Your questions answered, Carrie and David Grant

Nuala McGovern: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to SEND In the Spotlight. First off, thank you for all the messages you have sent since we've started this podcast. You've helped us understand what is the most important things to discuss, and you've also created a community as we tried together to reimagine the SEND system, and you have sent us many, many questions.

So this week you are taking a starring role as we put some of those questions to a panel of experts. Now, they won't give you legal advice, but they will help you determine your rights and also what you are entitled to for your child.

So let me bring in my guests who are ready to go. Welcome back to Carrie and David Grant, BAFTA award-winning broadcasters and parents of four children with SEND. So full of advice with years of experiences. Perhaps I'll start with you, Carrie - when I talk about battles and breakthroughs, what comes to mind?

Carrie Grant: Battles and breakthroughs is really what our lives are about. And, and we want more breakthroughs than battles, but unfortunately for many SEND parents, it's more battling than breakthroughs. We need to change those ratios,

Nuala McGovern: David.

David Grant: Yeah. The, the battles tend to be that in the hierarchy of SEND parents and families sit very firmly at the bottom, and the battles are to raise us up the hierarchy because until we are raised up the hierarchy, nothing will be done that will actually meet the needs that we have.

Nuala McGovern: And of course, we're hearing all about those needs. I have with me Eleanor Wright, a solicitor with SOS!SEN. It's a charity which helps parents and families of children with SEND access their rights to an education.

Many parents, Eleanor, you know, they get in touch and they tell us. Trying to get those rights enforced takes them to breaking point.

And they often feel like the law is stacked against them. Would you say it is?

Eleanor Wright: Well, no it isn't. The interesting thing in terms of what you were saying about being at the bottom of the pile, is that the law puts the child right at the top of the pile, and the law is very much on the side of the child, and therefore that tends to mean on, um, on the side of the parent if they're acting in their child's interests. And there's really not a lot wrong with our current law except for the fact that it is far too often not complied with, which in turn is due to lack of funding. And one of the things which we are currently most almost obsessed about is trying to get the message out that it is actually quite easy to enforce a child's rights, basically through my favourite remedy of threatening judicial review. Um, which is surprisingly cheap because you will usually be able to enforce a claim in your child's name and get legal aid, and therefore, surprisingly easy because you can pass the buck to lawyers if you have to get that far. But very often just a threat of judicial review resolves a problem very quickly, and that's a message we really want to get out.

Nuala McGovern: And I have to say, I don't think I've heard the word easy that many times when it comes to getting action in some of these cases, so we're looking forward to speaking more with you about that too.

Now beside Eleanor is Kelly Mooney, and Kelly is an assistant head and SENDCO - Special Education Needs Coordinator - of a state primary school rated outstanding by Ofsted in four of the five categories with 25 years of experience working with children with SEND.

If I asked you for your everyday life and what you're up against, Kelly, how would you describe it?

Kelly Mooney: No two days are the same. I think that it's changed significantly in the time that I've worked as a teacher and as a SENDCO because the need has changed so much. I think that what I would want to do more is be hands-on with the children and in the classroom, and what I'm doing more is filling in forms and paperwork and or supporting parents who are at breaking point.

Because we're at the coalface and we're often the person that they are angry with sometimes, because we're the people that they have the most contact with. We really feel that relationships are at the core of how to get things right with children. So we don't have punitive punishment in our school. We have restorative conversations and we really try to understand what behaviour is showing us. We don't need labels. We look at what the need is and then respond to the need that we see.

Nuala McGovern: Interesting that you talk about labels, and we've had this conversation with Anna Maxwell Martin and Kellie Bright two of our regular contributors as well.

Um, I know your school is oversubscribed, but there are some parents as well that don't want the label or even need to be persuaded that their child has special [00:05:00] educational needs or disabilities.

Kelly Mooney: Yeah. I think that we have a really good reputation for inclusion in our school, and that's because we have a culture of inclusion and inclusive practice, and that's led from the top, from our head teacher, and it has to be.

I think that we've been innovative in our approach to what inclusion looks like in our school, but that's cost a lot of money. But because we've done it well, we've become a little bit of a magnet school for families. And I understand that I'm a mum myself, I understand why you would want that for your child.

Um, one of the challenges for us sometimes with some of our families is overcoming that stigma around SEN and oftentimes we might be the first professional that has spoken about our observations, and that's really hard.

