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Sarah Watson
During her thirteen years in mainstream secondary education, Sarah has worked as Literacy Lead, Specialist Provision Lead (cognition and learning) and SENDCO. Sarah has Specialist Leader in Education status, an MA in Education and is a Specialist Assessor. Sarah has a particular interest in supporting children and young people with cognition and learning needs access an ambitious curriculum. Sarah also has experience with low incidence needs, leading two resourced provisions for children and young people with sensory impairments. Sarah is passionate about improving inclusion and access in mainstream settings and joined the Whole School SEND team in 2021. She is currently the Assistant Principal, SEND, at The King’s Academy in Middlesbrough.
Kayleigh began her career as a Psychologist in the NHS, working therapeutically with children and their families across a number of different fields. Her passion has always been to promote early intervention and end the stigma surrounding mental health, breaking down barriers and evoking conversations around diversity and social equality. It was her drive to see real change that led her to join her local authority, where she led on the development of a trauma-informed framework to support senior education leaders embed robust and sustaining cultural and organisational change. Through engaging and insightful training packages, Kayleigh brings together professionals of all backgrounds to promote the conversation of childhood and adolescent mental health, and the importance of early intervention
Claire Smith is a Lead Advisor for Speech and Language UK, where we want every child to face the future with confidence. For at least 1.7 million children in the UK, learning to talk and understand words feels like an impossible hurdle. So we give children and young people the skills they need so they aren't left behind, waiting to be understood. Claire has over 30 years’ experience as a Speech and Language Therapist, supporting children of all ages and their families, and leading and transforming children’s services. Claire has worked with early years, primary and secondary schools and is passionate about changing young lives.
Liz has more than 30 years’ experience as a Speech and Language Therapist . She joined Speech and Language UK in 2007 and works as a lead advisor in the organisation. Liz has worked on the set up and delivery of several projects and been involved in the development of Speech and Language UK programmes and resources, as well as training and consultancy crossing all phases of education. Liz is experienced in workforce development, creating and delivering training and workshops. She has worked in partnership with local authorities, settings and organisations to develop communication supportive environments and improve practice to support children and young people with speech and language challenges.
Sarah Johnson has worked in education for the last nineteen years. As a qualified teacher, Sarah has enjoyed roles in mainstream schools, Pupil Referral Units, Alternative Provision and psychiatric in-patient services. Sarah is the author of the book ‘Behaving Together: A Teacher’s Guide to Nurturing Behaviour’ and two upcoming books published by Routledge on Social and Emotional Mental Health. As a member for the Department of Education’s Alternative Provision stakeholder group, she has supported development of policy such as the recent SEND and AP green paper as well as chairing a range of panels and events within the education sector.
Dr Miriam McBreen is a Lecturer in Psychology at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, and a member of UCL’s Centre for Inclusive Education. Her teaching and research focus on provision to support pupils with reading difficulties. In particular, she is interested in understanding the links between reading motivation and reading development, and identifying practices that foster the motivation, engagement and learning of pupils with reading difficulties.
Dr Jo Van Herwegen is a Professor at Institute of Education, UCL’s faculty for Education and Society, and director of the Child Development and Learning Difficulties lab. Her research focuses on improving educational outcomes for those with learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental disorders, using evidence from developmental psychology and educational neuroscience. Jo has co-edited two books and has written over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Her research has been funded by a number of charities and research councils, including EEF, Nuffield Foundation, UKRI and ESRC.
She is currently Head of Research for the department of Psychology and Human Development and member of the executive committee for the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI).
Dr Leda Kamenopoulou is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education (IOE), UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, UK. Her teaching, research and publications focus on Multisensory Impairment (Deafblindness), inclusive education within different contexts, and preparing teaching professionals for meeting the needs of all learners. She has extensive experience of conducting qualitative and mixed methods research within a variety of education settings.
Dr Susana Castro-Kemp is an Associate Professor in Psychology and Special Needs at The Institute of Education, University College London. She has done extensive research on Education Health and Care plans, children’s ‘voices’ in provision for SEND, inclusive education, early childhood intervention and education policy.
