The Development of the Parents and Carers of Neurodivergent/SEND Children Staff Network.

The Purpose Behind Forming the Parents and Carers of Neurodivergent/SEND Children Staff Network.

Following a recent staff awareness session at the annual Neurodiversity event Embrace, Support Empower, several colleagues approached Anna to express their need for tailored support in navigating SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) pathways while also managing their responsibilities at home . 

In direct response to this insight, we have established a new network that is designed to meet the specific needs of our staff community. This network is built on the valuable lived experiences of our colleagues and will continually evolve based on their input, ensuring it remains relevant and impactful. 

How This Network Will Support You

The group’s initial aim is to simply bring colleagues together for relaxed, supportive conversations. We know that none of us have every answer—but what we can offer is a safe space, a listening ear, and a mix of lived and professional experience that can make a real difference. 

As the group grows, we’ll shape its purpose and terms of reference together. This way, staff voices stay at the heart of everything we do, helping the group evolve in a way that feels meaningful. 

We’re really looking forward to meeting everyone and seeing how the group develops—and the positive change it could spark along the way.  

Who can join?

The group is intended to be diverse and inclusive, and this is not an exhaustive list:

Meet your Network Leads

Since joining Edge Hill in 2013, I have been a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at Edge Hill University, bringing over 25 years of teaching experience across secondary schools in the Northwest of England and Yorkshire. I have contributed extensively to the ITE Secondary Physical Education PGCE with QTS programme and as the Faculty of Education’s Senior Safeguarding Lead along with 4 year service as a school governor. As part of his Teaching and Learning Fellowship at Edge Hill, I have focused on improving support for neurodivergent students, promoting a proactive, equitable, and research‑informed culture across the institution. My latest research also explores how neurodiverse trainees and mentors can implement meaningful adjustments aligned within Early Career Teachers. This coincides with real‑world practice

through a published peer reviewed book chapter on ‘photo‑elicitation methods in researching disability in physical education

My role in supporting the network is to enhance the employee experience for colleagues who are navigating neurodivergent or special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) pathways within their families. I recognise that these responsibilities can be both emotionally and logistically challenging, especially alongside work commitments. The group aims to create a supportive and understanding environment where staff feel comfortable sharing their experiences without fear of judgment. I want to ensure that colleagues feel valued, supported, and better equipped to manage these journeys both personally and professionally. Aisling Barker – External Charters Manager 

What are the factors surrounding children requiring assessments and support?  

Colleagues have shared that they have encountered unhelpful and, at times, offensive comments regarding the perceived increase in neurodivergence. These conversations have included remarks such as “everyone thinks they’re neurodivergent” and “everyone is a bit autistic.” 

The information below outlines several factors that have contributed to more people seeking and receiving neurodivergent diagnoses. 

The Emotional Landscape for Families Navigating SEND Pathways

A Closing Reflection  

The creation of the Parents and Carers of Neurodivergent/SEND Children Staff Network marks an important step in ensuring that colleagues who are supporting children through neurodivergent or SEND pathways feel recognised, understood, and less alone. The experiences shared by staff underline just how complex, emotional, and often overwhelming these journeys can be—yet they also highlight the strength, determination, and hope that so many parents and carers carry with them. 

By bringing people together in an open, non‑judgemental space, the network aims to foster connection, compassion, and practical support grounded in both lived experience and professional insight. As the group grows, its direction will be shaped collaboratively, ensuring that it remains responsive, meaningful, and truly reflective of the community it represents. 

Ultimately, this network is about more than sharing challenges—it is about building confidence, reducing isolation, and empowering colleagues to navigate SEND and neurodivergent pathways with greater clarity and support. We look forward to  meeting you and seeing the positive impact this community will create, both for staff and for the families they care for. 

Contact me

If you’d like to discuss this blog further, please email me

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Written by Helen Briscoe

Types of body doubling?