Nuala McGovern: So very interesting as well. And echoing of course, when you talk about funding, uh, what Eleanor has just said.

But as I mentioned, the listener is taking a central role in this podcast today. I wanna get into some of the messages that have been coming in. Here is one for you, Kelly. A listener left us this voice note.

Clip: Hello, I'm Emily. How do I get the right support for my son who has high need, but who doesn't suffer from dysregulation in the same way as some other SEND children. For so much of his school career so far, I feel my son has been left to flounder a bit as he's not behaving in a difficult way. He sits quietly and struggles rather than being visibly upset or disruptive to other kids.

Nuala McGovern: Kelly.

Kelly Mooney: You know, I think there's, there's sometimes a misconception whereby children have to be failing before support is in place. And we've taken the approach where we want to help children to succeed. And I think in, in the case of, of the caller, there can be a position where the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the oil, and systems are forced sometimes to respond to the noise. But I think that you've got to look at the impact of, of the child's presentation, what's the impact?

Nuala McGovern: So for her, what would you advise her to do?

Kelly Mooney: Be open, have conversations with the teacher and with the SENDCO about the impact. Does she understand it? Is that impact on his relationships, on his self-confidence and his self-esteem, on his wellbeing? He might not be causing challenges within the classroom, but that doesn't mean that he's thriving. Children shouldn't just cope. They should thrive within our schools, and I think that's really important.

Nuala McGovern: Carrie.

Carrie Grant: I do think that whilst that child may not be the squeaky wheel now, eventually that child will become the squeaky wheel. And when those children that are a little bit more under the radar become the squeaky wheel, it might be later on in their school lives, it might be that there's self-harm, it might be there's eating, uh, irregularities. It might be that they have depression, and so those things come up maybe a little bit later on, but eventually they will become that squeaky wheel. And then we really do have a crisis, which is why I would really advocate for diagnosis.

And as much as people might hate labels, a label is only a problem if you have a problem with the label. I'm fabulously autistic and quite proud of it. But what I would say is that if I was struggling in school and someone noticed that I wasn't really playing with any of my friends at school, and my mum didn't want me to have a diagnosis, what that holds me back from that is all of those other traits that may be to come, and it would be so good if we could get early intervention on some of those other areas, and we're not gonna get that if we don't have the diagnosis.

Nuala McGovern: Eleanor.

Eleanor Wright: Well, it's interesting, I was talking about this just the other day in relation to a dyslexic child. I mean, there's not many children who only have dyslexia as an issue, but classically they do tend to be sitting quietly despairing in the back of the classroom and not including themselves on the teacher's attention.

But if you can see from the record that they are not making progress, then I would suggest that they should look quite seriously at asking for an assessment with a view to an EHCP. Um, you simply have to show that the child may have SEN and may need support over and above, well through EHCP, essentially.

And even if you don't end up getting an EHCP, simply having an assessment is going to be valuable in terms of getting advice on the help that child needs.

Nuala McGovern: Yes, indeed. Thank you very much for that message. I wanna turn to another one. This is Liz. She got in touch and the way to do it is email us send@bbc.co.uk and here's what she wanted to ask:

Clip: Hi there. We are very lucky that our 8-year-old son has lots of support in school, even before he had his official diagnosis of autism and ADHD. However, I want to be prepared for secondary school and would like to get him an EHCP plan in place. But the school and the SENDCO advice is because the school is meeting his needs at the moment, which I brilliantly agree with, they don't believe that we will be successful and are therefore not keen to support an application. They are saying that he's on the SEND register and that that will transfer with him when he goes to secondary school and should be enough to secure his needs, but I'm not sure I believe that and so I don’t know what my options are in terms of making sure that he gets continuity of care and provision. Be grateful for your views on how I do that.

Nuala McGovern: May I come to you, Eleanor?

Eleanor Wright: Yeah. Unfortunately, I'd agree that it is optimistic to assume that everything will be fine going to secondary school. It is such a big step, particularly for children with SEN. When you're moving from a nice, cosy, single classroom to a great big secondary school, moving between several classes, several teachers, new subjects, new people, it's potentially quite dangerous throwing them in without support. Um, it's maybe on the early side, but again, perhaps it's worth thinking about applying for an EHCP because I'm afraid it can be a slowish process. I mean, in theory it takes 20 weeks, but if you end up having to appeal, um…

Nuala McGovern: Everybody laughs…

Eleanor Wright: …more than once. We're looking at two years, three years. Yeah. And one very useful factor is that there has been case law reports saying that you should always be looking forward. It's not good enough to say they're fine. Now, if you know that next term, they're going to be in a whole different environment and they're going to need support, the law is sort of more or less on your side.

