much better when we got home because i think it's very easy like you say when it's cold to just kind of vegetate on the sofa and the weekend you know and put the tv on and i think you know it's much nicer to go and have some fresh air it is it makes you feel better and i call it my stress buster walk and i just wanted to share with people that people know that i you know i'm always walking with angela we've walked miles yeah i think it was about seven or eight years ago we started doing this stress buster walk we're a bit like robocop when we're walking we're quite fast um but what happened on um yesterday actually um i was walking with angela and a lot of these parks like the paths sometimes are a little bit uneven and you know we go to generally go to the same parks there's about five or six different parks that we go to and as i've said in the past you know things have changed you know like some of the benches are now taped up and you can't sit down and have a picnic or whatever it is and obviously angela finds that side of it difficult but what happened was we were walking doing our usual walk around the lake and then we were halfway around and then i went over on my ankle all my word it really really hurt and i was thinking what we're going to do so angela was continuing to walk and i just shouted angela stop wait and luckily he did and he turned around because sometimes he just this what i call he catches the wind and he has to run and it's because with angela he's quite profoundly affected so for him it's like freedom you know he can he's in a place where he knows but obviously i couldn't run after him so it was just like i asked him to stop which he did i was in agony and i thought i've got to get round the park with him so first i shout i shouted to him angela come to come to mom and um which he did and then i tried to link him and i thought i put my foot down and it was just so painful i thought i've broken it so then um he didn't want me to link him because it's not what we normally do so um he then um just continued to start walking i said wait angela slower so i thought right anna get a grip so i just started walking um with him and as much as the pain was i think the adrenaline kicked in because i knew i had to get round the park to get to the car because angela obviously didn't understand i'd hurt myself and i then couldn't i didn't want to alarm him as well that was the other thing i didn't want him to get stressed or but um we finally got to the car and i sat i could have actually sat and cried but you know we managed to but these are the sort of things these are the sort of challenges that we have as parents as well you know when you've got a son or a daughter you know that has got quite like angela that's quite you know profoundly affected by thoughts and he's not understanding what's going on so um yeah i you know just just keep going the best you can that's all i can say really too i really feel for you was it okay your ankle is not broken or sprained or no it's just broke badly bruised and um swollen so i've got one of those elasticated bandages on and i've been taking um ibuprofen hopefully to and also i've got um a frozen bag of vegetables on the side but it's just like but it's something that you know i can't afford to have happened because i need it to get better soon so um so is there anything else you'd like to share with me about um the foundation and about the nursery and please can you um share again where people can find out information and also if you haven't got a pen handy um we're going to be um sharing um sorry you know what i've had angela didn't go to bed till half past three this morning i've had two hours sleep i'm so tired people know that's something that's with me as well is like for 20 odd years angela just doesn't need a lot of sleep he sort of just sleeps three to four hours two hours we've had got we've gone all night as so i'm feeling when it gets to this sort of time i i tend to start feeling it you need some coffee or a piece of chocolate something like i mean don't think i know that much but um yeah just um you know if people are interested um you know we are going to be putting an article on the charity website and that will be going up um very soon so if you want to find out a little bit more information but for people listening they might have a pen handy and they want to find information now um where can they find you well i would say if they want to find out information about the what we do at i'd say go to the website which is www.petrusplace.co.uk and on there you'll find all the information about the therapies we do and the nursery and you can meet our team and and then you can contact us and like i say go and organize a virtual viewing if you want to have a look around the nursery and see if it really fits your needs we've also got a an instagram account which is petrus place therapy center right the um the handle for the instagram and on there we often post um tips on you know we had one on the 6th of february which was from our ot nicole and she posted tips on there for parents that they can do at home the week before the 26th of january we had one from our speech and language therapist poppy about some tips parents could do there so i would say follow us on instagram have a look we're constantly posting tips and you know articles things that will help you whilst you're in lockdown and obviously all year round um