You may be aware of this practice even if you are not familiar with the term ‘body doubling’, some examples include:

• Study groups – the opportunity to work independently but situated within a wider group is a common and effective study technique
• Writing retreats – authors whether new, or established, use retreats where they work alone but in the presence of others to jumpstart their productivity or move past writers block
• Running groups – any form of exercise that can be done in groups, helps members to stay motivated, and can distract from the mental challenge of undertaking it alone

The science behind body doubling

Moving from being independent individuals to working in group situations is not a new idea, in fact it is well established in child psychology. Developmental psychology notes a specific period of a child’s life where they move from solitary play to playing in parallel with other children – often on separate activities.

This concept of parallel play has started to gain traction as a tactic used now by adults who engage in independent activities but are close to friends or loved ones whilst doing so. It enables a happy medium between social interaction and alone time. While the idea of ‘parallel play’ among adults often focuses on leisure activities and hobbies, it is also incredibly effective for work and study, where it is more commonly referred to as ‘body doubling’.

Body doubling and neurodiversity

Body doubling as a practice originally emerged from self-help strategies employed by neurodiverse people to stay motivated when faced with frustrating or boring jobs (Villines, 2024). However, it is now recognised as an effective accountability technique for a range of tasks, including exercising, undertaking household tasks, and studying.

It is so popular as a strategy for people with ADHD that TikTok (#ADHDtok) has a whole category dedicated to content sharing hacks like this (#ADHDhacks #BodyDoubling). Instagram also offers many accounts to support body doubling, including options to join Instagram Live study with me sessions while you work or study.

Body doubling as a study strategy

As a student, you can use the strategy of body doubling to increase motivation and accountability, as well as reducing distraction and procrastination. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t underpin these ideas with evidence! So …

• Many people have naturally employed this strategy for years without realising that it even has a name (Eagle, Baltaxe-Admony and Ringland, 2024).
• Recent research by Danvers and Wells (2025) identified that when students work in close proximity to others, it increases their feelings of accountability, therefore making their study time more productive.
• Importantly, they do not need to be undertaking the same tasks, or even aware of what the other person is doing for this technique to be effective (Eagle, Baltaxe-Admony and Ringland, 2023).
• While this technique appears to be effective anywhere, university students often choose space on campus rather than their home for more focussed study, finding that presence of others nearby has a positive impact upon keeping them motivated (Danvers and Wells, 2025).

Ready to give body doubling a go? 

Body doubling is something you can do physically, or virtually, alongside strangers, or with people you know. Why not try one of the following strategies to see if it helps you to study?

1. Gather a group of friends and book a shared study space in Catalyst
2. Hang out in a local coffee shop where other people are also working
3. Join an online body doubling live-stream session
4. Hang out in the fab new Students’ Union building where there are plenty of spaces to study as well as relax

The benefits of body doubling

The benefits of trying body doubling as a study strategy is that it offers flexibility to find out what works best for you. Whether that is the opportunity to work in companionable silence with friends, immersing yourself in the background buzz of a coffee shop, or just finding increased motivation by being near others who are working.

Have you already tried any of these strategies? Did they work for you? Any other recommendations? Feel free to share your experiences and tips with us @EHULibrary

Read more about body doubling 

DANVERS, E. and WELLS, A., 2025. The homeification of learning in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development [online]. 44 (1), pp. 33-48. Available from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07294360.2024.2429441

EAGLE, T., BALTAXE-ADMONY, L. B. and RINGLAND, K. E., 2023. Proposing Body Doubling as a Continuum of Space/Time and Mutuality: An Investigation with Neurodivergent Participants. In: ASSETS ’23: Proceedings of the 25^th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 22-25 October 2023, New York, NY [online]. Article No: 85, pp. 1-4. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3597638.3614486

EAGLE, T., BALTAXE-ADMONY, L. B. and RINGLAND, K. E., 2024. “It Was Something I Naturally Found Worked and Heard About Later”: An Investigation of Body Doubling with Neurodivergent Participants. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing [online]. 17 (3), pp.1-30. Available from: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3689648