Nuala McGovern: Kelly?

Kelly Mooney: Yeah, I, I agree with Eleanor. I think, first of all, it's really lovely to hear that, that parents has recognised the good work that the school is doing and that the child is getting the right support within that setting.

But it can be so different in different settings. What is ordinarily available is not the same. There isn't a rule or a minimum expectation. So that school might be doing some really, really good things for that child. But it might mean that the secondary school have a completely different cohort and prioritize their provision in a completely different way, and he might be left out there. So I would agree. Parents can request an EHC and I would say to do that.

Nuala McGovern: So it's the education, health and care plan, EHCP that we speak about. Mm-hmm. Uh, David, when you're hearing from that mum, what have you seen children go through all various iterations?

David Grant: We've had four go through the whole thing, and I would say that Eleanor's advice is absolutely right. You have to get the EHCP in place before secondary school. And the reason I say that is because exactly as Kelly said, secondary school is a completely different, it's a different world. It's a big step up for SEN children. But let me tell you, if you don't have provision already in place, then it becomes much harder to get it much, much harder because the school are new to the child.

They may say, well, give us, give us a term. Give us two terms. Give us a year. You know, let's see what we can do, by which time damage is done. We have that same thing. It took us, it took us till the fourth child to get it right. You know, to not trust that things were just going to be okay and they’re not not okay because of any ill will. They're not okay because you are leaving an environment where people have spent six years getting to know your child and you are going into one where they have no idea who your child is. And by the time they know enough to be able to say either, yes, we'll support your child getting an EHCP or no we won't, damage has already been done.

Nuala McGovern: And you're already a fair way through that secondary school. And also, of course, it's not just the environment that's changing, the child is changing, it's going through puberty. Um, I wanna bring in an email. This is from Jen. Thanks for messaging us.

“How can we nationally make sure that people with lived experience of SEND parenting are better represented on boards of governors, and that our voices are heard?”

David Grant: This is what I, okay…

Carrie Grant: …you're a full-time carer and now you're gonna be on a board?? Part of us would love to do that, right? We would love that voice, but we also have to take into account that parents are on their knees, they've given up work, they're full-time carers, so showing up for another meeting is very difficult.

David Grant: Yes. I was gonna say, this actually speaks right into the heart of what I said at the beginning about the hierarchy. That actually, unless SEND children are in some way and families are in some way represented, then you have at very best, well-meaning guesswork. You don't have anybody who actually knows and understands experientially the needs and the requirements of the children and their families.

Nuala McGovern: I know you are on a number of boards, but you haven't either been school governors?

Carrie Grant: No, no. That would've been even more trauma for me, I think. Yeah.

Nuala McGovern: Okay. Yeah, I understand. Um, Eleanor, what about that?

Eleanor Wright: Yeah, well, I am a school governor and guess what? Unsurprisingly, I am the SEND governor, and they won't let me retire because they worried about finding somebody else.

Nuala McGovern: Really?

Eleanor Wright: It is an issue. And actually, I mean, if there are SEND parents out there who want to go on boards of governors, I would have thought that an awful lot of schools would welcome them with open arms because they want people with that expertise and that interest. And SENDCOs, a good SENDCO is happy to have someone on the board of governors that, you know, who's sort of working with them and supporting them.

Nuala McGovern: As a SENCO perspective – Kelly?

Kelly Mooney: Yeah, I mean we have really good representation on our governing body actually. Um, and I think that has been intentional, but again, it's the culture of leadership. I think inclusion starts with leadership, actually. It has to be driven by the leadership of the school, and governance is part of the leadership structure and it helps for those, those children's voices to be heard and those individuals’ voices to be heard.

Nuala McGovern: And maybe if they've gone through the system, or maybe if they're at a point with their children. Maybe their children are moved ahead to university and that they're able to offer that expertise and maybe it might give people some food for thought. Right. I wanna turn to Carmen, ‘a frustrated parent’ as she describes herself.

