Courses and training for Professionals

[TwittleBee]

I've offered my child's school and LA some CPD and I'd to make suggestions about further courses and qualifications they could then go on and complete.

Would anyone here have some recommendations on courses?

Areas that the school and LA need to further expand their knowledge:

1. ASD and ADHD in adults (in particular parents)
2. Parenting styles for ASD and ADHD, particularly with PDA profiles
3. Recognising different communication styles and how to communicate effectively with different people
4. Understanding that people can feel more than 1 emotion and hold multiple dimensions to their personality.

Thank you!

I don't understand. Has the school/LA accepted your offer of the initial training?

Is there specific training on 'Understanding that people can feel more than 1 emotion and hold multiple dimensions to their personality'? That seems both blatantly obvious and not something that courses would address.

I'm not sure why teachers would need to focus their training on parenting styles. As a teacher, I have had training on effective communication with parents, and deescalating challenging situations with parents, but this is a small part of my job, so the majority of my training has been about teaching children.

Yes, I'm putting foward a lived experience of a disabled family for them as a workshop and want to address the areas that have commonly come up as issues raised by other disabled families through recommending courses.

What courses did you find useful?

And yes, whilst that point would seem obvious to some, there has been many parents who have said they do not believe the LA understand that.

The point about parenting styles, I'm keen to address how there is a lot of parent blaming, in particular with how a schools and LAs view a child's behaviour in school due to how a parent is parenting in a particular way but often that style is appropriate for the presented needs.

I’m not sure if this is the type of thing you mean, but the PDA Society does a range of courses/training. They also do consultancy work and bespoke training. PAST offers a range of training too.

Thank you, I shall take a look and include those links at the end of the workshop presentation

Thing is, this is an attitude issue in most cases, not a training need. The way normally to change this kind of attitude is not by addressing directly as people naturally get defensive. Parents suggesting to caseworkers that they need to understand that parents have multiple emotions is not going to achieve a positive change.

Linking to PDA society sounds good. Also the education endowment fund have good training on communication with parents as a whole school model(not sen specific). I did some excellent training on communicating with people whose English is limited, but I can't remember the training provider.

The lived experience piece sounds great. Do you know the audience? Only "schools and LAs" is a very wide workforce, hence feeling confused by your initial post. Classroom teachers wouldn't normally be able to prioritise this type of training; SENCOs and PLANCOs at the LA maybe would, but their workloads are enormous and they need to prioritise training that directly helps students, most of the time.

Attitude is likely a lack of understanding though, right? This was why I was thinking about courses that my inadvertently cover that, would that be a generic psychology beginner course? Emotional Literacy?

I shall take a look at the education endowment, thank you.

To be specific, it's the Education Access teams and the Attendance leads in schools. Helping them understand the barriers and the impact this has on families.

Ok, great, that does change things because these are staff that are parent facing rather than student focussed, so that makes more sense that they may go on to other related training.

Education Endowment may not be the right way to go, in that case, although its worth a loo. An emotional literacy course might be a good signpost. Not psychology, which tends not to be a practical course but theoretical. Any EBSA training? The national autistic society has a lot of advice and content that might support both understanding autistic parents and understanding autistic students and the parenting styles that might support them.