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Write up

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We visited another project to learn from their experience - The Key Club at Turtle Key Arts in West London is an art club for autisic people aged 16-30. There is a lovely film here if you'd like to know more. Thanks so much to Ceri and Ruth for generously sharing their time and expertise.

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KEY CLUB IS A FREE MONTHLY ARTS CLUB FOR PEOPLE FROM 16 TO 30 YEARS OLD ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM.

The club meets once a month on a Saturday, each meeting consists of a two-hour creative arts workshop presented by professional artists, followed by a social break. Recent workshops have included creative writing, singing and song-writing, film and video, visual art, script-writing for TV and Radio, drama, circus skills, photography and stop-frame animation.

"The Key Club not only allows members to create great art and learn new skills, it also helps them to develop friendships and inspires confidence." - The Lady

WHERE:
Key Club @ the Lyric
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, Lyric Square, King Street, London W6 0QL

Key Club @ the Kiln
The Kiln Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR

WHEN: Saturdays during term time

TIME:
Key Club @ the Lyric Morning 10am - 1pm OR Afternoon 2pm - 5pm
Key Club @ the Kiln 2:30pm - 5:30pm

HOW: Please fill in the ON-LINE APPLICATION FORM and we will be in touch soon.

KEY CLUB IS FREE TO ALL PARTICIPANTS. YOU CAN MAKE A DONATION TO HELP TURTLE KEY ARTS CONTINUE THEIR WORK WITH YOUNG PEOPLE ON THE AUSTISM SPECTRUM.

Key Club is run by Turtle Key Arts with funding from John Lyon's Charity and City Bridge Trust.

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KEY CLUB IS A FREE MONTHLY ARTS CLUB FOR PEOPLE FROM 16 TO 30 YEARS OLD ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM. The club meets once a month on a Saturday, each meeting consists of a two-hour creative arts workshop presented by professional artists, followed by a social break.

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Parents have been adding us to EOTAS packages! 

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Parents have been adding us to EOTAS packages! 

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We are looking for partners to deliver future sessions and have begun some exciting conversations with a nearby university

We are proposing to link with other services that are currently in development, such as using the hack space to also host a careers cafe for neurodivergent young people with some light touch information and skills sharing and mentoring. For example, what it means to be a create freelancer.

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Preparing information for future funding applications

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Preparing information for future funding applications

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We drafted this supporting document and have since attended a workshop on creating a one page impact report - so we hope to update this soon with what we learned.

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In kind contributions included:

Volunteer time at London Living Wage £1231

Volunteer time at specialist rates £6318

Partner time in kind at local authority rate £732

In Kind Services / Venue Hire £2184

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"Out of all disabled people, the group least likely to gain employment is autistic people."

"...only 16% of autistic people who want to work are in work, when we know that the jobs and skills of the future are exactly the kinds of things autistic people excel in"

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We know creativity works. We know innovation works. We know that purpose works. In this essay, I will demonstrate that neurodiversity works, for creativity, innovation, purpose - and for everyone.

In Why Should Anyone Work Here?, by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, published by Harvard Business Review, the authors reflect on organisational cultures of the 50s and 60s. The old goal was to mould ourselves to fit into a company: to trim off any of the eccentricities that make us who we are, so that we fit in better with others.

We know that this strategy does not produce satisfied employees. Conformist organisations aren't just constraining and boring, they also don't produce great work. In fact, diversity of thought and experience - the differences between us all - is essential to creating excellent work. We need disagreements to create and innovate. But we also need inclusive cultures, so that we can disagree safely and move on with our workplace relationships, without any bad blood.

At WPP, a creative transformation company, we need our workforce to be the most creative and innovative.

As AI begins to threaten jobs, when industries of all kinds are naming creativity and problem solving as key skills for the future, we see the importance within the education system on these skills dropping off. We see traditional talent pools drying up, as the competition for talent from elite universities becomes even more intense.

We know we must appeal to all demographics, as talent is spread among all. We know we must work harder to reach out to those from ethnic minorities and less privileged socio-economic backgrounds, to women, LGBTQ+ and people from all generations. We must develop those who don't fit the traditional mould by giving them opportunities to thrive and magnify their strengths. We must provide flexibility for parents, carers and older people and recognise that life happens around work. All this diversity and inclusion work takes time and deep thinking, but more importantly it requires empathy.

How do we build empathy into our culture? How do we create the psychological safety for people to bring their whole self to work? How do we let people know that difference is valued, and that their individual needs are taken seriously by their employer?

There is a huge pool of talent, making up 20% of the population here in the UK. This pool was shown to outperform their peers in the IPA Diagonal Thinking study, a measure of both lateral and linear thinking, which is crucial to success in our industry. They are problem solvers, because their everyday life is beset by obstacles to overcome. And the race to attract these people has already begun. The Valuable 500 launched earlier this year at The World Economic Forum, challenging companies to take the full breadth of diversity seriously - by putting disability on board's agendas. I am very proud to say that WPP has signed that pledge.

One in five of us lives with a disability. Scope, the disability charity, estimates that there are 13.9 million people in the UK who are disabled. And an estimated 80% of those disabilities are hidden - just 10% of disabled people are wheelchair users, despite our common conception of disability being all about mobility.

Disabled people are often thought of as the final group to be included in the workplace. And it's true, with only 52% of disabled people who could work finding a suitable role. This represents a huge cost to society in the form of out of work benefits, but more importantly, it is a massive waste of talent. So many disabled people are naturally creative but are stuck at home. We know that disabled people are far more likely to have 'neurodivergent' brains - minds that perceive and work differently than the norm. And when neurodiversity has been harnessed - such as in the cases of Steve Jobs, who was dyslexic, and Greta Thunberg, who is autistic - there have been revolutionary leaps in thinking. As we make the adjustments necessary for an inclusive and accessible workplace, we will be enhancing our work, our culture, and the representation and quality of life of all disabled people.

The creative and tech industries have been building a brave new world online for the past 30 years. This world bypasses the barriers that so many disabled people face when trying to get involved in society. Unfortunately, this new world isn't the utopian vision of disability inclusion that we hoped for. We see new accessibility challenges as designs haven't been tested with disabled people, making recruitment unnavigable for many. Increasingly, it's becoming impossible to apply for a job without using the internet, and the tests you find online are difficult to adjust.

Talent acquisition software has promised to take the pain out of recruitment. But does that also mean it is removing this pool of creatives?

Out of all disabled people, the group least likely to gain employment is autistic people. I should know, as I myself have a diagnosis of autism, and found it incredibly difficult to access employment, despite my abilities and experience.

Autistic people have a unique, analytical cognitive style, which can afford talents in areas such as systems thinking, attention to detail, ability to hyper focus, comfort with repetitive tasks and visualising problems. These talents can lend themselves to data analysis, AI and statistics, software design and development, exactly the areas in which we are desperate for talent. But beyond those stereotypical autism-friendly roles, autistic people can also spot inefficiencies in systems and solutions for complex problems ahead of their neurotypical peers.

So why is it that only 16% of autistic people who want to work are in work, when we know that the jobs and skills of the future are exactly the kinds of things autistic people excel in?

Autistic people are simply too 'different' for systems designed for neurotypical people. We know that of all the skills interviews test candidates on, social and communication skills matter most to a hiring manager's impression, which is exactly the area in which autistic people are most disadvantaged. The autistic candidates' strengths may lie in the extra productivity and alternative perspectives they bring. Their unusual education and work histories can be a barrier, and job applications might not give room to detail self-taught skills and experience.

Today, new talent acquisition software that uses AI to analyse your body language during a video interview have the exact same biases as humans against the behavioural differences that autistic people display, but the oversight to correct for those biases has been removed. The same effects are seen for people who have had a stroke or have a facial disfigurement. When presented with these differences, the computer says no.

Creativity involves hacking - finding new routes through a problem, bringing together different strategies, trying lots of things until something sticks. Because of our systemic thinking, autistic people make natural hackers. We see flaws and inefficiencies in systems quickly and know how to exploit them.

This skill can be applied by autistic people to any system. It's fundamentally the same problem-solving ability you see in disabled people who find ways to do the things that they struggle with, finding workarounds in a world which simply isn't designed for them.

It's the same ability you see in dyslexic people, who rely on their brain's visual system, rather than the language systems that neurotypical people use. If spelling mistakes and putting words the wrong way around is something we might reject an employee's application on, we may well be rejecting someone with a brilliant visual and creative mind. Just as symbols get mixed up in the dyslexic person's head, so do images, in the same way that puns exploit the bringing together of two disparate concepts that might sound similar.

