It was an anxious wait but when I received the telephone call to say the keys to the school were available to us, I could hardly get down to Hillingdon Civic Centre quickly enough! I hurriedly got Patrick and Angelo into the car and went off straightaway to collect the keys. Needless to say, I was very excited, ecstatic, even though Patrick and Angelo had no idea what all the fuss was about. Anyway, any thoughts of school in Patrick’s mind were full of negativity. To make it even more special, it was 5 January, 1999, Patrick’s ninth birthday!
At last I had the keys in my hand. And then it hit me: I couldn’t help thinking, What now? I drove straight to the school and let myself in. Bloody hell! I thought. Whatever have we let ourselves in for? Everything’s in such a state. We’re going to need a lot of help here.
Meanwhile, Angelo had seen fit to run off and explore. At first I wasn’t too concerned, as everywhere had been locked up, but I was dismayed to find he’d discovered the climbing bars in the main hall and had instantly clambered right up to the top, and was balanced precariously on a tiny wooden platform many feet up from the floor with nothing to break his fall should he have slipped.
Seeing him standing there so carefree absolutely horrified me. One false move and that would have been it for him, yet there was no way I could leave to get help. I knew I had to climb up there after him – and I really hate heights. It was a nerve-racking climb but, fortunately, after some negotiation, my powers of persuasion saw Angelo safely back on terra firma. Not the best of starts, by any means!
Then I rang everyone I could think of to let them know the news – we were in business. Further exploration of the school brought home to me just how much work would be required to bring it into a serviceable condition and, I must admit, it was pretty daunting.
But there was no way I would accept failure. Firmly in my mind was the comment made by one councillor while we were trying to secure the school. He’d said he reckoned we’d be handing the property back to the council within six months. ‘What do you know about running a school?’ he’d asked. ‘You won’t be able to hack it.’ He may not have known it at the time, but he’d just made me even more determined to make a success of the project.
Sean didn’t arrive at the school until the evening. Alex was with him. After looking around the whole premises we all gathered around to discuss the best way forward, excitedly chatting while, at the same time, wondering what on earth we’d let ourselves in for!
Up until the point we received the keys for the school, Alex had been working for a warehouse company but, such was the scale of the task ahead of us, he decided to quit his job and work for us full-time as project manager. He would be the only one among us at the time to receive a wage, but this was to be a vital full-time role and we had already budgeted for such expenses with our bank loan.
Once appointed, Alex threw himself wholeheartedly into the project and, thanks to him, the organisation of the scheduled work over the forthcoming months went, largely, very smoothly. His enthusiasm for the task before him was matched only by his humour. I have to say he’s a lovely man who likes nothing more than to have a jolly good natter!
It was clear that one of our priorities would have to be the school’s flat roof, which was leaking like a sieve in places, but that was obviously going to cost a huge amount of money. Further inspections saw us quoted figures in excess of £100,000. We knew this would be a difficult sum to raise and considered having the work done in sections to spread the cost. One thing was for sure: the work couldn’t be ignored, as we had rapidly-filling buckets all over the place every time it rained.
It was all hands on deck in the race against time to get the school up and running. Sean, Alex and I began the painting – with Sean ending up with more paint in his hair than on the ceiling! However, it soon became obvious we would need a lot more help if we were to have any chance of completing the project in time. We established a core workforce of seven or eight of us, but we also had a lot of occasional volunteers, including parents, brothers and sisters and grandparents of children who were hoping to get into the school.
One parent, whose daughter had autism, was an electrician and he took responsibility for the huge task of sorting out all the wiring at the school; and another grandparent, also an electrician, still helps us to this day. Another parent with an autistic son became the maintenance manager.
We’ve since become like one big family.
People would come in to help clean up, paint and so on. Prince’s Trust volunteers cleared the area of old trees and paving slabs, while Middlesex Community Service would bring along people who had to work in the community on Saturdays. Alex and I would be on site to monitor what was going on.
Surprisingly, in spite of being made to come along to help out, many of the offenders, once their penance had been paid, still chose to come back to assist in any way they could, perhaps because of the camaraderie among our volunteer workforce. One lady, a drink-driver, had enjoyed working at the school so much that, a few months later, when she reoffended, she even asked if she could return to our school to serve her time. And she did!
