Fidget Project launched to bring occupational therapy to school children with special needs

The Fidget Project: ‘Sensing to Learn; Learning to make sense’, is designed to support children with sensory processing differences in their school. 

The idea, brainchild of Lynne Tarrab-Snooks, Education and Wellbeing Consultant, retired Integrative Psychotherapist MSc and co-founder and lead writer of The Thrive Approach, and Helen-Jane Ridgeway: Integrative Psychotherapist, MSc, is to create a fully equipped peripatetic bus service to a group of schools within the Education South West Trust. 

This way, children can have weekly access to occupational therapy (OT) with a qualified occupational therapist, within their school day, supporting both the children and the school. 

Lynne said: "It is currently really hard to gain access to OT sessions, even if your child is on a pathway to a diagnosis of an Autistic Spectrum Disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Hyper-activity Deficit Disorder or school-related anxiety.

"The excellent service offered by the Devon Children’s Development Centre staff is somewhat overwhelmed by the level and range of needs.

"Special Educational Needs provision has recently been the subject of a concerned discussion in the House of Commons, and this project is for parents and community members to be able to DO something. We have some amazing, hard-working staff in our local schools; money is tight and the level of SEND needs keeps rising."

Stock image Shutterstock: Occupational therapist using sensory integration therapy to improve sensory processing

So Lynne, Helen-Jane and other local people "really want to invite you to make a difference". They will need to raise something in the region of £120,000 to buy and equip a bus, employ a specialist OT for two years and employ a bus driver.

The team have met with the Special Educational Needs Departments Co-ordinators (SENDCOs) of the schools in the Education South West Trust, all of whom are "both interested and supportive of the project".

They will be launching a series of community meetings in local schools and venues to introduce the project to parents, staff and local business people - keep an eye out for dates and times. 

These will coincide with the launch of the project’s Crowdfunder page. They have identified a bus that we can convert and we are working closely with Occupational Therapists who have a specialism in working with Sensory Processing Differences to discover the pieces of specialist equipment that they will need to have on the bus.

The idea is that the bus will offer a peripatetic service to identified schools over a minimum of a two year period so that children (who need it) will have access to weekly sessions on the bus with a qualified OT.

Lynne continued: "We believe this project has the potential to make a real difference.

"The motivation for this pilot project came about in recognition that children’s Sensory Processing Needs, when left unmet, result in many of the behaviours that get in the way of their learning.

"Children with Sensory Processing Differences have vestibular and/or proprioception needs that are often not recognised or met in learning situations.

"This includes the children who have difficulty being able to focus, concentrate, settle, be still, be part of a group, stand in line, answer questions or get involved in discussions that are truly collaborative and exploratory. They might shout out, make noises, push others, need to run, be overly clingy, not understand instructions, play about, or take themselves off to a quieter corner to do repetitive actions.

"They might be very controlling in an attempt to feel safe. They might need to lie on the floor or be under a desk: in other words, the very behaviours that are their attempts to regulate themselves are the behaviours that prevent them from accessing learning in the usual ways in which learning situations are organised.

"Their behaviours, which can be attempts to regulate the swirl of emotions and multi-sensory information that is overwhelming their nervous systems, often also interrupt the learning of others in the class.

"Children with Sensory Processing Differences may already have (or be on a pathway towards) a diagnosis of autism or Attention Deficit Disorder AND they can also be children who have not been recognised as neurodiverse in any way but rather labelled, lazy, anti-social, clowns, overly sensitive, highly anxious, a nuisance in class, impossible to teach, badly behaved and/or out of control.

"These children often make up a disproportionate number of the children who either get excluded from schools or whose parents, sometimes in desperation, remove them from schools to be home-schooled. In some cases, this works well; in others, unschooled and uneducated children and adolescents become disadvantaged and more vulnerable in society at large."

Stock image Shutterstock: Child in therapy sensory stimulating room

The aims of the project are: 
o to enhance SEND provision to support more children to access education and to improve their learning outcomes.
o to augment the provision in (identified) state schools to more effectively address the needs of children with Sensory Processing Differences.
o To support children with SPD to have more options about their behaviours so that they can access learning and become successful learners
o To reduce the behaviours in classrooms that interrupt learning.

The objectives are: 
o Provide research evidence, over a two-year trial period, that more children are accessing education (retention, attendance, improvements in learning, reduction in exclusions for inappropriate behaviours).
o Provide on-site (The Bus!) specialist interventions and activities with an Occupational Sensory Processing Therapist for children experiencing difficulties.
o Offer ‘Life Hacks’ (trainings) for SENDCO’s, teachers and families of children with SPD to raise awareness and support the development of informed relationships between schools and parents.

If you would like to learn more or get involved, you can contact Lynne on: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 07778 345233 or Helen-Jane on: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 07976 701796.