Dr Brian Irvine works at UCL at CRAE, the Centre of Research in Autism and Education. There he works as an Early Career Researcher on the ESRC funded Superior Perceptual Capacity in Autism, SUPER. For his doctoral thesis at the University of Birmingham he investigated Specialist (Autism) Mentoring in UK Higher Education. Over the last decade he was a mentor himself, where he had had the pleasure of regular meetings with many brilliant students as they journeyed through their university life. He has a background as a teacher in a primary school inclusion provision and – last century – was Head of Philosophy and Religious Education at a secondary modern school.
For fun, he keeps bees, as it guarantees not being interrupted for a few hours. Twitter: @BigBadBee
Deputy Regional SEND Lead
Rebecca has more than 15 years’ experience working as a senior school Leader, Deputy Head teacher (Head of Start-up School), Assistant head teacher and a SENCO in several inner city schools. Her areas of expertise include SEND, SEND legislation, creating an inclusive classroom/ quality first teaching, inclusion, SEMH (including ADHD) and Emotional related school refusal (attendance). She holds a Master’s Degree in Education focusing on SEND and Autism Spectrum Conditions. At the heart of it all, she is an outstanding English teacher. Rebecca is a qualified SENCO and registered with British Psychologist society (CCET3).
Her current position is Director of Inclusion for Every Child, Every Day Multi Academy Trust. Her role includes supporting and working in collaboration with Head teachers, senior leaders and SENCO’s in developing a person centred approach to inclusion. She also works as a School improvement partner for schools in her Trust and outside the Trust as directed by her CEO. Her philosophy is centred on the understanding that every teacher is a teacher of SEND and every leader is a leader of SEND.
Jean is a national expert on special educational needs and disadvantage. She is the author of numerous articles and best-selling books on inclusion, including Beating Bureaucracy in SEND (4th edition, 2023), Time to Talk (2017) and Reaching the Unseen Children: practical strategies to close stubborn attainment gaps in disadvantaged groups (2021).
Jean has been a teacher, an educational psychologist and head of children’s services in a local authority. She was formerly government Communication Champion for children; before this she headed the Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts one-to-one tuition programmes, and led on inclusion within the government’s National Strategies. She was awarded a CBE for services to education in 2011.
@JeanGrossCBE
Education Officer
Sam has had varied career in education, holding several SENDCO posts across mainstream schools and a pupil referral unit; going on to work as a local authority SEND advisory teacher, where she supported schools and early years settings with the development and implementation of SEND provision for children and young people. Later Sam went on to lead the Learning Support Team with Nottingham City Council; whilst also lecturing at Grosseteste University on the subject of SEND, and training teachers in specialist assessment. Sam is a dyslexia specialist teacher/ assessor, and has a special interest in Specific Learning Difficulties. More recently, Sam has worked with adults supporting identification and accessibility in the workplace.
Alison has been a teacher for 26 years and is currently Whole School SEND National Coordinator. She has previously been a class teacher, nurture teacher, SENDCO, Head of Chestnut Nursery School, and Head of Inclusion for Exeter Children’s Federation. She has been on the board of trustees at nurtureuk since 2016 and has a passion for improving the education and life chances of children from a background of deprivation. Her interest in children affected by social, emotional and/or mental health issues encouraged her to become a Specialist Leader in Education for the Exeter Consortium and Teaching School Alliance. Through this role she helps lead the Professional Community for SEND for South West Institute for Teaching (SWIFT). This community works to support schools identifying and meeting children’s needs and so reduce permanent exclusions across schools in the Southwest. She aims to keep the well-being of children at the heart of everything she does.
Chief Executive Officer of Pathways Education Ltd, Claire leads a fast-growing organisation that serves children and young adults not in formal schooling, to help them re-engage with learning, life and beyond. Underpinned by the values of Wellbeing, Connection and Empowerment, Claire’s work relentlessly focuses on re-imagining education to ensure all young adults have the opportunity, skills, and support to transition into high aiming paid employment in their adult lives.