I decided to ring around as many newspapers as I could think of to drum up support. I started with our local newspaper, the Uxbridge Gazette, and spoke to a reporter, Barbara Fisher, who has, over the past few years, been a huge supporter and also become a good friend. Barbara gave me several tips so far as dealing with the press was concerned. She advised me to keep all my correspondence short and sweet – they like conciseness – and suggested sending in letters on coloured paper so they would stand out among all the others received each day in the majority of newsrooms. It turned out to be very good advice.
We were very fortunate that our project captured the imagination of so many people and companies willing to help us along the way. When we acquired the school, the NatWest bank donated a whole load of toys, and David Kamsler, from the Link charity, which is based in Basingstoke, gave us lots of chairs and tables that had been donated to his charity at the end of the tax year when the companies renew their fittings and fixtures.
David also provided us with a huge number of large, heavy, blue carpet tiles, enough to cover most of the floor space at the school. Alex and Sean and I borrowed a couple of knackered old vans and drove down to Basingstoke to collect them from the company where they were situated. We had to lift them from the floors and load them into the vans. Although they were almost brand-new, there was a fault with them that meant the rubber backs were not quite as good as they might have been. That said, they were certainly good enough for our purposes. The vans really struggled on the way back to Hillingdon, such was the weight of the loads, and then we had to go back for more! We covered the classrooms and corridors, the staffroom as well.
The Pavilions Shopping Centre in Uxbridge chose the school as its charity for the Millennium, and four schools in South Harrow donated nearly-new furniture, including 90 desks. British Airways donated older-style PCs, office furniture, blankets for the relaxation room and a £5,000 cheque after they’d seen a number of newspaper articles. And we held jumble sales.
People would even leave things outside the school doors that they assumed would be useful to us – toys, computers, books, tables, etc. Some items had notes attached to them with messages such as, ‘This is for the autistic children and the autistic lady!’ Sometimes there were items we didn’t really need but we took them to jumble sales and got money for them, so they weren’t wasted.
Sixty British Airports Authority staff from Heathrow Airport helped to create a daily-skills living room and the company also donated £5,000 to help equip it. The room was converted into a classroom equipped with a kitchen, dining room and living area where the children could learn how to cope with everyday life. The American School, an independent private school nearby, which had had some autistic pupils in the past, gave us lots of books.
Although there was a lot of hard work to do, we also had times when we had a laugh. Outside there was grass everywhere, growing out of control. Alex, wandering around, found an enormous petrol motor mower that had been left in the grounds but we had no idea whether it would still work. We decided to give it a try. To our surprise it started and I decided to make a start on cutting the grass. Unfortunately, as I let out the clutch it roared off, much to Alex and Sean’s amusement. It was so powerful it just lifted up and dragged me along behind it! Alex said he just wished he’d had a camera with him at the time.
Obviously, all this work at the school took time and, without Patrick and Angelo being in appropriate places of education, Sean and I would sometimes need to bring them along with us. For that reason it was important we could leave them securely while we worked and we had to ensure all the doors were locked so they didn’t wander off while we were otherwise occupied. We made arrangements for the boys to receive their home tuition at the school and set up a classroom specifically for them to give them the opportunity to get used to their new surroundings.
Unfortunately, the burglar alarm used to go off an awful lot. Alex, Sean and I were the callouts, since we didn’t have the money to employ security staff at the time. We also used to get false alarms and later we discovered that the alarm was faulty, which wasn’t much fun when you consider it would often sound off at about 2 a.m.
Soon after we’d had a washing machine and fridge delivered, the alarm went off again, so Sean, Alex and I arrived at the school late at night to find a window had been smashed at the back of the premises. Then Sean saw two guys running off with the washing machine, so he jumped over the fence and gave chase. Seeing this big guy screaming and charging towards them, they sensibly dropped the washing machine and ran for it. Later, in a lane at the back of the school, a large amount of property was found awaiting collection, stuff that had been stolen from the school and other properties nearby. We got the washing machine back but it had been badly dented. Fortunately, though, the people who donated it to us in the first place replaced it.
