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What's happening at Skylarks

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Skylarks- Spread your wings

Spread Your Wings is a career development programme for young people with additional needs aged 12-16 offered by Skylarks Charity. This online programme is open to families from any borough and is free of charge. Courses start regularly and taster sessions are held for parents. 

Click here to read more.

SEND Parent Champion wins Volunteer of the Year award

The Coram Family and Childcare charity held their Parent Champions annual conference this month. 

Part of this conference is the Parent Champions Awards which are an opportunity to recognise volunteers’ achievements and valuable contributions.

Kingston and Richmond were nominated for scheme of the year and two of our SEND parent champions were nominated for "Biggest Impact" - Misha Patel and Linda Nystrom.

We are honoured to say Linda Nystrom won this award. Linda has been working hard for SEND parents in her local community and local schools. She received 20 nominations including parents from her groups.

Click here to read more.

Why I am Rude: a poem about our perception of ‘behaviour’

Poem by Sarah Dillon of the National Association for Therapeutic Parents. 

This poem aims to help adults and children to understand the 'why' behind behaviours which may be seen or described as rude, when actually, it is often a defence mechanism. There may be trauma, attachment or adverse childhood events which have impacted on the child's view of themselves and those around them. These children are not rude, they are communicating their pain. (1 minute watch)

Link here.

Hello and welcome to this month's My Family Coach week’s newsletter

Don't Miss our Free parent/ carer online class available:  What Can I Do When My Child Feels Angry? Tuesday, 4th June 2024 at 8pm.  

Lots of parents and carers come to us for help with their child’s anger. Often, they’re struggling to know how they can best support when they see explosive behaviours. Sometimes their child is hurting themselves, or other people. 

We know families also often turn to you, as trusted professionals, for support around their child’s behaviour. That’s why we’ve created Family Engagement Training to help you and your staff feel confident when supporting parents and carers.  

Anger is not a bad emotion. We all naturally feel angry at times. We don’t want to teach children to suppress these powerful feelings. Instead, they can learn better ways to cope when they feel angry and recognise the signs of anger before they feel out of control. 

Our tips for parents/ carers include: 

• Responding in a calm way.  

• Giving space or taking a child away from a difficult situation to calm down, if it’s safe to do so.  

• Speaking more slowly, using fewer words (which gives them verbal space to self-regulate) 

• Giving them enough time to feel back in control of their emotions – and as we know, it can take much longer than we might expect! 

Please do share these resources with your families to help them learn more about supporting their child when they feel angry: 

• For younger children: How to Help a Child Who is Often Angry 

• For older children: Ideas to Help With Your Teenager’s Temper 

• Podcast episode: Anger & Behaviour 

Also, please share Tuesday evening's upcoming free online class about anger with your families (it's at 8pm, live on Zoom).

We’ll be talking about how to help children recognise this emotion with lots of practical strategies parents and carers can try at home. We send a copy of the recording to anyone who can’t make it to the live session. 

Best wishes,

Jonathan and the My Family Coach Team