In December she wrote to us and she says,

“We have applied for an EHCP in year three and were declined. The school applied at the end of year four and it was declined again. I appealed. And the local authority, the LA has conceded. The SEND Tribunal has set out a timeline of 10 weeks for the LA to carry out the assessment and inform us if they will grant an EHCP.

That deadline was three weeks ago. I've contacted the LA and they've informed me that they cannot meet the deadline and I can submit a complaint. I've also contacted the tribunal helpline and they advised to contact the tribunal via email. I'm hoping you can research this and advise us parents what to do in these circumstances, we're not in a fortunate position to pay for a solicitor.”

Eleanor?

Eleanor Wright: Well, this is sort of issue we are dealing with an awful lot. Um, I think firstly, don't go to the tribunal because they don't have any jurisdiction to enforce their own orders, which is a bit peculiar, but there it is.

You could complain. The problem with that is it's a very, very slow process. Um. This is classically one for my favourite remedy, of threatening judicial review. I mean, we tend to say write directly to the local authority first saying this is an absolute duty, which it is, it's statutory, it's not just the tribunals taking 10 weeks out of the air, um, produce this EHCP or else reluctantly, I will have to enforce my child's rights through judicial review.

And sometimes the fact that you show that you know how to enforce your child's rights can wake them up. If that doesn't work, you have to have what's called a pre-action letter done, it's a protocol that requires it, and you really do need someone to write that who knows what they're doing. Please don't use AI. I have seen such awful pre-action letters written through AI, and I'm afraid, yep, solicitors will be expensive. There are some charities who do them, including ours.

We are classically doing them, particularly with these time limit issues and because local authorities know they have no defence, they dare not risk you taking them to court because they would end up having to pay your costs. Um, we find that 90% of the time they give in, in the unlikely event you did have to take them to court. As I mentioned, you would, you are enforcing your child's rights, so you would get legal aid in your child's name, so you know people who worry about the cost of going to court, it shouldn't be an issue and that’s another factor in making local authorities give in because they know you don't have that financial barrier.

Nuala McGovern: And those letters are called PAPs that you say, do not write yourself. Um, need to give a little update actually to Carmen because since that initial email, we've been in touch with her and she said she's had a response to her complaint to the local authority and that her son will have an educational psychologist assigned by the end of February this year. So things are moving. Go ahead, Eleanor.

Eleanor Wright: That should all have been done ages ago. That's just not acceptable.

Nuala McGovern: So what would you say that she should do?

Eleanor Wright: Well, what we do, I mean, there is an issue through the country though, of educational psychology advice, but we don't think it's necessarily as bad as local authorities say, and we tend to send a letter that says, well, okay, we recognize we don't want you to make a decision without getting this advice, so what we want to hear from you is that you've instructed an ed psych that they will come and report within six weeks and you will make a decision shortly after that. You know, if they're not going to even start assessing till the end, you're going to the summer.

Carrie Grant: Yeah. It's more jumping through hoops for parents. It's more kicking the can down the roads. Parents are on their knees.

Eleanor Wright: Exactly.

Nuala McGovern: Kelly, how would you describe what the educational psychologist is doing or, or what that assessment might be.

Kelly Mooney: For my school, the educational psychologist is involved at the point of us making a referral and making a request. We often ensure that a child has been assessed by an educational psychologist before we put an education health and care needs assessment.

Nuala McGovern: And what do they do? The psychologist.

Kelly Mooney: We have a wonderful educational psychologist at our school who will observe the child, she'll observe the child in different contexts as well. So she's looking at the social interactions, how they are at playtime, how they are with friends, not just whether they can access maths and literacy. Um, so she'll look at the rounded picture of what need looks like for them, meet with parents, meet with teachers, and then write a report with recommendations about what support should look like.

Nuala McGovern: Okay, here's one for all of us. Let us listen.

Clip: Hi, I'm Claire. We are currently in the midst of our second round of school refusal and my 14-year-old daughter, she's managed about three, four handful of mornings since October half term. There's no guidance, no help, no alternative provision of education, and we're told it's not the teacher's job to send work home. And I get that, they have enough to do.

But what are the other options? What are the options left for us? The school are trying to make accommodations, but the school environment, the one my daughter is terrified of, is not gonna change. My daughter is desperately wanting to get her GCSEs in 18 months time, but who's going to teach her? I work full time and even if I didn't, how am I supposed to teach 10 GCSE subjects? So what is left for us?