Dyslexic, bipolar and schizophrenic people show this extraordinary ability to make links, allowing them to excel in creative roles such as art, comedy and writing. These are the creatives we need, but without the support and right connections, end up unemployed or in low paying work which neglects their abilities.

Game theorists point out that in any competitive system, there is a value to using unconventional rules. In recruitment, an advantage can be gained by finding talent that is undervalued by everyone else. We have seen autistic people being employed as developers, despite having poor qualifications - perhaps they dropped out of school or could only focus on a few subjects - compared to their colleagues, but outperforming them three-fold on productivity.

What if we could hack our recruitment systems, just as disabled people use different strategies and systems to get around their impairments and societie's barriers?

Before we can start hacking, we need two things: motivation - the business case, and allies - the people who can make the case and drive the change.

Last week, I spoke to a room full of executives from top corporations at an ideathon event, run by Ambitious about Autism, a charity that specialises in helping autistic young people in education and work. These execs were tasked with looking at the problem of autistic underemployment from all angles. As I have discussed, like all diversity issues, this is a complex systemic issue.

But to even begin on making the changes necessary, we need the motivation. We need to make the case for why neurodiversity works, which is exactly the business case I presented. The advertising world has been benefiting from neurodiversity for years, without realising it. Our industry is known for celebrating eccentricity. In my speech to the ideathon I spoke about how many leaders in our industry have diagnosis of dyslexia, or children who are on the autism spectrum. Some recognise those traits in themselves and talk about how crucial those skills have been to their success. These are the allies we need to be loudly making the case, which is exactly what I saw at Diverse Minds, the creative industry's annual neurodiversity conference where we saw Facebook VP Steve Hatch talk about his dyslexia, and at events such as The Future is ND.

So now that we are aware of some of the systems and practices that disadvantage disabled people, and the ingredients we need to make a change, what gets the best out of them? How do we move from a system that looks for reasons to reject, to one that is strengths based?

In the UK, employers are required to make 'reasonable adjustments' to application processes, interviews and jobs themselves, so that disabled people can do them. This system works when a few conditions are met. First, the job seeker or employee must understand their entitlement, and know what adjustment they can ask for that an employer will deem reasonable. Then they need to have the confidence to ask for it. Next, the employer, represented through recruiters, HR and the hiring manager, needs to know what is reasonable and be able to implement the adjustment. So quite a few hurdles, which are certainly not guaranteed.

I certainly didn't know the adjustments I was entitled to until I was given the opportunity to turn my life around on the Autism Exchange programme.

Like many autistic people, my path to employment was winding and messy - I dropped out of school aged 12, despite being academically able. Around this time, I got my diagnosis. I'd suffered years of bullying, I had two undiagnosed autistic parents with their own mental health challenges, and I'd developed and lost my first close friendship in the space of a year.

I was always creative, especially when it came to my "special interests", a term used in the autism world for our deep knowledge of certain subjects. I was coding my fan site for Christina Aguilera and Mis-Teeq, copying my favourite musicians by writing lyrics and poems - but photography seemed to stick. By the time my peers were leaving secondary school, I had a full portfolio of wild fashion images, which got me onto an arts college course.

Creativity was my saving grace, my route back into education, and eventually I achieved a first-class degree. But my social skills and confidence levels still presented a barrier to employment. I'd often hear that I'd aced cognitive tests in the recruitment process, but not hear back from the in-person interview.

In a Guardian article about the innovative edge autistic people lend businesses, Jeanette Purkis, an autistic advocate points out that "autistic people often do much better in recruitment processes which enable them to demonstrate their skills over time and not in a high stress situation like an interview."

So how do we get people with different brains, such as autistic people, into organisations so they can demonstrate their ability?

Supported internships and job trials are the solution many organisations are turning to.

By recognising that all disabled people, neurodivergent or not, have unique individual needs, we begin to see that our current one-size-fits-all recruitment systems can never truly be adjusted for all needs. Recruiters feel nervous when they realise it's impossible to pre-empt adjustments. By working with advocates, whether from external charity partners, or from within the business, we create a safe environment to express needs, and a support system for recruiters and hiring managers to learn about how to accept and meet needs.

By trialling someone's ability at work, we can learn about what we need to do better for accessibility, and we give the opportunity to see the true ability of the candidate.

At m/SIX, a GroupM media agency part owned by WPP, the recipe was perfect: strong allies in leadership roles making the case for an accessible employment option for autistic people. Last year they piloted their Autism Exchange programme, in partnership with Ambitious about Autism, the charity partner of m/SIX client TalkTalk. Now into its second year, the programme has been massively successful. Three interns, including myself, came in for three months - fully paid, with full access to all the training employees enjoy.

All three of us were offered full time roles. All three of us had struggled to fit into the usual recruitment process, but all three of us were recognised for our talent and productivity in the roles.

The Autism Exchange programme is pitched as an exchange of knowledge - autistic people get the opportunity to experience working in an office role, and to see if a line of work suits their skills. And employers can find out about the experience of someone with complex needs in their organisation, with the safety and support of the programme.

Crucially, m/SIX was supported by Ambitious about Autism with training before we came into the workplace, and us interns were supported by the staff there with what to expect and what reasonable adjustments we could ask for. Before this internship, I hadn't any idea that I could ask for adjustments for my autism. Coming in and leaving a little later made all the difference in avoiding the busy rush hour, which represents a sensory nightmare for me.

But what effect does having autistic people in the company have?

During a podcast GroupM produced after the internship, m/SIX CEO Alistair MacCallum spoke about one of the motivations for running the programme - giving managers the challenge of managing people with complex needs. Arguably the biggest barrier to employing any neurodivergent, or disabled person, or someone with mental health problems, is the worry about managing those needs.

Tech companies and hedge funds have been aware of the benefits of employing autistic people and have provided job trials in place of interviews. Microsoft, SAP and IBM all have widely publicised successful programmes, but less heard about is Google, HP, Deutsche Bank and J P Morgan. The results of those schemes have led to greater number of places being provided each year, and interest from their competitors.

The Harvard Business Review article, Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage, looks at SAP's Autism at Work programme, which aims to employ 650 autistic people by 2020. "It's made me a better manager, without a doubt," says Silvio Bessa, the Senior Vice President of Digital Business Services. Managers thought more about maximising the talents of all employees, neurotypical or neurodivergent, through greater sensitivity to individual needs.

As soon as m/SIX began their Autism Exchange internship programme, people came forward to disclose their dyslexia. They had been hiding it, and not getting the adjustments they need to be their most productive. MacCallum explained during the podcast about the effect on the culture of the agency, with a new sense of psychological safety and tolerance of difference. This was achieved by including just three autistic interns, with unique needs, in a few teams of a few people. Through role modelling, a sense of purpose was created, which the entire agency felt.

We are now seeing neurodiversity networks and employee resource groups springing up across our agencies, advocating for greater inclusion of disabled and neurodivergent people in their campaigns and in their organisations. These groups provide the opportunity to influence, but also to support each other individually, and to celebrate their achievements. At GroupM we have been using the Neurodiversity Champions group to raise awareness through video interviews with autistic employees, to clarify some of the questions fellow employees have around how best to include them.

By modelling inclusion of those on the fringes, we develop the psychological safety to be different. When we allow flexibility in a system - such as talent acquisition, or the floor plan of our office - for those on the margins, we model empathy. It doesn't matter if someone finds it difficult to spell or use a wheelchair. We create a workplace which responds to individual need, rather than conformist groups who feel the need to 'mask', 'code switch', cover and pretend to be someone they are not.

As Rory Sutherland points out in his book, Alchemy, "innovation happens at the extremes". You are more likely to come up with a great idea by focusing on one outlier than ten average users. We've been focusing on the majority, the non-disabled, when designing our recruitment programmes and our workplaces, when designing for people with the most needs provides benefit for all.
SAP reports that changing corporate communications to be more direct have improved communication over all, and that neurotypical people who took part felt their work is more meaningful and their morale greater.
We are increasingly hearing in HR surveys that feeling your work is purposeful is hugely attractive factor for employees, young and old. People want their organisation to display values that they can identify with - and what better value could there be for creative transformation companies than magnifying their strengths, celebrating difference and championing flexibility to the needs of the individual.