It was nerve-racking to come out at the dead of night to a deserted school, not knowing who or what we might find. Sometimes, as we patrolled the premises, Sean would walk around holding a truncheon, though I’d warn him not to hit anyone with it because such is the law of the land that it probably would have been Sean who would have got into trouble rather than an intruder. Other times, Sean would go around on his own, which really worried me.
The break-ins highlighted the need for better security and, again, volunteers in the form of Waterside Parkland’s manager Richard Wassell and his team came to the rescue to supply us with extra fencing and lighting. The most vulnerable part of the premises was the fence at the back of the grounds, which backed onto a field. This had to be heightened but we couldn’t risk putting any spikes on the top because autistic children are renowned for climbing and we could not afford to risk their safety.
Another unexpected problem arose when we began receiving mail addressed to Moorcroft School that was intended for the previous occupants of the site. We hadn’t changed the name because the former occupants had moved on but, although they were no longer based on our Moorcroft site, they had retained their school’s name elsewhere. Obviously, this was a situation that needed to be urgently addressed to avoid any confusion. We decided to rename our school and held a meeting to decide upon it. After putting our heads together we came up with Hillingdon Manor School, which didn’t take too much imagination owing to the fact that it is situated in Hillingdon and is adjacent to a manor house!
Of course, having the premises at last was only the beginning of a very long road we had to travel down. After all, what use is a school without any teachers? Bearing in mind this was hardly our field of expertise, we knew we had to bring in a head teacher first of all, who would be responsible for advising us on the number and calibre of staff required to enable the school to function effectively.
Policies and procedures would need to be put in place before any other appointments could be made, so the appointment of a head teacher became paramount – but how do you go about getting a headteacher for a school that is falling apart, with no pupils or staff?
It was hardly an attractive proposal, but I’d made a few contacts at Christina Bertolucci’s workshops and I was aware of The Times Educational Supplement, which regularly carries advertisements for teaching professionals. I popped into our local branch of W H Smith, bought a copy and studied the way the advertisements were laid out in the situations-vacant columns. Then I noticed the paper carried a special-needs section, which also featured a good number of advertisements.
Looking at the existing advertisements, I got an idea of how our own advertisement should appear and what kind of requirements we should highlight. I was shocked, however, when I looked at the price we’d be required to pay for our advertisement: £600. Just think what we could have repaired with that sort of money!
We had set aside a certain amount of money from our bank loan to pay staff upon opening but, obviously, we needed to be able to sustain ourselves financially afterwards. We reckoned statementing fees would go some way towards helping out on that front.
And so it was that we put together the following advertisement:
Challenging placement in a new school set up by parents. Applicants need to be enthusiastic, determined and have knowledge of autism.
We soon received some replies, but there were some very strange or wacky applicants. One even wrote to us on some writing paper with the logo from the kids’ TV programme Rainbow on the top of it!
Sean, Alex, myself and Dave, who was the only person out of the shareholders without a child with autism, conducted the interviews. Of course, knowing what to ask potential head teachers had to be researched prior to the interviewing process, and already I had a number of questions drafted. Previously I’d contacted Rosemary Siddles from the National Autistic Society, who dealt with education matters. Rosemary was very helpful in assisting me with a draft questionnaire and advised how much parents paid for their children to attend similar types of school.
One applicant, probably in her eighties, arrived for an interview. She was wearing a kilt, white training socks and trainers. She was one of several who turned up, none of whom we felt were suitable for our project. Fortunately, on the last day scheduled for applications, we received an application from Angela Austin. I’d read only the first paragraph of her letter when I thought, This is the one. Angela had expertise in speech-and-language therapy, she was a special-educational-needs teacher, and she had ten years’ experience of working with people with autism. At the time she was working in a unit in Surrey for children with mixed disabilities. I called her over for an interview.
When she arrived at the school for her interview, Patrick was sitting in an office just off the main corridor near the entrance, reading one of his dinosaur books. Angela was very well-spoken, and well-dressed, with blonde hair, and she looked quite out of place in such a dilapidated building. As she walked past the office where Patrick was sitting, she noticed him and went in to say hello. At this time Patrick had the attitude that, if he didn’t know someone, he didn’t want to know them. He didn’t want them in his space. He kept his book in front of his face and ignored her.