VILLINES, Z., 2024. What is ‘body doubling’ for ADHD? [online]. Available from: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/body-doubling-adhd

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If you are keen to know more about the event, the idea and the SpLD team, explore the blogs from our recent events and our webpages:

Embrace, Support, Empower (Ormskirk October 2025)

Embrace Support Empower (Joining the dots April 2025)

Embrace Support Empower (Manchester January 2025)

What to expect on the day:

• Introduction to Specific Learning Difficulties and Assistive Technologies 11-12
• Drop in over lunch time 12-1
• Introduction to Specific Learning Difficulties and Assistive Technologies 1-2
• Drop in 2-3

You don’t have to book the sessions to attend – just turn up ?

Ellie is looking forward to engaging with you in classroom two – stop by or tune in on Instagram @EHULibrary

We have a variety of digital resources that you may find helpful if you are not around or available on the day of the event:

• Assistive and Accessibility Technologies toolkit 
• ADHD toolkit
• Dyslexia toolkit
• Neurodiversity/Neurodivergence toolkit
• Dyspraxia toolkit

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It’s almost that time of year again! We’re looking forward to our third year of running this awareness and celebration event for staff and students.  

This year, you’ll notice some familiar activities and content themes but with some special guest appearances and the return of the brains…? Not only this but we will also have an interactive drop in on the ground floor of Catalyst every day from 10am-2pm so please come along to engage with colleagues, peers and friends. There will be opportunities to listen to words of wisdom, share your own and show us your brain – no surgical procedures or tools will be used, provided or encouraged in the delivery of this activity…

What’s on: 

On Wednesday 22 October our SU Disability Officer, Sam Wood is talking to his experiences and offering students a chance to ask questions and find out more about the support the Student Union can offer. Sam’s rich experience will no doubt be enlightening, powerful and relatable – hopefully you’re as excited as we are.

Our colleague Leon Fraser will be available to speak with staff and students about the excellent work in the department to support neurodiverse learners including personalised support, inclusive pedagogy, awareness-raising activities, and targeted employability programs.  This work has been complimented by our collaborations with school partners and mentors in this space.

To reintroduce Neurodiversity:  

If you’re a little late to the party, Neurodiversity is a movement, a community and a world where neurological differences are recognised. It’s a term to represent different thinking styles, ways of processing and communicating, to name a few. Neurodivergent or Neurodiverse is how some may describe themselves.  

We like to think we take a strength and person-centred approach to viewing and supporting our different thinkers…

But why are we still doing this event? Good question. The answer is simple. Brains ain’t going anywhere so neither are we ?  

We as humans are SO varied, so our message is embrace your variation, support yourself using the ways that suit you and others by learning and understanding, and let us empower you, empower yourself and those around you.  

Check out the portal if you want to meet with us directly or slide into our shared inbox if you want to talk shop.  

Direction of travel for us is to collaborate more and bring all the wonderful work across the university, together using our events and the connections we make during the events, as the glue. Not only this but we work all year round on educating ourselves to do better for our staff and for students.  

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Hello and a warm welcome to the final UniSkills Focus On… blog of the academic year. In this edition we will be exploring Times Higher Education.

What does Times Higher Education offer? 

Times Higher Education is a publication and website with a focus on the news and issues affecting higher education. Times Higher Education includes a number of different sections:

• News: where you can read the latest news and analysis about issues affecting higher education in the UK and worldwide
• Rankings: contains the most comprehensive university rankings in the world, including World Rankings, Impact Rankings, rankings by subject, rankings for different regions of the world and Reputation Rankings  
• Campus: has a wealth of information and advice on academic careers, whether that be in teaching or research
• Events: contains details of the events that Times Higher Education organises
• Student: aims to support students throughout their academic journey, from application to graduation and beyond with information on preparing for university, student finance, accommodation, applying to university, how to study abroad, the best universities, as well as guides about different subjects
• Jobs: has job adverts from universities all over the world, for a variety of different posts

What are the benefits of using Times Higher Education? 