we have got a competition coming up actually on wednesday oh on our instagram page which is for um it's just basically how to like and share the page so that we kind of get some more followers aware of what we're doing but it's to offer two free sessions virtual sessions of either speech and language or ot with our therapist as i mentioned you call a poppy so look out for that competition on the 17th of february and and that will give you the opportunity to win a couple of sessions and give it a try and see see if you like it okay so um that'll be on hopefully be on the charity website the link for that as well and again if you want to follow me on instagram it's at anna kennedy ob e if you want to follow me on facebook or the charity on facebook it's anna kennedy online and if you want to follow me on twitter and that's at anna kennedy want and i post all my own posts everything that i'm doing with angela or anything that's happening with the charity how i'm feeling um and a lot of parents do follow me and um moms say to me that you know in the morning they get up say oh what's anna been up to uh um you know anna's still going so and i i've been told that i'm quite a motivator and then um my sister says yeah but who motivates you but you know what it's just that i have i am quite a driven person and i am very passionate about what i do and i am a workaholic and i love speaking to parents and families and unautistic adults i do speak to lots and lots of people online um and we have what's called the wider work club as well at three o'clock in the morning because i always know the parents that are up at that time so we have a chat either on facebook or we chat on twitter and i ask questions as well so and also please be patient because i get so many messages and i i do get to them eventually but just please be patient because obviously now with covid i'm in the office on my own you know i'm doing a bit of everything and um lisa's working from home and i have my fantastic team of volunteers everybody in the charity is a volunteer and they give me their their special time and i couldn't do with what i do without them you know we're a very close knit team and they're either moms or dads or grandparents even autistic adults role model so if you want to check out you know who our ambassadors are who are our charity patrons we've just got young charity patrons as well please check out the charity website and they're constantly writing articles for me you know sharing how they're feeling during lockdown or if they've got any projects going on so please um check them out and there's lots of useful information on the resources page so again if there's something on the resource page you feel that should be on there please write into the charity website um on the contact form and we will make sure that we can put it up there for you so we've got a few minutes left so if you had to give some tips and advice to a mom so because you've got a son who's got ADHD yeah tips and advice would you give um i think i mean obviously every child's different who has ADHD or autism but for me um it's it's a big part of it is being patient and not reacting to things so with my son for example he will have huge emotional outbursts um he just can't control his emotions and he's aware of that and he the funny thing is he will often say afterwards mommy i'm sorry i just couldn't control it and i think it's about how you react to that and it has a huge difference i mean when we first found out he had the he had ADHD we you know got advice from the psychologist we had lots of strategies that we could implement at school to help him and at home and you know massive massive changes massive improvements just by implementing small things you know being patient giving him time to say Jack okay just take a deep breath let's talk calm down um things like with schoolwork you know breaking down tasks into smaller time slots rather than giving him a task that might take half an hour saying right let's do 10 minutes then let's take a break and have a drink and have a chat and then let's do another 10 minutes you know just kind of small small things actually he'd make a huge difference and a huge difference in building his self-esteem because that's part of it as well he's having very low self-esteem um you know just not being able to control emotions and and you know sometimes not being able to communicate how they're feeling and i think although you know struggle through lockdown with lots of other things i think one thing being able to spend a lot of time you know you get to kind of understand how your child works and what you know what you can do to help them a lot better and i really have kind of newfound respect for teachers as well i think you know the job the teachers do with children in schools is amazing i think all parents have um found that appreciation yeah i've definitely i've definitely spoke to parents to think oh all hail to teachers yeah i just wanted to say to you sarah thank you so much for taking the time out to chat to me and talking to me about the foundation and the nursery and everything that you do and really appreciate it and also hats off to you with four children at home thank you so much thank you now please stay safe stay strong and everyone look after yourself one day at a time we're going to get there hopefully not long to go so take care of yourselves bye everyone bye sarah bye bye thank you