The Tes SEN Show

If you have read our last blog, you will know that Hannah and I traveled down to London last week for the Tes SEN Show. Although a lot of the show is aimed at supporting pupils with SEND in mainstream and for SLD learners we did find a few great stands for PMLD. This is a completely free event to attend which is incredible really as nothing seems to come free anymore. The event seemed very well organised from the badge entry, bag checks on the door, your free bag including a very informative guide, the many seminars and CPD sessions and the free parent and practitioner talks going on throughout the day. TES do a wonderful thing for the SEND community by organising this event, I would just love to see more of a representation for our PMLD learners next year as whoever we spoke to, people mentioned the rise in pupils with PMLD. I wanted this blog post to highlight some of the companies we spoke to throughout the day that were relevant to our work with people with PMLD.

One of the first stands we came across was C Potential. C Potential, based in London, are a charity for people with cerebral palsy and complex needs. They offer many services including speech and language therapy, music therapy and also run their own school. One of the most exciting things we chatted to them about was Mollii Suits, something we didn't know much about. We saw this mannequin with a paneled 'suit' attached and it immediately caught our attention. The very knowledgeable team explained to us how the suit works. This explanation is taken from their website 'It has conductive elastic sewn into it with electrodes located at the major muscles. A completely painless electro-stimulation is conducted via silver wires to 58 electrodes on the inside of the garment. These target muscle groups and prompt natural reflexes which relieve muscle tension and help build control of low muscle tone.' The suit can improve range of movement, fine motor control, help learn new movement patterns and ease chronic pain and spasticity. C Potential offer free assessment for Mollii suits and are independent as they do not directly sell the suits. The suits are £4,100 exc VAT so are very pricey, however the ladies at C Potential explained that many parents apply for grants. The company that make them offer an additional service for growing children to reduce additional cost.

We then found our way to the Move stand. We have spent a lot of time researching the Move Programme as we are working towards introducing it at our school in the near future. Move is a physical programme that aims for each child to reach their full potential in sitting, standing, walking and transitioning. Move is a personalised approach, working collaboratively with parents, professionals and the child. When we visited Castlewood school in Coventry, we spent a lot of time talking to Jodie Dunn about the Move programme, she also presented on Move at Flo Longhorn's Best of British Special Education Forum earlier this year. We saw the Move programme in action as we were shown around the school and looked through learning journals and videos to see amazing progress and the impact it as had on the families as well as the child. Move delivers training sessions around the country as well as coming into schools to deliver whole school training. From what I have seen of Move we would strongly recommend looking into it. To read some lovely success stories click here.

Also on their stand were Mount Industries Furniture who are also an Enham Trust Social Enterprise. They are beginning to work closely with the Move Programme to design specialist furniture for classrooms for pupils with complex needs and disabilities. They had a couple of pieces on show including a round table with grip holes to support standing as well as a stepped storage unit. He discussed how personal the furniture could be. We gave the example of one of our pupils who loves music or another who is motivated by light and he said it would be great to put a music or light up panel at the top. It seemed like a great idea to us to be able to personalise furniture to fit the needs of your room practically but also as additional apparatus to support the physical development of your pupils. We expressed that if they ever wanted a tester for their products we would jump at the chance! We hope to hear more about their developments soon. Another lovely aspect of Mount Industries Furniture is that part of their work with Enham Trust is proving people with disabilities with employment opportunities.

I have spent a lot of time this year researching sensory rooms (another topic I would like to write more about in the future). We have been putting all of our energy into fundraising for a new sensory room. Unfortunately our old sensory room is in a state of disrepair and wasn't always appropriately used. There are sadly a lot of articles out there that highlight the misuse of sensory rooms, the ;turn everything on and send your class in' approach. However, when I was designing our room I found lots of wonderful new products that I am very excited about. Firstly magic carpets or interactive floors are incredible. Our children loved the one at Alton Towers. I especially love the versions you can upload things to yourself such as your current topic, story or pupils in your class. I have spent months looking through the Spacekraft catalogue and I will share with you some of favourite products in a future post. Spacekraft and Sensory Guru were at the Tes Show providing people with technical sensory wonders all day. The interactive floor was a hit!

In the next post I will write about Soundbeam, Evidence for Learning, Calvert Trust and Smart Box.

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Not the best photo of us, but just to show that we rocked our Sensory Dispensary t-shirts all day!