• Times Higher Education is a useful source of information for any student who wants to keep up to date with the latest news about higher education
• If you are interested in working in higher education after graduation there is information on the careers available, and you can explore the types of jobs on offer
• There is a large range of information for students about student life, on the best universities by geography and subject and guides to different subjects, what is involved in their study and what kinds of jobs are open to you.
• If you are interested in further study THE Student will have a lot of valuable information for you

How to access Times Higher Education

There several ways to access Times Higher Education:

• You can click on the many links in this blog
• You can go to the Journals and Databases tab in the Subject Resources webpages for Teacher Training and Education
• You can download an app from your app store (iOS, Android and Kindle Fire) to read Times Higher Education on the go

You will need to register with your Edge Hill University email address, but once you’ve done that you will be able to access all the content in Times Higher Education.

Further Help and Support   

Remember, if you need any further help or support finding, accessing, or getting the most out of your resources head over to the UniSkills web pages. From here you can access lots more information, toolkits and video tutorials, book on a UniSkills Workshop and even book a one-to-one appointment. 

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Times Higher Education and enjoy the rest of your summer break.

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What do DOAB and DOAJ offer? 

Both DOAB and DOAJ contain sources that are open access. This means that they are free and open for anyone to use and do not have any subscription charges. They are covered by Creative Commons licenses, meaning that you are free to use the material you find, as long as you reference it in your work.

DOAB has over 94,000 academic peer reviewed books and DOAJ has over 21,500 academic peer reviewed journals and over 11 million articles. DOAB and DOAJ cover every possible academic subject, including but not limited to:

• Arts
• Education
• Geography
• History
• Language
• Law
• Literature
• Medicine
• Music
• Philosophy
• Politics
• Psychology
• Religion
• Science
• Social Science
• Technology

What are the benefits of using DOAB and DOAJ? 

With the large range of subjects covered and the ease of access of the sources within DOAB and DOAJ, these two resources are useful for any student. They both have high quality, peer-reviewed academic sources, so you can be sure that the books and journals articles you find, and use meet the highest academic standards. Why not explore at DOAB and DOAJ and see what they can offer you?

How to access DOAB and DOAJ

There are a variety of different ways of accessing DOAB and DOAJ, including clicking on any of the links within this blog. You can also go to your Subject Resources webpage for your subject and under the Additional Resources tab, you will find links to each of these resources.

Further Help and Support   

Remember, if you need any further help or support finding, accessing, or getting the most out of your resources head over to the UniSkills web pages. From here you can access lots more information, toolkits and video tutorials, book on a UniSkills Workshop and even book a one-to-one appointment. 

We hope you’ve enjoyed our dive into DOAB and DOAJ. Please join us next time, when we will be exploring Times Higher Education.

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What does JSTOR offer? 

JSTOR is short for Journal Storage and is a large archive of over 12 million journals, books, images and primary sources across 75 academic disciplines. Breaking this number down further, JSTOR has over 2,800 academic journals, 158,000 book chapters and 2 million images.

The subjects covered by JSTOR are too many to list but include:

Area Studies

• African Studies
• American Studies
• Asian Studies
• British Studies
• European Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle East Studies
• Slavic Studies

Arts

• Art and Art History
• Music
• Performing Arts

Business and Economics

• Business Development Studies
• Economics
• Finance
• Labour Relations
• Management and Organisational Behaviour
• Marketing and Advertising

History

Humanities

• Film Studies
• Language and Literature
• Philosophy
• Religion

Law

• Criminology and Criminal Justice

Medicine and Allied Health

• Health Policy
• Health Science
• Public Health

Science and Mathematic

• Biological Sciences
• Botany and Plant Sciences
• Chemistry
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Environmental Science
• Geology
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Statistics
• Technology
• Zoology

What are the benefits of using JSTOR? 

