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Hello. My name is Matthew Ward, and I am the new Deputy Designated Clinical Officer for SEND in Kent & Medway. I am working alongside the Designated Clinical Officer within the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) team in Kent & Medway NHS CCG. My background is mainly in mental health nursing (BSCHons), heavily surrounding risk management and prevention, having worked within the crisis resolution home treatment team in West Kent. I have also worked in secure units helping people with a wide range of complex needs such as eating disorders, personality disorders, severe depression, and psychotic illnesses.
Some of you may recognise me from my previous role as ‘Health Lead for SEND’ within the CCG and I am excited to once again be working closely with colleagues from health, and education.
I look forward to continuing to build positive professional relationships and help to improve the services surrounding health for children and young people with SEND.
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Medway Youth: Wednesday Squad and Shine
Our Medway Youth Service recently held a fun evening of games and activities for Halloween. Our Wednesday Squad session runs from Parkwood Youth Centre every Wednesday from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. This is a youth session for young people with additional needs aged 16-25. It is an opportunity for young people to socialise, meet new friends and learn some life skills along the way.
Medway Youth Service work with young people aged 8-19 and up to 25 for those with additional needs. We engage with young people in youth clubs and out and about in local parks and greenspaces. Our youth sessions are a great way for young people to socialise and learn new skills and are run by professional youth workers. Find out further information or find a youth club near you.
You can get in touch via:
For further details, please contact Angela Cox: angela.cox@medway.gov.uk
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Medway’s Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) community wide application project was recently presented at BILD’S International PBS conference. As you probably know, the overall aim of PBS is to improve the quality of life for the individual and the people around them. In Medway, the focus is predominantly around supporting individuals with a learning disability, autism, and complex needs. It’s a proactive and preventative person-centred approach, focussing on teaching new skills to help individuals participate and to improve their quality of life, seeking to understand the reason for behaviours which challenge, so that all needs can be addressed.
PBS empowers people to use better and less harmful ways to get individuals needs met and is also values-led, meaning that it supports individuals to have the human rights and opportunities that others have. To find out more about PBS, take a look at Medway’s PBS website, including free e-learning for parents, carers and professionals.
- A small pilot with PBS professionals to be able to conduct Functional Behaviour Assessments and develop Behavioural Support Plans
- Promoting PBS training
- European Pilot for School Wide PBS in conjunction with BILD
- PBS Community of Practice
If you’re interested in improving the support individuals with learning disability, autism and complex needs receive, you can join our PBS community of practice working group (with quarterly meetings to hear guest speakers and take part in open discussions to share experiences, learning and network with others). The group is open to both parents and professionals. To join email diane.weekes@medway.gov.uk
Christmas can be a very exciting time of year, but for autistic people it can present many challenges, with changes of routine and environments. In the run up to Christmas the Medway Small Steps Facebook Page will be sharing strategies and tips to help children with sensory difficulties cope with the change in routines, expectations, and social interactions over the Christmas period. They asked some of the families they are supporting what their top 10 tips would be to make Christmas as special as possible. Here they are:
1:Create a plan
Print off a calendar for the week before Christmas so your child can see clearly what is happening. You may want to use visual aids which could include photographs of extended family members that you will be seeing over the festive period.
2:Prep your extended family
Talk to family members ahead of time. Discuss your child's specific needs, and gently but firmly tell them what your plans are. Be sure to let them know that this will make the whole experience better for everyone.
3:Use social stories
There are lots of free downloadable and printable social stories online that you can use to speak to your child about what might happen in certain situations. They offer much needed structure and can help reduce your child’s anxiety if they know what to expect over Christmas.
4:Know your child’s sensory triggers
The extra lights, smells and tastes can cause children with sensory processing difficulties feel overwhelmed. Give some thought to decorations, and perhaps leave at least one room in the house that doesn’t have any decorations.
5:Presents
The excitement of surprise gifts can be very overwhelming so perhaps let your family and friends know what your child’s interests are or maybe provide a wish list. There’s no need to open everything at once: you could spread the gift giving over several days.
6:Food
If your child has specific eating habits and is likely to reject Christmas dinner you could perhaps try to include unfamiliar Christmas food into meals during the lead up to Christmas Day. Alternatively, if their favourite dinner is spaghetti bolognaise, why not let them eat that – it is Christmas after all.