‘Hello,’ she repeated, ‘isn’t that The Oxford Reading Tree Book on Dinosaurs?’
Patrick glared over the top of his book as Angela started telling him what was in it.
‘How do you know about this book?’
‘I’ve already read it,’ replied Angela and, within moments, she’d got around him.
I couldn’t help thinking, This is the one! This is the one! She knows exactly how to speak to Patrick as nobody else could. As for the interview, it went really well. We explained our intentions to Angela of including pupils with a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome, high-functioning autism and/or semantic-pragmatic disorder or pathological demand-avoidance, then she left to await our response.
Afterwards, it took little persuasion from me to convince the others that Angela was just the person we needed. It was agreed I would telephone her the next day to offer her the job. Meanwhile, Angela had returned to Surrey, where, after telling her colleagues about our school, she was advised that she must be mad even to consider joining a school run by people like us.
When I called her the next day, she was surprised to hear from us so quickly and asked if she could have a little time to consider our offer. Fortunately, despite being advised to the contrary by her colleagues, she decided she would be happy to join us – but there was one condition. She wanted a teacher she worked with called Karen Croucher to come with her. Angela told me she had already asked Karen if she would be willing to relocate and Karen had indicated that she, like Angela, was interested in the challenge awaiting them.
We had no problem with that. If Angela thought Karen was up to the task, who were we to say otherwise? We knew we would have to put a lot of faith in Angela’s ability and expertise if our school was to run effectively and efficiently.
When Angela and Karen arrived to take up their posts, we still had no idea how many pupils would be on the school roll when we opened. We knew, of course, that we needed more teachers and, after a series of meetings between us and Angela and Karen, it was agreed that the main responsibility for such appointments would be left to them.
Angela and Karen worked well in putting together a series of policies and procedures that proved their worth at a residential school they had previously worked at dealing specifically with autistic pupils at the more severe end of the spectrum. Their appointments were just the start of a dream team that would grow as the weeks progressed.
A broad, balanced, well-structured and stimulating curriculum would stretch the abilities of the pupils and it was decided to adopt the same TEACCH approach to lessons as those implemented so successfully at Springhallow School in Ealing. This approach plays a major role in the education of people with autism. Basically, TEACCH is a flexible method of teaching that was first established in North Carolina as far back as 1966. Its primary aim is to prepare people with autism to live or work more effectively at home, at school and in the community.
Hopefully, the following principles of the programme, complete with references for further reading, will clarify. As we saw in Chapter Four, TEACCH is an acronym for Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-handicapped CHildren. It is a ‘whole life’ approach aimed at supporting children, adolescents and adults with autism through the provision of visual information, structure and predictability. Essentially, this means that the approach can be used in all areas of life for the whole of one’s life. Having an autistic-spectrum disorder means that a person may have difficulty in organising their environment and sequencing tasks. Simply put, TEACCH teaches skills that will allow a person with autism to overcome these difficulties.
The TEACCH programme focuses on structuring the environment to facilitate skill development and independence. Clear physical and visual boundaries are established to help children understand what they are expected to do in each area. Visual supports are used to support children’s comprehension.
TEACCH aims to provide the least restrictive teaching possible. One-to-one support is available to children as they learn new skills. However, they are encouraged to develop independence and opportunities for integration and reverse integration are provided.
Every aspect of structured teaching is predetermined and organised to benefit the success of a person with autism. The programme emphasises certain skills and behaviours, but the effects of this work move into the child’s personal life and everyday activities. The programme consists of precise methods to set up the learning and work environment, make schedules, create activities and teach the learner.
The physical layout of the classroom plays an important role in the implementation of the TEACCH programme because children with autism have trouble differentiating between events and activities. To address this, TEACCH creates several distinct areas for specific activities. Each activity is consistently done in its own designated spot, allowing the child to relate the activity to the work area and, therefore, allowing for more concentration and focus.
Students with autism are also very easily distracted, so minimal decoration of the room and dividers for each work area are necessary for the success of the programme. When working, it is beneficial for the students to be facing a blank wall to avoid added distractions. This can help students focus on the activity instead of what is occurring in the rest of the room.