It's not just data and software where the skills of autistic people can be applied. Although I loved my time at m/SIX, when a role in Diversity and Inclusion came up with the Talent team at GroupM, I jumped at the chance. I had already had the opportunity to influence on job descriptions and policy, by working with the Neurodiversity Champions employee resource group and the Talent team. I had developed both the understanding of media agencies and a network within the business, and I had already demonstrated my ability to those who were hiring. This month I celebrate a year in my role.

We also see autistic people in our creative agencies. Gabriella Field, Junior Strategic Planner at Ogilvy, launched ReWired, a neurodiversity employee resource group, and has been named by Campaign as a Face to Watch. At a junior level, Gabriella has shown leadership and drive - she spoke in a blog about her desire to open the door for others, and her impact on the industry within just a year demonstrates the impact autistic people can have when their creativity is unleashed.

One objection that can heard around employing neurodivergent people is the perceived risk that we are not 'well rounded' - that while we excel in certain areas, far outperforming peers, we struggle in areas that others take for granted.

But as Rory Sutherland says in Alchemy, "complementary talent is worth more than conformist talent". And neurodivergent people do complement each other, with patterns of abilities being exactly inverse to one another.

In fact, in their friendships and love lives, neurodivergent people tend to attract each other. They can cancel out each other difficulties. My partner and I are both dyspraxic, and although he is not autistic, I can see he has strong ability in understanding systems - he's an electronic musician. But he's hopelessly disorganised. On the other hand, I am obsessively organised but have a hard time socially. He is a natural social butterfly, adapting his communication style to others effortlessly. We benefit from complementary cognition, and work with other neurodivergent people on his record label.

Pairing neurodivergent people with different conditions up on inclusive employment programmes, allowing them to assist and mentor one another, as well as working together creatively, is a recipe for supercharged creative partnerships.

And we will avoid design that isn't accessible, risking billions of revenue for our clients, when the experience of disabled colleagues is raised up the agenda and advocates exist in all parts of the business. We've seen the innovative campaigns and products developed for and about disabled people - but this is just the beginning. Soon we will see workplaces become truly accessible for all.

By developing these programmes, we create accessible routes for exceptional minds. We enable managers to harness the unique abilities of all our people, as well as understanding their needs. By fostering ally ship, we create Neurodiversity Champions, who can model that tolerance that creates psychological safety. And by setting up employee resource groups for disability and neurodiversity, we create the safe spaces for neurodivergent people and allies to support one another, spreading the benefits of complementary cognition and purpose across our businesses, allowing us to develop the innovative work that benefits our clients and includes all their customers. In this way, we hack our recruitment systems by designing for the extremes of human cognition, paving the way for new creativity and empathy to enhance our work.

Amy Walker is Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator at GroupM, and founder of Neurodiversity Works. She is diagnosed with autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia, as well as mental health and physical conditions.

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Why Neurodiversity Works for Creativity won the WPP Atticus Award 2020 in the Creativity with Purpose category. You can read a exerpt here. Amy Walker is an autistic, dyslexic and dyspraxic inclusion...

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"The complexity [referring to safeguarding, procedures and policies] of setting up youth projects is why there are so few new ones established"

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"The complexity [referring to safeguarding, procedures and policies] of setting up youth projects is why there are so few new ones established"

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Youth Worker for Some Kind of Hack Space

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"People have come back, that shows this is something people want to come to". "The fact they came back proves they liked it".

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"People have come back, that shows this is something people want to come to". "The fact they came back proves they liked it".

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Youth Worker for Some Kind of Hack Space

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We are thinking about how we will measure outcomes from our project and the young people we meet. 

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We are thinking about how we will measure outcomes from our project and the young people we meet. 

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What does it mean to be neurodiversity affirming?

We wish to deliver our project in line with this practice, shared with us in Spectrum Gaming training we attended.
We would welcome any advice on how we will collect evidence to measure the effectiveness of us applying this approach.

The 5 As of neurodiversity affirming practice, from The Autistic Advocate:

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Authenticity – A feeling of being your genuine self. Being able to act in a way that feels comfortable and happy for you.

Acceptance – A process where you feel validated as the person you are not only by yourself but by others.

Agency – A feeling of control over actions and their consequences in your day to day life.

Autonomy – A state of being self-directed, independent, and free. Being able to act on your ideas and wants.

Advocacy – To speak for yourself, communicate what is important to you and your needs or the needs of others.

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"He really enjoyed the coding room and the coding a musical instrument activities at the hack space."

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"He really enjoyed the coding room and the coding a musical instrument activities at the hack space."

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We could repeat workshops or extend them over a number of Hack Space days

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We could repeat workshops or extend them over a number of Hack Space days

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For those that find they are particularly interested in a workshop, we think it would be really benefical to revisit or continue activities over a number of Hack Space days. Some of this cohort enjoy going in deep on a subject!

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"We didn’t manage to book for the first one due to huge anxiety but I have tentatively booked for the one on 15th"

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"We didn’t manage to book for the first one due to huge anxiety but I have tentatively booked for the one on 15th"

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We received lots of messages from parents expressing the challenges their child experiences, anxiety about trying something new or traveling, and concern they might take up a space if their child was unable to attend on the day.

We knew would be the case. Continuity and consistency will play a crucial role in helping to improve this situation for young people wishing to attend.

The parents on the steering group discussed the possibility of lift sharing so people could arrive together.

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Parents were establishing this social club at the time I was trying to work out how to set up Some Kind of Hack Space. I learnt a lot about what young people wanted to do and what families needed to support them to attend. Most importantly it gave me the confidence and motivation to try and make it happen. The sessions are quite similar in approach, however Some Kind of Hack Space would allow young people to attend with or without their parents or carers as suited them, so hopefully a next step in gaining independance and autonomy.

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Attending network meeting for CoCo East, a local co-production collaboration for children and familes

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Attending network meeting for CoCo East, a local co-production collaboration for children and familes

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We are thinking about how this can done to include the voices of young people - what kind of engaging workshop or activity could invite young people to develop this with us in a meaningful way? Or, have the values and approaches we are adopting already been thoroughly interegated by young people at Spectrum Gaming?

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TWEAK THESE SECTIONS BELOW AND TO PAST TENSE!

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TWEAK THESE SECTIONS BELOW AND TO PAST TENSE!

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32 young people registered to take part in the overall project

21 of those registered attended hack space sessions over the 3 pilot project days

15 attendees at each Hack Space

We had space for up to 30 young people at any time

6 workshops or activities on offer (each day was 5 hours long with structured and unstructured activities)

73 instances of participation in activities in total

8 Project Partners
Artillery, Leyton Sixth Form, Waltham Forest Parents Forum, The Goblins Chest, Left Blank, ND Social Club, Continuum, Drake Music

12 Jobs / Freelancer Roles (8 artists/creative practitioners involved in delivery of project)

23 Volunteers (Including 5 young people, 2 on work experience placements)

280 Volunteer Hours

7 R&D Activities with team and steering group members including:
- steering group meetings,
- a site visit to hack space venue Leyton Sixth Form,
- visits to similar initiatives and resources (The Tool House and Key Arts Club),
- attending Autism Acceptance training,
- joining CoCo East - a Co-production Collaborative,
- and a post pilot project trip planned for young people at the end of September (to play 'Stow Away', an alternate reality game designed by local artists)

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We suggest starting a little later, perhaps 10.30am or 11am. This would allow time after setting up to implement additonal things learnt at the previous session, brief the team about who is planning to attend on that day and make adjustments if possible.

Ideally, we would offer the structured workshop to kick the day off rather than in the afternoon as previously, or even better, two structured workshops AM and PM, as well as the choice of self led activities on offer all day.

9.15am - Can access building to start setting up
10.30am / 11am - Open Space with choice of activities all day
11am - Structured workshop (approx 2 hours)
3pm - Close
3.45pm - Building locked up

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A monthly 'hack space' aimed at neurodiverse 14 - 25 year olds with a special interest in creative uses for technology and design technology activities or practice.

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A relaxed supportive environment in which neurodiverse young people can explore their own creative ideas supported by a regular coordinator, and freelance technicians with expertise in neurodivergent conditions and youth work.

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An extended day-long session that allows young people to arrive and settle in at their own pace, with up to 6 hours to explore their ideas and special interests.

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A 2 hour workshop or demonstration delivered by a visiting artist or person working in technology to offer a more structured part of the day and to introduce new ideas and opportunities.

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Somewhere that gives access to specialist equipment and expertise for experiments outside of formal education.

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A programme devised in response to attendees interests, recruiting visiting artists, designers, scientists, engineers etc. from diverse backgrounds, and including recent graduates.