Formally the CEO of DFN Project SEARCH and DFN Foundation, Claire is an experienced senior leader and public speaker with an extensive background in education, innovative curriculum design and best practice supported employment. Experienced chair and board member, Claire currently holds a number of non-exec trustee roles, one with a specialist school with the primary responsibility for safeguarding, and one with DFN Project SEARCH.
Claire supports many national workstreams around evidence-based transition to employment provision and is currently an external advisor to a large-scale national charity as well as sitting on a number of APPG groups around assistive technology and supported internships.
Operations Manager for British Association for Supported Employment (BASE) and Inclusive Trading CIC.
Nerise has worked in supported employment for over 25 years, across a wide range of services. Nerise is committed to ensuring people with disabilities have the opportunity of employment and developing their careers. Prior to this role, Nerise has been an Associate of BASE providing all quality assurance and was pivotal to the development of the Supported Employment Quality Framework. Nerise is strongly passionate about quality assurance and leads the work across BASE and Inclusive Trading to drive quality across employment pathways and workforce development.
Caroline has worked in education since 2009 and has a passion for supporting learners with SEND. She took on the role of SENDCo and developed this working across multiple schools. Prior to taking on the role of National Delivery Coordinator for Whole School SEND, she worked as a Regional SENDCo (leading and coaching other SENDCos) for a large MAT.
I began my career as an NHS speech and language therapist in 1991 working with children in clinics, schools, nurseries and special schools. I then retrained as a teacher in 1999, completing a PGCE in primary education, specialising in Early Years and worked in primary schools, mostly as an early years teacher, for 18 years until 2018; for the final 8 years of this period, I was also the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) within the school.
In 2018, I began the journey to become an educational psychologist by teaching on a temporary, part-time basis as a SENCO in Derbyshire, at a special school in Derbyshire and at a pupil-referral unit in Derby City at the same time as applying to the Doctorate training programme for Educational Psychology. I completed the three-year doctorate course at the University of Sheffield which included placements at Nottinghamshire County Council and then was fortunate to be able to work for Nottinghamshire County Council as a qualified educational psychologist when I qualified in 2022.
My professional interests include a focus on communication and social and emotional needs as well as promoting and facilitating inclusion using a systemic-level perspective where possible, to empower schools and families to understand and support children and young people’s educational needs.
I began my career in education as a secondary school teacher before training as an Educational Psychologist nineteen years ago. The majority of my time as an Educational Psychologist has been working for Nottinghamshire County Council, where I have had the opportunity to contribute to a wide range of development projects and have been seconded to work with a large primary multi-academy trust for the last five years for a day week. In addition, I am a tutor on the Doctorate in Applied Educational Psychology professional training programme at the University of Nottingham; supervising research which provides a unique contribute to the fields of education and educational psychology.
My professional interests are wide ranging but a constant throughout my career has been my commitment to promoting and facilitating inclusion, and how children and young people learn, particularly the importance of memory, speech and language and emotional well-being.
From an early age, I was interested in the ‘why,’ ‘why do certain people behave in the way that they do?.’ This interest evolved further when I discovered that there were several interpretations from a single event from a range of people. However, in certain groups and contexts certain voices/perspectives were marginalised, discredited and at times not even considered. Based on this experience I was eager to think around how we can provide platforms to hear from the perspectives of those that can often be marginalised such as children and young people. I recognise the importance of hearing children and young people’s lived experiences and what is important to them. A further interest I have is the use of language and how this shapes individuals’ identities and their understanding of themselves.
Based on these interests, and my learning of psychology at University, I was eager to apply psychology in practice. I completed the Doctor of Educational Psychology in 2020 – 2023. I then went on to work as an Educational Psychologist in 2023 at Nottinghamshire Educational Psychology Service. I continue to learn, and each day is different, but I love that I have been able to build my interests into my work, and this is what makes each day enjoyable and interesting!