Schedules are utilised when teaching an autistic child about a sequence of events that will happen during the day, as the child will be more capable of distinguishing between the distinct events and determining what he or she is to do next. The children receive their own daily schedule, designating times for activities such as play, structured play, work, independent work, snack and circle time.
The students learn what to expect next and this can sometimes motivate them to complete a task because they see that a more enjoyable one will follow. Each schedule is geared towards the individual student, allowing for a higher comprehension level. For advanced students, the schedule could be composed simply of written text, while other students might need pictures of their work stations or actual objects from these stations. The comprehension of these schedules helps the children to learn to follow directions and develop an independence they did not possess before.
The different work stations contain activities that the child becomes accustomed to and, therefore, he or she obtains more proficiency in the activity. In the work area, the child works with a teacher on activities dealing with topics such as shapes, colour and organisation. With the teacher’s help, the child completes an activity and then moves on to another. Each activity is done many times until the child is capable of doing it on their own, in which case the activity is moved to the independent learning station. There, the child gains more independence, working alone to complete the activities he or she is accustomed to.
Structured play sees the child working with a teacher, using toys and games to help gain attention skills and learn to work with different objects such as blocks and balloons. The play station is where children can relax, use their own imagination and participate in whatever game or toy chosen. The children have their own times for each activity allowing for personal interaction with the teachers and stations.
There are two times during the day in which the group combines as a whole – snack and circle time. During snack, the teacher distributes a portion of food to each child only when he or she is asked for that specific food. The child must say the word for the food or hand over a card indicating a preference. This increases the communication skills of the children.
Circle time is a time when the children sit and sing songs to end the day. Each day the same songs are sung, allowing the children to become familiar with the songs and to anticipate what is next.
Underpinning the above is the need for assessment and measurement. It should also be stressed that the programme is highly individualised for each child. Finally, while the above describes how the method may be implemented among smaller children, the approach can be modified and thus made appropriate for older children and adults. In the workplace this approach could organise a person’s day, what clothes they should wear, what they need to do before attending a meeting and so on. This ‘structure’ would allow a person with autism to work effectively.
TEACCH and connective education run alongside each other. It takes a very simplified view of autism, in that to understand the world the person involved has to take in lots of pieces of information and build interconnections between them.
An example of this may be learning a set of manners or ways of behaving, which is a good thing. But while correct etiquette is essential in the right situation, it can be a disaster in others. For instance, if Sean attended a dinner party for the Lord Chief Justice wearing a dark lounge suit and called everyone sir or ma’am, that would be fine. But, if he didn’t realise that this approach is inappropriate at the works Christmas party or a shindig at the rugby club, he might be seen as not fitting in.
Thus, connective education teaches in a way that reinforces the interconnections between information. It can be applied to factual information and the learning of socially appropriate ways of behaving. To this end, what would be taught at Hillingdon Manor would be measured. An individual education plan would be rigorously monitored to enable the teachers to build on what is achieved in a very systematic and constructive way.
With the decision to adopt TEACCH at Hillingdon Manor, a mission statement and prospectus were devised. Within these were a number of pledges designed to cover every aspect of pupils’ wellbeing. The school would provide a safe, excellent and effective learning environment for pupils within the autistic spectrum where they could minimise their disability and maximise their ability. This would be achieved through a curriculum of connective education, which would offer pupils the opportunity to make connections and gather meaning that would allow them to progress throughout the curriculum and in the world outside the school.
The staff would, through practice, promote the use of a consistent language-focused environment, which would address the so-called triad of impairment in autism – difficulties in social interactions, social communication and imagination – and they would work to provide an environment where the emotional, social and physical needs of the pupils would be met in such a way that the pupils would learn to be responsible for and manage their own thoughts, feelings and actions and their learning.
The ethos of TEAM, which stands for Trust, Empathy, Assistance and to discriminate what Matters (and what does not matter) in life, would be promoted. The school would be committed to providing a therapeutic environment that would ensure all pupils would be treated with dignity and respect, and their needs as human beings would be met.
Families would be trained, supported and encouraged to take on the specific philosophy and structures the school would employ to support their children with consistency.