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Offers 'low demand' social opportunities for young people who may experience social anxiety and isolation. By this we mean, an opportunity to work alongside like minded people, perhaps working on independent projects, and without a requirement to join in or present their work.

For up to 30 young people a day, parents and siblings are welcome to support their young people in settling in and to join in with the activities themselves.​

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Parents
Neurodiversity Social Club
Waltham Forest Parent's Forum and the many sub groups of!

Partners
Richard Hodgkiss and staff at Leyton Sixth Form Colleage
Fran, Chris and staff at Foundation for Future London

Artists
Rae Goddard & Verona Mock - Visual Scribes
Rupert Greyling
Sean Rodrigo
Tim Yates
Jennie Caminda

Some Kind of Hack Space Team

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To all of the young people who signed up

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To all of the young people who signed up

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Thank you for coming along to something new and piloting the project. We really appreciate what a leap of faith it was for you to come and test out this idea with us.

Thanks also to those who contributed their brilliant ideas in advance, and to my eldest son for running things by the 'Cringe Test' before I shared them with other young people!

And to those who didn't make it but who wanted to be there, we hope to meet you when you are ready and we wish you all the best.

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'Some Kind of Hack Space creates a safe space where neurodivergent young people feel valued for their participation, ideas and creative approach. '

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'Some Kind of Hack Space creates a safe space where neurodivergent young people feel valued for their participation, ideas and creative approach. '

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The sense of self-acceptance this generates is essential for mental health and well-being. We want participants to experience the excitement of learning new things in dialogue with creative innovators, gain insight into working as a creative, and to go home with a head full of possibilities.

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celebrate difference and offer a neuroaffirming experience for all participants

build on existing skills and special interests of neurodivergent participants by accessing specialist technologies and spending time with experts

build confidence among neurodivergent participants in their skills

build confidence of neurodivergent participants to be active changemakers to inform service provision

build confidence of neurodivergent participants to try new things in shared spaces

equip neurodivergent participants with practical, social and intellectual experiences to help prepare them for the transition to adulthood

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Recent National Press about Emotionally-Based School Avoidance - often referred to as School Refusal.

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Recent National Press about Emotionally-Based School Avoidance - often referred to as School Refusal.

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illie was seven years old when she started struggling with going to school. Her teachers weren't too worried initially, her mother, Sarah, says: she was managing fine academically. But Millie, who is autistic and has a sensory processing disorder, seemed to find the busy classroom overwhelming. The following year, she began seriously to resist.

"It would start the night before," says Sarah, a children's nurse. "She couldn't sleep, couldn't eat her dinner, then in the morning she'd be absolutely flat out - it was taking an hour to get her out of bed. I would have to dress her, she'd be like a rag doll. And all the time they kept saying, 'Just get her in, she's fine once she's in.' It got to the point where I was physically unable to carry her, she'd be lying on the floor kicking and screaming."

The first Covid lockdown in spring 2020 was, for Millie, a welcome relief. "You weren't allowed to go to school, you weren't allowed to leave the house, nobody was allowed to come round - it was good for her." That September, Millie returned to school armed with an Educational Health and Care Plan (EHCP), a statement of her special needs, which was meant to guarantee specific support in school. But her mother says it wasn't consistently followed. Millie began having panic attacks, and the following autumn "she just had an absolute meltdown, breakdown, whatever you want to call it. So she stopped going to school."

Sarah fought for a place at a special school with tiny classes, which could ease her daughter back gradually. But halfway through her first term, Millie broke down again. Now 12, her only education for nearly a year has been work sent home via a hospital tutoring programme for chronically sick children, and her parents have drastically adjusted their expectations for her. "If she's alive, happy ... there's so much more that's relevant in life than going to university," Sarah says. "The difficulty is she wants to be doing things. She loves learning."

When Millie gets frustrated, she sometimes self-harms, pulling her hair out and picking at her skin till it bleeds. Sarah's voice breaks as she discloses that her daughter used to say she'd rather be dead, so she didn't have to go to school. "When she was saying those things, she was so young she didn't even realise people can kill themselves. Now she's older she knows suicide is a thing. That's why we have to keep her safe at home."

People tell me to shout at them, take their iPad away, but it's not that they don't want to go, it's that they can't

The strain on the family is intense: Sarah has stopped work, her husband had a breakdown himself last year, and she feels judged by other parents. "People say, 'Just tell them they have to go; shout at them, take their iPad away.' And I say, 'It's not that they don't want to go to school, it's that they can't.'"

As a new autumn term begins, the biggest challenge for many headteachers is getting children through the door. After three years of constant interruptions to education, from lockdowns to Covid outbreaks and teaching strikes, attendance has crumbled. Persistent absence, defined as missing more than 10% of lessons, more than doubled from 8% of primary and 13.7% of secondary school children pre-Covid across England to 17% and 28% respectively in 2022-2023. Rachel de Souza, children's commissioner for England, calculates that of the 1.6 million children persistently absent during the autumn and spring of 2021-22, 818,000 were off for reasons other than the usual childhood illnesses.Many of these absentees are worryingly vulnerable: children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and children on free school meals are disproportionately more likely to be persistently off. But absence is a complex, many-headed hydra.

Some parents have seemingly learned to treat education more casually, taking cheap term-time holidays or allowing "duvet days". (The Instagram parenting influencer Molly Gunn recently confessed to letting her children take birthdays, "lounging days" and six weeks in Ibiza off.) At the other end of the spectrum are the "ghost children" supposedly vanishing from schools during the pandemic and potentially at risk of falling into crime or abuse. Though there are few reliable estimates for how many children have actually fallen off the radar completely, in the autumn of 2020 93,514 children were absent more than 50% of the time compared with just over 60,000 pre-Covid.

But perhaps the most perplexing problem facing headteachers is an apparent wave of chronic anxiety in children, leading to what was formerly known as school refusal - now termed "emotionally based school avoidance". For some children who found school difficult and craved the comfort of home, leaving the cocoon of lockdown was obviously tough. But for others, anxiety seems to have emerged only under the stress and isolation of the pandemic. And sometimes children's own feelings can be hard to disentangle from those of parents anxious about mixing socially again. Whatever the cause, this autumn offers a critical opportunity for a fresh start.

"September is the moment," says De Souza, who fears that if absence isn't solved now, then it may become baked in, with lifelong consequences for the most disadvantaged. "Every child, however difficult it is and for whatever reason they might be out of school, will think again in September." The education secretary Gillian Keegan is also preparing an autumn offensive, appealing this summer for heads to fetch children in from home themselves if necessary.

But parent groups such as Not Fine in School and Square Peg, representing families like Sarah's, say crackdowns on nonattendance risk stigmatising those whose children genuinely can't cope. They want better pastoral care and SEND provision in schools instead, and for children's happiness to be prioritised. "All we've been measuring is results, tests, exams," says Square Peg's director, Ellie Costello. "I think our children have been holding a mirror up to us - the life we are asking them to live, the expectations on them, the pressures on them." This isn't just an argument about attendance - in part, it's about the nature of childhood itself.

rowing up in Middlesbrough, in a neighbourhood where, he says wryly, teenage boys could get up to all sorts, sport evidently helped keep Michael Robson on track. A former professional footballer - he signed to Sunderland straight from school but never quite made the big time - he is friendly but brisk, with an athlete's iron self-discipline. He waves away the proffered sandwich lunch when we meet at Grangefield academy in the market town of Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham.

Robson is now a senior executive at the Northern Education Trust, which oversees this school and a scattering of other academies along the north-east coast, from the former mining community of Blyth down through Hartlepool to nearby Redcar. But before the pandemic, he was headteacher at North Shore academy, the trust's other school in Stockton, where he oversaw an uncompromising approach to boosting attendance (since adopted trust-wide) dubbed "exemplary" by the schools minister Nick Gibb. (The trust's CEO, Rob Tarn, now sits on the Department for Education's Attendance Action Alliance, helping spread best practice nationwide via regional attendance "hubs", or local clusters of schools who share strategies.) Here, then, is the government's favoured recipe.