7:Involve your child
Ask your child what they would like at Christmas and give them some control over what happens, perhaps they could make place cards so that your child knows ahead of time where everyone will be sitting at the dinner table.
8:Quiet Space
Identify a quiet area that your child can go to if they feel overwhelmed they may need to sit quietly in a room on their own or they may need some time outdoors to run, jump or twirl.
Christmas is a time that is often filled with family traditions, so you might want to re-evaluate whether the trip to see the Christmas lights at Bedgebury is possible for the whole family.
10:and....relax!
Christmas can be stressful but your child may respond to your stress levels. Staying calm will help your child to regulate their own emotions. Remember, there are no rules, you can make your Christmas what you need it to be to meet the needs of your family. The most important thing is that you enjoy it.
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Small Steps is a new service providing support and advice for families in Medway whose children are either pre or post diagnosis of Autism and/or ADHD. They offer support pre- diagnosis so families can get the right advice and direction from the beginning. They work closely with health professionals, education settings and the local authority to enhance what is available to families. The service offers information workshops, specialised parenting groups, and can provide parents with a Project Worker or a Volunteer Befriender who will offer home visits and 1:1 support within the family home. Volunteer Befrienders can support families to access social activities, attend medical appointments and offer a listening ear.
Alongside PBS, we also have the positive parenting programme 'Triple P'. For access to the Triple P online training module, speak to your school’s SENCO or school nurse/health visitor (or for those with a social care or family support worker, speak to them to request a referral if eligible).
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School’s Mental Health Services webinars
Medway Partnership Commissioning are holding a series of Mental Health webinars in the next term for schools to come and talk to various Mental Health services at lunchtime (12-1pm). Each session will host different services to give a brief overview of what they do, who the services are for and how to access. Dates are as follows;
Friday, 21 January
Monday, 28 February
Monday, 28 March
To register attendance, fill out the online form
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Medway Council's Child Health Team have developed a network for Mental Health Leads.
The network will receive quarterly newsletters as well as invitations to meet with other professionals across Medway, providing opportunity to share best practice examples and keep up-to-date with service provision as well as policy and legislative changes. As part of the network, members are piloting an online directory tool of various mental health services to help navigate support using a needs-based approach.
The network can support any trouble shooting or common themes that may be arising for your setting, seeking collaborative solutions and embedding a no wrong door approach for children and young people in Medway. For finer details of the network please contact the team directly: childhealth@medway.gov.uk
If you would like to join the network please complete the form via the link attached
You may have heard f about the above nationally funded Integrated models of care / multidisciplinary team (MDT) project. It aims to improve outcomes for children and young people (CYP) with specific risk factors. We are excited to announce that we were successful in our expression of interest (EOI) and NHS England and Improvement will provide funding for this important project. We are one of only two test sites in the South East.
Our work will initially focus in two test site areas: East Kent and Medway and Swale, with rollout planned to start out early 2022. The expression of interest focused on the development of a model of integration for CYP with long-term health conditions, emotional wellbeing needs, frequent hospital admissions and other risk factors such as poor educational attendance and social care involvement.
It is anticipated that the delivery model will feature improved multi-disciplinary and multi-agency holistic care for CYP and families. This will span health, education and social care services and will include use of the Kent & Medway Care Record system to assist with joined up care planning and co-ordination of interventions. An element of the expression of interest is the delivery of acute paediatric outpatient clinics across Primary Care Networks as a way of strengthening the relationship and links between primary and secondary care and reducing hospital attendances.
As well as introducing the project to colleagues in Medway, we have been busy planning design task and finish groups. At these groups we will work with professionals across the current system to design the approach, propose the model and determine the patient cohorts that might benefit most from a system-wide MDT approach. The Council for Disabled Children (CDC) will be facilitating this work for us and have also helped us to develop questionnaires for children, young people, and their families. We are keen to hear about experiences of care so that it can be used to support our work on how we can bring health services together and best support children, young people, and families.
If you would like to learn more about the project you can contact, Kelly Webb: kelly.webb@medway.gov.uk or Julia Cox: julia.cox@medway.gov.uk
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