A huge consideration would be how to encourage appropriate and acceptable behaviour. This would require an extensive good-behaviour policy, which would need to provide very clear definitions, aims and guidance about how pupils’ emotional wellbeing and pastoral care would be supported by all staff. There would be a pastoral-support manager and each pupil would have a pastoral-support plan, which would be agreed by all staff involved and by the pupil’s parents. It was hoped this plan would form overall targets for decreasing behaviours that inhibit learning, independence and acceptable behaviour.
The school would maintain a calm, low-anxiety environment that would support the pupils in keeping the school rules and boundaries, and staff would be trained to understand what happens in the brain in times of high anxiety and emotional charge. All behavioural incidents would be recorded, sent to parents and kept by the school, and would be open to scrutiny by any appropriate individuals or agencies.
Our policy would ensure that all staff would be committed to supporting pupils to comply with the rules and boundaries expected in mainstream education and in the world outside. This would require the introduction of a ‘no blame’ culture in which ‘what works’ is what is promoted, rather than making self or others ‘wrong’. This would be adopted because pupils with autism do not learn or understand the rules and boundaries incidentally, as non-autistic people do. If they are burdened with being made ‘wrong’ by those of us who do understand, their anxiety levels will rise and their information processing breaks down.
The pupils’ needs would be met in accordance with the human needs and resources identified by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrell in their book Human Givens. This requires pupils to make choices about their responses to their own behaviour. Staff would aim to encourage self-cognitive self-reflection and personal responsibility in behaviour management to support the development of the observing self.
Staff would also be encouraged to support the pupils to identify clearly the cause of anything upsetting them, then to discuss the cause with the child to guide them into making an effective choice about how to deal with the situation and how to clear up any negative results of behaviour that does not work, clearing up with whoever has been affected, and moving forward.
The school would also offer a parent-training session on a termly basis to provide theoretical and practical information, and advice and strategies that would support the families of children with autism in the home. The sessions would cover such areas as promoting good behaviour, behaviour management, transactional analysis, relaxation, holding for wellbeing, and the Human Givens Approach which, in itself, requires further explanation.
The human needs as defined by the Human Givens Approach are as follows:
With this in mind, a trained Human Givens therapist would be appointed to assist the pupils in solving their problems and helping them to move forward with emotional issues. This confidential service would also be made available to parents.
Because an autistic child may not fully understand when being told no, the good-behaviour policy adopted the stance that the word no should not be used when referring to a pupil’s behaviour. Instead, the pupil’s name should always be preceded by the word stop. No, however, could be used in answer to curriculum questions or in relation to unacceptable actions – for instance, the rule is ‘no hitting’.
When dealing with misbehaviour, a pupil should be supported by the offer of a choice, linking the expectation with the action and the consequence. For example, the school expectation is ‘to listen to the adult in charge’. The pupil may choose to listen to the adult in charge and do what works, or they can decide not to listen to the adult in charge, not do what works and not have free time at break time. One choice, therefore, is educationally, socially and physically advantageous to the pupil with an individually positive outcome; the other is unacceptable educationally, socially and physically with an outcome less desirable for the pupil.
If a pupil is experiencing upset or their information processing is reduced, further clarity would be required. In this instance, staff would hold out two hands, palms upwards. Pointing to one palm, a staff member would say, ‘[Pupil’s name], you can choose that a and b will happen.’ Then the staff member would say ‘[Pupil’s name], or you can choose that c and d will happen.’ Working in this way would require staff to know what each pupil’s powerful positive and negative reinforcers are and this approach would also require close liaison with parents. If the pupil then refuses to choose, the staff member would say, ‘Not choosing means you are choosing that c and d will happen.’
Of course, there would always be the possibility that a pupil’s emotional charge would be so high they might become a danger to themselves and to others’ health and safety. A physical-intervention policy was drafted that would be implemented if ever staff felt it appropriate to step in to deal physically with a situation. Staff would be trained in the use of ethical and legal physical intervention as approved by the British Institute of Learning Disability.
We also had to consider the probability that not all pupils would have English as their first language. We would need to reflect the cultural diversity that exists within our wider community. Of course, every aspect of education at Hillingdon Manor would be conducted in English but we needed to recognise that, for children who have English as an additional language, the complexity of their needs must be considered in addition to their communication impairment.
Our speech-and-language therapist would be required to assess the communication needs of these children and to work with curriculum staff and parents to develop an appropriate communication system that would include strategies and resources to support both understanding and use of communication.