As JSTOR is primarily an archive the majority of the journals and books are a minimum of 3-5 years old, so it isn’t a database for the latest cutting-edge research. Some of your subjects require information that is fairly recent, whereas older sources are acceptable in other disciplines. The depth and breadth of the subjects covered means that JSTOR is useful for a large number of students on many different courses, including English, History, Social Sciences and Education.

How to access JSTOR

There are, of course, many links to JSTOR in this piece that you can click on. However, another way to access JSTOR is to go the Subject Resources webpages for English and Creative Writing, History, Media, Music, Performing Arts, and Teacher Training and Education. On each of these pages, in the Journals and Databases tab, you will find a link to JSTOR.

Further Help and Support   

Remember, if you need any further help or support finding, accessing, or getting the most out of your resources head over to the UniSkills web pages. From here you can access lots more information, toolkits and video tutorials, book on a UniSkills Workshop and even book a one-to-one appointment.  We hope you have enjoyed this post about JSTOR. If so, please join us next month, where we will be exploring the Directory of Open Access Book (DOAB) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

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What does Box of Broadcasts offer? 

Box of Broadcasts, or BoB as it is often called, is a huge archive of radio and TV programmes. It is produced by Learning on Screen, a charity which promotes the use of audio-visual material in education and research, and it contains over 2.2 million radio and TV programmes from over 75 free to air channels.

The television channels include:

• BBC channels: BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC News, BBC Parliament and the regional BBC Channels.
• ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4
• Channel4, E4, More4, Film4
• Channel5, 5Star and 5USA
• Sky News, CNN, GB News and Aljazeera
• Foreign language channels, including France24, 3Sat, Arte, Tagesschau24, and RAI News 24

The radio stations include:

• The BBC national stations: Radio1, Radio2, Radio3, Radio4, Radio4 Extra, Radio5 Live, Radio5 LiveSports Extra, 6 Music, Asian Network, BBC World Service
• The main BBC regional stations: Radio Scotland, Radio Ulster, Radio Wales, plus Radio Cymru and Radio Nan Gàidheal
• TalkSport, Classic FM

What are the benefits of using Box of Broadcasts? 

If you think of the wide range of subjects covered by all the radio and TV programmes that are broadcast, you can easily recognise that BoB is potentially of use for all academic subjects, including health, education, the sciences, business, the arts, literature, media and more! Obviously, a large number of programmes are made purely for entertainment value, but even these have an academic aspect you may not have thought of.

Research has also shown that leisure activities can have a positive influence on academic study by reducing feelings of stress and improving your mental health and emotional well-being. It’s also important to take a break when studying to help your concentration and stop you feeling tired. What better way to unwind than watching your favourite TV show on BoB?

BoB also has some great features that are really useful:

• You can watch or listen on a PC, Mac, phone or tablet
• There is a programme guide, and you can request that a programme be recorded
• You can create clips of programmes and can preview these before saving them
• You can create playlists of useful or your most liked programmes

How to access Box of Broadcasts 

If you go to the Subject Resources webpages for your subject, access the Additional Resources tab you will find the link to BoB in this list of resources. Of course, there are also lots of links to BoB in this blog post and you can click on any of these to go direct to the BoB homepage right now.

Further Help and Support   

Remember, if you need any further help or support finding, accessing, or getting the most out of your resources head over to the UniSkills web pages. From here you can access lots more information, toolkits and video tutorials, book on a UniSkills Workshop and even book a one-to-one appointment.    

Join us next time on the UniSkills Focus On… blog, when we will be discussing the benefits and features of a database called JSTOR.

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What does Statista offer?

Statista is a platform that analyses data and statistics from over 22,000 sources on over 80,000 topics. Statista takes this data and transforms it into charts, infographics, and reports, making it easier to interpret and use.