Work starts well before the school day begins, with the attendance team visiting some children before they've even had a chance to bunk off. "We'll knock on the door at 7.30am and say, 'Don't forget, you're in school today,'" explains Andrew Murphy, Grangefield's equally energetic executive principal. Lists of absentees are generated within minutes of registers being taken; all can then expect a phone call or knock on the door, even if parents ring in to report a child is sick. (Absence is considered a safeguarding issue, because for some children, failing to turn up could signal they are in danger, at home or elsewhere.) In the afternoons, staff might phone parents of children reported sick to ask if they'll be back tomorrow, or visit hardened absentees who don't answer a morning knock. And if it doesn't work? "Keep trying - we go again," Robson says. The trust's ethos is the "no excuses" approach beloved of Michael Gove in his time as education secretary - which means no blaming challenging circumstances, even though these schools serve the kind of disadvantaged, mainly white working-class communities where attendance was historically difficult even pre-Covid. "We should be able to do it for the kids in this community, and we don't expect less of them," Robson adds firmly.

'Some young people are really, really struggling': Michael Robson of the Northern Education Trust. Photograph: Christopher Owens/The Guardian

All this costs money - Grangefield has access to five learning managers, an educational welfare officer and safeguarding officer, which Robson says is affordable only because they belong to a big multi-academy trust. And crucially, it also involves carrots alongside the stick. Walking round the school, the corridors ring to the sound of applause: children here are taught to clap good answers from classmates, and those who go the extra mile get their names written up on the classroom door. On every table sit boxes of equipment to which pupils can help themselves - not every family here can afford pens and rulers - and a strict uniform policy is maintained by ensuring nobody goes without. "If it's a hardship, we'll give them a blazer; if they've no shoes, we will give them shoes. If they've forgotten something, we'll lend it," Robson says.During lockdown the trust bought every child a laptop; anyone not logged on by the time online lessons started got a phone call or visit.

Then there is the Bridge, a small nurturing unit designed to ease children back if they've been off with serious illness or are vulnerable for other reasons. "You might have a child who is out of school and the prospect of returning to a big cohort is terrifying. For some we'll say, 'You just need to come in at these hours and work with a teaching assistant or tutor in your own room,'" Robson says. In nearby Redcar, the trust tried taking severely absent kids to make things in the engineering department of a local college or on outdoor activities: anything to rebuild relationships with teachers.

Yet for all this, attendance remains a "daily battle": while it's still above the national average at North Shore, it's not yet back to pre-Covid levels. And, rather tellingly, that pattern isn't just confined to children. In 2022, the year the pandemic officially ended, sickness absence among working adults was higher than in any year since 2004. Almost half of adults still work at least sometimes from home. In demanding children snap back to the old norm, society is arguably asking more of them than of grownups. What's more, when schools minister Gibb was asked by MPs this year about a reported rise in anxiety among children, he said home working may have allowed some parents to keep at home anxious children who would once have had to go to school.

There is still little hard research on how many children are experiencing sustained anxiety about school post-lockdown. The NHS found one in six children aged five to 16 had a probable mental health disorder in the summer of 2020, up from one in nine three years earlier. According to the schools insurer Zurich last year, a staggering 42% of parents felt their children experienced frequent anxiety.Butit's not always clear what that catch-all word "anxiety" means, especially given the long waits many children face for assessment by an NHS specialist. It's a sensitive subject around which Robson treads audibly carefully.

"I think society is better for being accepting of, 'Look, it's OK to say I'm struggling.' I think we would all recognise that we are better off in a world where you don't have to bottle things up," he says, stressing that he doesn't want to sound like a dinosaur. But still, it's complicated. "Some young people are really, really struggling and need some help and support, and I don't think anyone would deny that. Some young people might say that they're socially anxious but not understand that this is perfectly normal, to walk into a room of 200 people and feel a bit anxious. You have not 'got anxiety', you are anxious." He has, he notes, encountered children reportedly too anxious for school but seemingly comfortable enough in a crowd at Middlesbrough Football Club on weekends.

How does a parent tell the difference between normal childhood worries and something more serious? It's important not to over-medicalise children's emotions, says Stevie Goulding, co-manager of the parent helpline at mental health charity Young Minds. Being anxious about exams, for example, is normal and even healthy: "It helps you to focus, to get that adrenaline pumping."

But if anxiety persists when exams are over, or lasts for more than four to six weeks with no obvious trigger, or spills over into home life and activities children normally enjoy, there might be cause for concern. If a child is actively resisting going to school, Goulding recommends sticking to the usual morning routine regardless. "Wake up with the expectation that they get up for school, have their breakfast, get their uniform on, while having awareness that they might not be able to leave the house." Parents should try to establish exactly what's worrying them - perhaps a particular lesson, teacher or friendship - and keep chasing any promised intervention by the school. Many children with special educational needs strive to maintain a normal facade in class and explode only when they get home, she points out, meaning teachers may not always realise how serious things are.

We've really underestimated the impact of Covid. Even youngsters you'd have thought would be fine say their world stopped

Fourteen-year-old Dilly comes across as articulate, charming and chatty over Zoom from home in Essex. The only clue as to the effort that may be costing her is that we're talking on a Sunday morning, because by the end of a school day she's too tired. Dilly is good at "masking", or disguising her autistic traits to fit in, but it wears her out. "A lot of the time I don't realise how big an effort I'm putting in. I only realise when I'm exhausted later and don't have any patience and can't think about anything," she says cheerfully. In a crowded room, she says, she will feel hyper-aware of things others wouldn't register - "people's conversations, people coughing, sniffing, everything" - which can make it overwhelming.

Dilly's school avoidance started at nursery. Can she describe how it feels? "Very anxious. I sort of build up in my head what it's going to be - this is going to happen and if that happens, that's going to happen - like a whole catastrophic thing." Sometimes she starts worrying about the next day as soon as she gets home. "I'll get stressed about what happens tomorrow, or I haven't done this homework and the teacher's going to get cross with me and then I'm going to get upset and this is going to happen. Sometimes there's not a reason - most of the time there is." Her ideal school would be "much more personal, shorter days, no homework and no tests".

Dilly now attends a tiny independent school of only 100 pupils, geared to dealing with her autism and dyslexia. Though it's still sometimes hard to make herself go in, she's motivated by wanting to get some qualifications and fulfil her ambition of becoming a film producer. But, as her mother acknowledges, she's arguably one of the lucky ones.

Stephanie Rocke's son, Alton, was in year one when he stopped wanting to go to his Northamptonshire primary school. Always an anxious child, he began suffering what looked like panic attacks; his year two teacher suggested he might have some form of special educational need, though nobody was quite sure what (he's since been diagnosed with ADHD and autism). Then, disastrously, lockdown hit. "He couldn't engage at all in home learning," Rocke says. "That's when we started seeing the first signs of him hitting himself, calling himself stupid, getting frustrated. After a month we just gave up completely - it was too stressful for everyone." It was only when school resumed that she realised how far behind he was.

He has an EHCP now with a "list of provisions a mile long", which Rocke says the school simply couldn't deliver. "They just say, 'If we don't have the staff available ... '" Every September, he would start out optimistic, only to wind up withdrawn by Christmas and in meltdown by March. By the spring of year five, she says, he wasn't eating, sleeping or interacting with the family. "We kept getting told that he should be going to school, should be getting an education - we knew he wasn't learning, but we felt we'd got to keep doing the right thing and sending him in, even though it didn't feel like the right thing. And he just kept getting worse." This March, the couple removed him; they are waiting to hear if he has got in to a school specialising in autism.

Rocke and her husband, who run their own business, have taken out loans to cover the cost of therapists, psychologists and solicitors to argue their case with the local education authority. Some SEND mothers she knows have given up work to home school. "That's what happens - especially women, especially mothers. They have no career, no job, no lives outside their children because they care for them full-time. It's shocking."

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Suzie is one of those mothers. Her eldest, 16-year-old Amelia, started struggling in social situations in year three of primary. "She started describing herself as an alien on planet Earth: she'd hide in the loos," Suzie recalls. It was the family GP who first mentioned autism. "She was having to put so much energy into holding it all together at school, it was like a Coke bottle that's been shaken: if you take the top off, it explodes everywhere."

'We have to support families to overcome barriers': Jill Wright (on left) and Marie Beale, head and deputy head of Whitefield primary school, Liverpool. Photograph: Jane MacNeil/The Guardian

Moving Amelia to a small private school helped initially, but by year seven she was self-harming and saying she didn't want to live. Just before the first lockdown, her parents began home schooling her.

Meanwhile her younger sister Evie, now 13, was showing signs of distress. "Lockdown really unsettled her and she struggled to go back - we know now it was because she really liked the much calmer environment at home. It showed families there's another way of doing this. We don't have to put them through the hell of school every day." When lockdown ended and Evie returned to school, she had trouble sleeping. Then she stopped eating. "In May 2022 she also turned round and said to us, 'I don't want to be here any more.' School has driven both our daughters to be suicidal," says Suzie, who gave up her job in the wine trade to watch over her daughters and hasn't worked since.