The criteria for consideration for admission to Hillingdon Manor would include that the child’s needs should arise out of their autistic-spectrum disorder, and some other related pervasive developmental disorders; the child would have their needs recognised through appropriate funding by the sponsoring local education authority; the child would have the commitment and support of their parents/carers to the educational approach used at the school through parents agreeing to a home–school contract; the principal would be satisfied that the needs of the child would be met; the principal would decide, using admission procedures, which children would be admitted to the school and would seek to ensure a balance of age, compatibility and gender; and admissions would be made on the basis of availability of placements, taking into account the above factors, plus a child’s level of functioning, learning and difficulties and age.
The school would be ‘human-being-centred’, meaning it would place strong emphasis on equal opportunities with respect to gender, race, sexual orientation, religious belief and disability. The school would be committed to using the latest research into human brain functioning to refine and improve its practice. It would also be committed to keeping abreast of new research into autistic-spectrum disorders and to assess its implications for improved practice.
The policies adopted by Angela and Karen proved sufficient for approval from the Department for Education to open the school. Now, at last, we could advertise and release news stories to the media that we were hoping to open to pupils in the near future.
Thanks to the Video Diaries programme, teachers had become aware of our project and, learning that opening was near, some contacted me to express their interest in positions at the school.
This led to a further three to four days of interviewing, the panel consisting of myself, Angela and Karen. I thought I might feel a little out of my depth during this period but, surprisingly, that was not the case. I guess I’m a pretty instinctive person and I seem to know if someone feels right; but I’ve also learned that, just because someone presents you with a fantastic reference, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they’re all they’re cracked up to be.
It was so important to get a good staff team – one that would work together – which ultimately proved difficult over the first 18 months to two years after we opened when some members of staff expressed a desire to do their own thing rather than work in the same manner as the rest of the team. Frankly, that just doesn’t work with children with autism. Again, consistency is the key and that is what we had to strive for throughout.
Specialist speech-and-language therapists who could effectively address the communication disorder symptomatic of autism were particularly difficult to find. Individual education plans needed to be implemented for each child depending upon their specific difficulty. We were fortunate to discover a really good agency, which found positions for therapists from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Many of the therapists who joined us from this source remained with us for two or three years, then, on returning to their native countries, told colleagues about us. They then applied to come and work with us, too.
Some of the staff who had joined us had children of their own with autism. One lady with an autistic son began working with us as a support assistant and went on to become our administrative assistant; our maintenance man had a son with autism; the grandfather of a deaf and autistic boy also joined us to cover the electrical work, as did Alex’s brother-in-law, who also works on the maintenance side of things.
The borough referred children to us and we would look at the paperwork made available to see if we could provide a suitable learning environment for that particular child, basically, to see if they met our admission criteria. If so, they would then be assessed.
This sometimes proved very difficult. Because of their autism, some children find it problematic to be assessed, which meant we occasionally had to carry out this process in their own homes or go to the school or nursery where they were at that moment in time. This task fell mainly to Angela and Karen.
We were delighted when our MP, John Randall, invited Sean and me to bring the boys to the Houses of Parliament in London. After all the hard work at the school, a day out was a welcome treat. I didn’t know how the boys would react but it was a new experience for them and a very interesting one for us. Angelo was mesmerised by the House of Lords, and all had been going well until he dived under a security ribbon and made a beeline for the Queen’s chair and sat on it.
An agitated security man was quick to react and stepped in to shoo him off: ‘Stop, you can’t sit there!’ Angelo instantly became cross – he’d liked the chair and wanted to remain seated on it – so Sean had to pick him up quickly and carry him off as he kicked and screamed in protest. ‘Keep calm,’ said Sean to the security man, ‘my son’s autistic.’ Then he added cheekily, ‘You’d better check the chair, mate, because he tends to wee on chairs!’
After Angelo had calmed down we went for lunch on the terrace of the Houses of Parliament, which we all enjoyed. On a table nearby was the then Chancellor (now Prime Minister), Gordon Brown, accompanied by some of his colleagues.
At the end of our visit John gave us a bottle of House of Commons wine that had been signed by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, for us to auction to raise money for repairs to the school.