The sources that Statista uses include:

• Market research reports
• Government and official organisations
• Company financial reports
• Surveys and polls
• Industry publications

Statista covers a broad range of sectors and industries, including:

• Finance and Economics
• Technology and Telecommunications
• Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals
• Media and Advertising
• Consumer Goods and Retail
• Energy and Environment
• Transportation and Logistics
• Sports and Entertainment

What are the benefits of using Statista?

With its wealth of economic information through consumer and market insights, industry reports and company and country profiles, Statista is a great resource for students on Business related courses. You can explore trends, forecasts, in-depth market analysis and economic data on countries and companies all over the world.

However, Statista covers much more than Business and Economics. Statista also covers public opinion surveys and demographic trends that may be useful for Social Science students; the in-depth public health data will be invaluable if you’re studying Health and Medicine; if you’re interested in Technology and Engineering, Statista has information on areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) trends and the adoption rates of various technologies; there’s also a lot of data on climate change, energy consumption and sustainability that make Statista essential if your course includes Environmental studies.

Statista offers data in a range of easy-to-read graphs and charts which make it much simpler to interpret data and statistics. The range of subjects included in Statista and the depth of information it contains means that Statista is an essential resource for a wide range of students.

How to access Statista

There are many links throughout this post you can click on for access to Statista. The main way of accessing Statista, however, is to go the Subject Resources webpage for your subject, click on the Additional Resources tab and you will find the link in the list of resources displayed.

Further Help and Support  

Remember, if you need any further help or support finding, accessing, or getting the most out of your resources head over to the UniSkills web pages. From here you can access lots more information, toolkits and video tutorials, book on a UniSkills Workshop and even book a one-to-one appointment.   

Don’t forget to join us next time, when we will be exploring Box of Broadcasts.

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It’s time for a round up but by no means, is this the end of our work, learning, raising awareness or initiating conversations about Neurodiversity.  

During our time developing our awareness events (since October 2023) we have developed a suite of self-serving resources (due to be updated again Summer 2025) to inform and educate around some topics falling within the Neurodiverse world. You can engage with these toolkits (as well as other wonderful toolkits) through our webpages.  

• SPLD Toolkits 
• UniSkills Toolkits

Social Awareness

If you engaged with the social media content (still available on Instagram – Neurodiversity Celebration Week 25 – Embrace Support Empower 2024) or attended any of the workshops or activities, you will remember the variety of content including information sessions, guest speakers and polls. We were so thrilled to receive great feedback and engagement however we still have room to grow.

Over this period, we have seen the development of the Neurodiversity network and continue to reflect on Inclusive teaching, learning and support related practice and the growth of our Staff Accessibility network. Not only this, work continues within wider university networks of advocates to further improve student journeys.  

Each of these things are a branch on the tree, a puzzle piece, a line and dots on the journey to improved inclusive practice and positive outcomes for students and staff experiences at EHU.  

Neurodiversity Events

During our events, our main focus has been to start or continue conversations. Not only around what neurodiversity is but also to discuss brains in general and what we all need as individuals, to function and thrive.  

During our October and January events, we wanted to give students and staff an opportunity to share whatever words that came to mind when discussing learning, cognitive and sensory needs. In October 2023, this was ‘Step into Study Skills’ and in October 2024 this was ‘Show us Your brain’ (this activity was repeated at St James’ in January and during World Mental health day events with Student Life colleagues). Colleagues were blown away by the engagement and it was not only a chance to share strategies about approaching university life but also one to spread positive and spirit lifting words to staff and students.  

This included contributions to the ‘Positivitrees’ in the form of paper labels completed by those engaging in the activity and speaking with the SpLD team. We have been loving reading them all and thought we’d share some.

We’re not crying, you are!

Not only do these words highlight who is providing support but also reminds us of how great you all are.

If you’re interested in attending (and want to request to participate in anything specific) or collaborating with us for events in 2025/2026 – email us.

We’re looking forward to developing the next event and engaging with you when you join us 🙂

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