Both girls are now back in school. Evie, who has been diagnosed with ADHD, generalised anxiety disorder and autism, is well enough to attend the same small independent college as her sister and their local education authority eventually agreed to pay their fees on the grounds that no suitable state setting is available. "Every single step of the way we've either had to pay for the help we needed or fight horribly for it," Suzie says. "I'm very lucky we don't need me to rush back to work. We do have the resources to fight for our kids. But so many parents don't and that's why so many kids go missing. They can't cope, there's nothing else and nobody to help them."

All three families belong to a support network run by Square Peg and Not Fine in School, which swelled rapidly last summer ahead of the first term back with no allowances made for Covid- and pressure to get attendance back on track."We had [then education secretary] Gavin Williamson saying, 'We've relaxed the measures, everybody back to normal' but you can't treat a population like a machine that's on or off," says Square Peg's Ellie Costello. More than a third of families in its Facebook group have children with SEND, she says, and some battled for years to get EHCPs, only to find the promised support isn't forthcoming. Yet the law requires them to send their children to school anyway, or risk being taken to court for nonattendance (prosecutions brought by councils have doubled in less than a year, according to the Ministry of Justice, with fines of up to £2,500 - like speeding tickets, they can be issued by magistrates in the parent's absence). While some heads argue that prosecution is a valuable deterrent for otherwise uncooperative parents, Costello points to hard cases such as the lone parent who contacted her after being finedin absentia while undergoing chemotherapy. "She got home to see that the hearing had happened and she owed £800 plus costs. If you don't open your mail, or are on your own and struggling, these notices get lost." Some of the parents she meets have been accused of being "difficult" or adversarial by their children's schools, she says. "But why do people become these things? Because they're not listened to, or they feel judged or blamed."

s children's commissioner, it is De Souza's job to listen. A warm, dynamic steelworker's daughter from Scunthorpe, until early 2021 she ran an academy trust famous for its hard-driving "no excuses" philosophy. But the stories she has heard from children in this job seem to have shifted her perspective. Immediately after being appointed, she held a consultation about how Covid had affected children. "It's really seared on my mind, some of the conversations I had going round the country in March 2021, talking to very socially confident youngsters who you would have thought would be fine but who said, 'Basically my world stopped,'" she says. "I talk to hundreds of children every month, and they will all talk about this. We have really underestimated it."

Initially, she assumed any anxieties about returning to school would fade relatively quickly. But the more she studied attendance data in that first year back, the more it worried her. In hindsight, De Souza thinks children needed more help readjusting to the outside world. "We should have been concerned with children before it was, bang, back into the classroom, into exams. We should have been opening up school buildings, public buildings, got our youth workers and said, 'Children have taken an unbelievable hit, we should be getting them out, having some fun.' I never thought I'd hear myself saying that," she says, laughing. "There's room in schools for fun, for play, for thriving communities."

If you sit in judgment and say, 'You have to do this, you're the parent, you're responsible', you're just adding pressure

It's not, she stresses, that she has abandoned the drive for educational excellence. "The golden thread right through my career has been ensuring kids from the most disadvantaged areas get the opportunities. It's just how and what you need to do to achieve that. I have been able to see more widely, and see even better ways to do that. I realise that we're not islands." Over the summer she discussed with GPs, police and others how they could cooperate in getting missing children back to school. "We need the NHS not to be issuing children with multiple disabilities with appointments on four different days. We need all the services to be seeing attendance for what it is, a proxy for children's wellbeing." School is, she says, critical not just for educational reasons - children with good attendance records do better in GCSEs and A-levels than those without - but for mental health, with research suggesting teenagers in particular are happier when they're around their peers. Sadly, it's also critical for some children's safety. She still wonders whether six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, who died at the hands of his father and stepmother in lockdown, might have lived under a teacher's watchful eye.

Summarising her findings for MPs earlier this year, De Souza identified unmet special educational needs, mental health and young carers missing school to look after their parents as key problems with attendance. A recent government green paper on improving provision was full of good ideas, she says, but needs boosters under it: "My worry is the funding for that is two years down the line - we need it now." Though government plans to train mental health leads in schools are welcome, she says, NHS children's and adolescent mental health services aren't coping with a rise in demand either: "It takes funding, it needs a proper plan." (A spokesperson for the Department of Education said it recognised that the pandemic had affected children's mental health and that some faced greater barriers to attendance than others, adding: "That's why we are ensuring pupils with SEND receive the provision they require through new national standards and earlier intervention, alongside reforms to the SEND system that will give families greater confidence that their children will be able to fulfil their potential through improved mainstream provision in their local area.")

But schools can help, De Souza thinks, by teaching strategies for managing anxiety. Visiting a secondary school in Bolton where a staggering 30 local parents had died of Covid, she expected to find the pupils traumatised; but instead they talked about how teachers had helped them support each other through tough times. "These children were in the worst situations and they were finding a way to grow through it and not let it hold them back." The key, she argues, is fostering emotional resilience, or the ability to bounce back from difficult experiences. And that's what lies behind a pilot project on attendance now under way in a deprived part of Liverpool, a city that has seen its share of hard times.

On a sunny morning in Whitefield primary school, the playground is full. Three small girls are chalking pictures on the tarmac under headteacher Jill Wright's window, while other children play handball or career around in toy cars. Wright introduced longer breaktimes after realising how much children had missed out on playing together during lockdown. But, crucially, her teachers don't just supervise; they join in. "The staff here teach play," Wright explains. "They go out and play to make those relationships with the children."

Relationships are key at Whitefield, a so-called trauma-informed school - one based on understanding how childhood trauma affects development - serving a proud but deeply deprived neighbourhood. Pupils speak 30 languages between them, a third have SEND and almost half are eligible for pupil premium; some have had difficult early lives. But Wright is fiercely ambitious for them and so, she says, are their parents. The school has above average attendance for the area. "I can't think of any of our families who don't want the absolute best for their children, who don't have the same aspirations they'd have if they lived in the [more affluent] south end of the city. It's that some face different barriers we have to support them to overcome." As we walk through calm, orderly classrooms and corridors twinkling with fairy lights, she explains how the school has been geared to reduce anxiety levels.The year six classroom feels almost homelike, with padded seats and a comfy sofa. If a child is absent, teachers tell them when they return that they're part of the school family and it's not the same without them. There are no detentions for bad behaviour but, Wright insists, "That's not to say everyone does what they like."

Instead her deputy Marie Beale has led a programme within school teaching children to regulate their emotions, helping them calm themselves when they're anxious or angry and settle down to learning. Feelings are colour-coded - the red zone is for anger or fear, yellow for anxiety or over-excitement, blue for sadness - to help children identify emotions and understand that they can change zones by using simple strategies such as counting slowly back from 10, playing outside or discussing their feelings with a grownup. Last year Beale began training parents to use these strategies at home, funded by the Leeds-based charity Shine (which works with schools across the north to close the gap between disadvantaged and better off children).

"Instead of coming in saying, 'He's really angry this morning' they can say, 'He's in the red zone, I've tried to get him in, I don't know what to do,'" Beale says. Previously, parents might end up shouting at children to go to school in desperation, but now they have other tools. "Parents who have done the work on emotions, they understand the children are not being awkward."

Yet as at Grangefield, the rules are very clear. Failure to call in and explain absence from school or its attached nursery prompts a call or home visit, and parents are fined for taking term-time holidays. If children are off sick, the school's warm and motherly family liaison officer, Marguerite Young, will use her judgment on whether to call parents and gently try to find out if complaints of tummy ache might be masking something else. "If you know the child, you know the family, you can speak to Mum and say, 'Do you think this is anxiety?' and we will get to the root of it," she explains. Sometimes she'll offer to fetch a child herself in the morning, and some pupils sit with her for 10 minutes before the day starts, to calm themselves. The idea is to do whatever it takes to get anxious children in, so absence doesn't become a habit; parents are reminded that lessons build on each other, so if a child misses one day, the next will be harder. But the key is winning families' trust, Young says. "They know me and I know them, they can ring me on my mobile if they're having a bad morning."

The whole approach, Wright adds, is to walk a mile in parents' shoes rather than blaming them if they can't get their children in. "It's easy to sit in judgment and say, 'You've got to do this, you're the parent, it's your responsibility.' If you say that without underpinning it with support for the child or the parent, you're just adding pressure to an already pressured situation."

While her methods could easily be caricatured as chalk to the more robust cheese offered by Grangefield academy, visiting both reveals not just the hidden nuances but how closely each approach is tailored to local need. Michael Robson acknowledges some communities might find his home visits intrusive; Jill Wright accepts what works in her small primary, where teachers can get to know all the families, might not suit a big, anonymous secondary. But primaries can, she argues, help secondaries by ingraining good habits early on. (Shine's CEO, Helen Rafferty, says research shows children who attend nursery aged two go on to have better school attendance records when they're older.) It's by starting with the youngest children that attendance seems most likely to be cracked in the end. But that isn't much comfort to the families falling by the wayside now.

If Millie's mother Sarah could write education policy, she says wistfully, she'd throw "all the money in the world" at training teachers in neurodiversity. As it is, she and her husband sometimes fantasise about dropping out of the system. "We go on Rightmove and say, 'Let's buy a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, just move there and give up on everything and everyone, and live our lives and be safe,'" she sighs. "But in reality, that's not the way. It's getting the people who have the power to make things change."

The headline of this article was amended on 4 September 2023 to refer to England rather than Britain.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Children are holding a mirror up to us': why are England's kids refusing to go to school?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As a new academic year begins, more children than ever are worried about returning. What's being done to get them into the classroom - and is that always the best idea?

# data[].attributes.headline
“In Waltham Forest, there are approximately 399 [autism] diagnoses per year for children and young people aged between 0-18.” 

# data[].attributes.subject
“In Waltham Forest, there are approximately 399 [autism] diagnoses per year for children and young people aged between 0-18.” 

# data[].attributes.body
The total number of EHCPs in the borough is around 2,884.

SEN support for pupils is around 5000 children/young people, including those with EHCPs.

Families experience long waits for assessments suggesting that more children are undiagnosed. Data on how many children are not attending school is poor, but it is a situation commonly expressed in peer-led groups that are part of Waltham Forest Parents Forum. There is scarcely any informal learning or social provision in WF for these children that supports their learning styles to build on their interests. Families report experiencing extreme isolation, concern about how children will transition to adulthood, and frustration that their child or young adult cannot access the expertise and tools to develop their creative and digital interests when both exist in the borough and are available for mainstream school attenders.

# data[].attributes.headline
Some Kind of Hack Space is being shaped with young people in Waltham Forest who are struggling to access mainstream school and satisfy their own curiosity for learning. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Some Kind of Hack Space is being shaped with young people in Waltham Forest who are struggling to access mainstream school and satisfy their own curiosity for learning. 

# data[].attributes.body
Our vision is to create a rare opportunity for neurodivergent young people (14-25yrs) to follow their own lines of enquiry, to access specialist equipment and expertise outside of formal education, to work on ideas in a concentrated way, but alongside other people in a relaxed social space for learning.

# data[].attributes.body
"We like the info sheet, the stars and arrows on the floor, the maps, open start times - gentle closing times. This is one of the few things that gets him out of the house, fortnightly works. The focused activity supports social engagement, it's been great to get him out to do something. It helps him recognise his limitations and preferences. There's no opportunities for building skills for independence. Positive for our other son too because he is home with Dad so they get their own time."

# data[].attributes.headline
"It does help me leave the house at the weekends because it is something I want to do [and I don't feel like that very often]"

# data[].attributes.subject
"It does help me leave the house at the weekends because it is something I want to do [and I don't feel like that very often]"

# data[].attributes.body
Young Person, age 13

# data[].attributes.headline
"Amazing, the approach of flexible/ drop in learning is great to see. My son who has been quite traumatised by his school experience is instantly put off by anything that might be framed as a lesson or another intervention regardless of what it is which is such a barrier to engaging in things he actually enjoys and is good at. Having the opportunity to dip in and meet others would be great for his self esteem and potentially give him the opportunity to thrive."

# data[].attributes.subject
"Amazing, the approach of flexible/ drop in learning is great to see. My son who has been quite traumatised by his school experience is instantly put off by anything that might be framed as a lesson or another intervention regardless of what it is which is such a barrier to engaging in things he actually enjoys and is good at. Having the opportunity to dip in and meet others would be great for his self esteem and potentially give him the opportunity to thrive."

# data[].attributes.body
Feedback on our initial plans for the project

# data[].attributes.headline
"Its great to hear about the project you are proposing, its definitely a big gap in the borough and something that ties in really well with the work I am doing." Autism Strategy Officer

# data[].attributes.subject
"Its great to hear about the project you are proposing, its definitely a big gap in the borough and something that ties in really well with the work I am doing." Autism Strategy Officer

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We informed local services of our plans and made links with other providers. We obtained copies of the borough's new autisum strategy for Waltham Forest. We found it especially helpful to think about how this project helps with transition to adult and ties in with the borough's ambitions for this.

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Founder Story: An interview with Laura Kerry

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Founder Story: An interview with Laura Kerry

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Conducted as part of Foundation for Future London’s storytelling approach to evaluating their funding programme.

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Laura Interview - Some Kind of Hack Space

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We already sent an expression of interest for the Foundation for Future London large grants for 2024 and are delighted to be through to the 2nd stage.

We are exploring other funding opportunities so that we can continue to deliver the project in the autumn as continuity is especially crucial for the young people we are working with.

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3 July: Mid-Point Review - The Challenges

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3 July: Mid-Point Review - The Challenges

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We had anticipated the challenges and did our best to mitigate them. We know that more than double the number of young people attending would like to come, but their mental health and anxiety prevents them. Those that have attended came back and our youth worker feels this is significant. The challenges are as we expected, but also the very reason we were motivated to do the project!

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Another set of principles we can measure our outcomes by -suggested to us in an evaluation workshop with Foundation for Future London.

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Evidence suggests there are 5 steps you can take to improve your mental health and wellbeing. Trying these things could help you feel more positive and able to get the most out of life.
1. Connect with other people

Good relationships are important for your mental wellbeing. They can:

help you to build a sense of belonging and self-worth

give you an opportunity to share positive experiences

provide emotional support and allow you to support others

There are lots of things you could try to help build stronger and closer relationships:

2. Be physically active

Being active is not only great for your physical health and fitness. Evidence also shows it can also improve your mental wellbeing by:

raising your self-esteem

helping you to set goals or challenges and achieve them

causing chemical changes in your brain which can help to positively change your mood

Read about exercise guidelines and workouts to help improve your fitness and wellbeing

3. Learn new skills

Research shows that learning new skills can also improve your mental wellbeing by:

boosting self-confidence and raising self-esteem

helping you to build a sense of purpose

helping you to connect with others

Even if you feel like you do not have enough time, or you may not need to learn new things, there are lots of different ways to bring learning into your life.

Some of the things you could try include:

4. Give to others

Research suggests that acts of giving and kindness can help improve your mental wellbeing by:

creating positive feelings and a sense of reward

giving you a feeling of purpose and self-worth

helping you connect with other people

It could be small acts of kindness towards other people, or larger ones like volunteering in your local community.

Some examples of the things you could try include:

saying thank you to someone for something they have done for you

asking friends, family or colleagues how they are and really listening to their answer

spending time with friends or relatives who need support or company

offering to help someone you know with DIY or a work project

volunteering in your community, such as helping at a school, hospital or care home

5. Pay attention to the present moment (mindfulness)

Paying more attention to the present moment can improve your mental wellbeing. This includes your thoughts and feelings, your body and the world around you.

Some people call this awareness "mindfulness". Mindfulness can help you enjoy life more and understand yourself better. It can positively change the way you feel about life and how you approach challenges.

Read more about mindfulness, including steps you can take to be more mindful in your everyday life.

Further information

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Read about 5 steps you can take to improve your mental health and wellbeing.

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Timeline - the programme was a bit condensed at the end of the academic year due to availability. The preference would be as planned, for monthly sessions.

Budget - only slight tweaks as we recieved a little less than applied for, but the venue hire was very generously offered as in kind for the pilot project.

Delivery Team - this evolved organically with the people and expertise we discovered as we established the project. We now have a lead artist taking on a more involved role due to their specific interest in the project. Plus, a young person working on the project as our technician.

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Young Person

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Dave - co-lab
Ricardo - w/exp
Norman / Morag
- the expertise and the welcome

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For the young people we were inviting, we knew it had to be local, be available outside of usual operating hours so the building could be quiet, and have flexible spaces with some equipment and resources we could use.

This was made possible because of a previous collaboration and relationship with Leyton Sixth Form College, and because the campus is open for the public to play sports on the weekend staff were already employed to open the building. Knowing a key member of staff with a desire to engage with communities beyond the college community was a huge help and they connected us to other staff including their safeguarding officer who referred students to us.

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“Are we going to do this again next week?” “Is there some gold paint”

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“Are we going to do this again next week?” “Is there some gold paint”

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We made sure to buy gold paint for the following session!

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About Rupert our facilitator, one young person said: "I think he was possibly very overqualified. Extremely." 

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About Rupert our facilitator, one young person said: "I think he was possibly very overqualified. Extremely." 

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I asked him to explain a bit more, and I think what he was saying is that he felt the artist didn't need to be doing the workshop for them because he was so talented, he could work anywhere.

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Autism, the co-occuring, and other conditions, that young people in our group told us about

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Autism, the co-occuring, and other conditions, that young people in our group told us about

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Autism
ADHD
Generalised Anxiety Disorder
Dyslexia
Dyspraxia
Dyscalculia
Obbessive Compulsive Disorder
Restricted Eating (ARFID)
Pathalogical Demand Avoidance
Aphasia
Speech and Language and Developmental Delay
Development Coordination Disorder
Type 1 Diabetes

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For young people: an information pack, community rules, outline for each of the sessions, and the workshop details were shared in a Padlet available here:

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For young people: an information pack, community rules, outline for each of the sessions, and the workshop details were shared in a Padlet available here:

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This is something young people could engage with more over a longer period. Comment on and even vote for activities they would like to do.

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Things young people would like to do at future Hack Space days

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Things young people would like to do at future Hack Space days

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Any art , craft, tech based activities.

Sculpture, sound scapes, 3d printing, textiles.

Paint some D&D characters or do more towards the set we started previously.

More resin workshops
More VR workshops

Fixing gaming devices and controllers

"Any electronic fixing would be very popular with my child"

"We are trying to learn arduino and 00 gauge controls for the Pumphouse model at the moment"

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"I'm really hoping it gets more funding" Young Person Attending the Hack Space

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"I'm really hoping it gets more funding" Young Person Attending the Hack Space

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We asked about the things young people may find challenging or need assistance with in advance

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We asked about the things young people may find challenging or need assistance with in advance

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These included:
Loud Noises
Social Anxiety
Fear of crowds
Dislike of Touch
Loneliness
Fear of unknown people or places

We continued to learn a lot each time we met them, observing how they responsed to things. Many were very sensitive to sound, unexpected sound was the most challenging. While they could be in spaces that, for example might be noisy or bright, it might mean that they become tired quicker or feel anxious. So our aim was to minimise things that detract from participating. From what we have learned, there are lots of simple adjustments we would make to the spaces if we can secure additional resourses.

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Two young people brought their own projects along to the Hack Space

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Two young people brought their own projects along to the Hack Space

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One felt able to share their project with the Hack Space team and other young people. Their hacked games controller allows you to play retro games, and so of course, some collaborative gaming took place ustilising the big screens available in college.

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Some outcomes since the Hack Space pilot:

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Some outcomes since the Hack Space pilot:

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"An unexpected outcome from attending was that my daughter got to visit Leyton sixth form college without the formality of an open day or busy event which really gave her the opportunity to see the building and resources and exhibited art work and to visualise herself going there to study in the future."

"We have met up with hack space attendees which has given a sense of a neurodiverse community to my child for the first time ever."

"A combination of the Hack Space and Neurodiversity Social Club has made my son more confident to try and make friends at school mainly through the medium of D&D which he had previously not got as an option."

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Young Person

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"I would have preferred it monthly. Due to the funding the sessions were quite close together and as a family I think once a month would have worked better."

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"I would have preferred it monthly. Due to the funding the sessions were quite close together and as a family I think once a month would have worked better."

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"Some of the young people perhaps fell into 'school mode' in the workshop e.g. didn't realise they could leave, move around etc. This wasn't an issue as adults were open to this but perhaps the young people need reminding of this flexibility because they aren't used to it usually in learning environments."

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"Some of the young people perhaps fell into 'school mode' in the workshop e.g. didn't realise they could leave, move around etc. This wasn't an issue as adults were open to this but perhaps the young people need reminding of this flexibility because they aren't used to it usually in learning environments."

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"I think having the session dates one after the other meant that we couldn't attend them all and would be more likely to attend if they were spaced out throughout the year e.g. one per month." 

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"I think having the session dates one after the other meant that we couldn't attend them all and would be more likely to attend if they were spaced out throughout the year e.g. one per month." 

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"I enjoyed everything especially the resin workshop"

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"I enjoyed everything especially the resin workshop"

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"Keep it being drop in and out with a flexible time frame"

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"Keep it being drop in and out with a flexible time frame"

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"Keep the snacks and drinks, keep the friendly welcoming staff with a low key approach."

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"Keep the snacks and drinks, keep the friendly welcoming staff with a low key approach."

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"Keep doing fun tech stuff, keep doing creative project on a D&D theme (or other string interests of the group members!)"

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"Keep doing fun tech stuff, keep doing creative project on a D&D theme (or other string interests of the group members!)"

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"The flexibility of time e.g. being able to come and go as suited chill out areas." 

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"The flexibility of time e.g. being able to come and go as suited chill out areas." 

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"A choice of activities alongside a focused workshop worked really well." 

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"A choice of activities alongside a focused workshop worked really well." 

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"Visiting artists leading sessions was inspirational and felt very 'grown up' and different from school." 

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"Visiting artists leading sessions was inspirational and felt very 'grown up' and different from school." 

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"I found the experience fun and I got to meet new people, and meet with friends"

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"I found the experience fun and I got to meet new people, and meet with friends"

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"It was a great opportunity to get inside a college and my son now seems to be keen to go to college rather than a school when he is older so that has expanded his horizons." 

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"It was a great opportunity to get inside a college and my son now seems to be keen to go to college rather than a school when he is older so that has expanded his horizons." 

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"The were pros and cons of the college space. The spaces were nice and big. Downside was, it wasn’t a very intimate setting and there was no way to control things such as the overhead lighting." 

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"The were pros and cons of the college space. The spaces were nice and big. Downside was, it wasn’t a very intimate setting and there was no way to control things such as the overhead lighting." 

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"I thought the detail of information you gave before the event was the best I have ever seen and has actually made me rethink the amount of info I need to give to autistic young people in future."

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"I thought the detail of information you gave before the event was the best I have ever seen and has actually made me rethink the amount of info I need to give to autistic young people in future."

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"Information about the building and events was clear with excellent visuals which tackled her anxiety about unknown elements. The environment itself was well adapted for sensory sensitivities with calm rooms and choice. Very inclusive and therefore felt really different to other 'mainstream' events." 

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"Information about the building and events was clear with excellent visuals which tackled her anxiety about unknown elements. The environment itself was well adapted for sensory sensitivities with calm rooms and choice. Very inclusive and therefore felt really different to other 'mainstream' events." 

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"I think she felt hopeful that learning could be fun and accessible which is an enormous thing to achieve with a young person so disengaged from learning and school!"

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"I think she felt hopeful that learning could be fun and accessible which is an enormous thing to achieve with a young person so disengaged from learning and school!"

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"My daughter felt very safe and secure because everything was geared towards her neurodiverse needs." 

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"My daughter felt very safe and secure because everything was geared towards her neurodiverse needs." 

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"I found Hackspace interesting, I learnt how to use resin, and how to make electronic music"

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"I found Hackspace interesting, I learnt how to use resin, and how to make electronic music"

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"My son learnt about how to to use resin, more about technology and how to use raspberry Pi, and also had a few nice interactions over shared interests/gaming with other young people." 

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"My son learnt about how to to use resin, more about technology and how to use raspberry Pi, and also had a few nice interactions over shared interests/gaming with other young people." 

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What did you not like? What was unhelpful or challenging?

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What did you not like? What was unhelpful or challenging?

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What did you like? What should we keep doing?

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What did you like? What should we keep doing?

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How did you feel? How was the experience of being at the Hack Space?

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How did you feel? How was the experience of being at the Hack Space?

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What did you think of the Hack Space? Did you learn anything? If so, what was it?

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What did you think of the Hack Space? Did you learn anything? If so, what was it?

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"Really good for parental well-being, peer support for parents" 

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"Really good for parental well-being, peer support for parents" 

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The following sections show some of the feedback we gathered using the 'Head, Heart, Bag, Bin!' evaluation method recommended by our funder.

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The following sections show some of the feedback we gathered using the 'Head, Heart, Bag, Bin!' evaluation method recommended by our funder.