Nuala McGovern: Carrie or David, you've had children that were out of school for years.

Carrie Grant: Exactly, exactly. That story,

David Grant: That situation. Yep.

Carrie Grant: And this is where I fought for the higher hours on the EHCP, because that provided my child with a TA. That was my first win.

Nuala McGovern: So teaching assistant

Carrie Grant: A teaching assistant just for that child. And then in the EHCP. We said please could that child have a catch up session? So if they weren't able to get until midday, let's say then that TA would've sat through all their classes and because my child was actually quite intelligent and able to take on stuff quickly, she would then catch up all the stuff that my child had missed.

Really, really good, and then an amazing SEND officer at my local authority did the complete unexpected and fought for us to have that TA come to the house when our child was not able to get out of the house in the morning. And that really transformed my child's education. In fact, knowing that a TA would come to the house and do that individual one-to-one teaching in the home setting meant that my child got into school more.

Carrie Grant: It's 'cause it lowered the anxiety and if you lower the anxiety, the toleration levels go up and demands can be made. They're more easy. So that was our story. But we here, David and I, in our support group, hear this story. This is such a common story.

Nuala McGovern: Yeah. And that's why we want to bring it here. Kelly?

Kelly Mooney: Has there been an unpicking of what the barriers are to them getting into school? Is it anxiety? Is it trauma? Is it that they are conscious of their differences and they are conscious of how they're perceived? Is it about, you know, relationships with peers and what can we do proactively to overcome that?

If a member of staff at our school has been off, we offer them a phased return into work. We don't expect them to just come straight back in and get straight back into it. You know, we think about adult's wellbeing, but in these situations we've really got to look at the child's wellbeing and what they need.

David Grant: And this is why I hate it being characterized as a school refusal.

Nuala McGovern: It's quite a, a strong term, isn't it?

David Grant: It really is because it suggests that the school is fine and it's the child that has the issue. If somebody said there is danger down that road and you chose not to walk down it, but walked down a different road, it wouldn't be called road refusal, it would be called common sense! These kids know they're not safe in that environment. So they don't want to go into that environment and then it's characterized that they're the problem. When, when reasonable adjustments ought to be made so that the environment is no longer a danger to them.

Nuala McGovern: Very briefly, Eleanor?

Eleanor Wright: The, the name nowadays is EBSA, Emotionally Based School Avoidance. Um, I think, well if that child hasn't got an EHCP you should apply because that might bring things like key worker support or somewhere they can place a safety within the school, etcetera. Um, but if you can get evidence that backs up that they cannot be in school essentially for mental health reasons - you are in quite a strong position to push for home tuition. Sometimes known as EOTAS - education other than at school. And also, if your child has got an EHCP, the local authority still has a duty to deliver as much as they sensibly can from that EHCP within the home. So again, you can ask for that and you can enforce it if need be.

Nuala McGovern: Thanks so much to all of you for writing in and for lending your voice also to this programme, of course, to my panel of experts for offering some possible options and ideas and hopefully some inspiration on, on the ways forward.

I do want to say there are many organizations that offer free impartial advice about the SEND system and each local authority in England has a SENDIASS service, so that's S-E-N-D-I-A-S-S, which stands for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information, Advice and Support Service. Uh, the advice service in Scotland is called Enquire, with an E, and in Northern Ireland and in Wales, there are Children's Commissioners that deal with those issues.

We've been seeing more speculation in the newspapers about what might be in the Schools White Paper that is the government's reforms to what they call the broken SEND system. Now, let me give you a few examples.

The I paper says ‘Four different support tiers for SEND children’ A few days later, it had ‘Parents of SEND children faced being blocked from EHCP appeals’, uh, to the Financial Times - their headline was ‘Ministers set to Delay Key Elements of Special Needs Education Reforms until next Parliament’. Who'd like to jump in on any of those headlines or your feelings when you see them? Eleanor?

Eleanor Wright: What I read was that it was specifically looking at the appeal against refusal to assess that they want to take away, which is the first part of the process, and that makes no sense at all - Why would you want to stop children accessing an assessment? It doesn't even commit them to issuing the EHCP. But if you have had an assessment and you therefore know more about the child's needs, how can that be harmful? Um, and they have to be aware that if a child is blocked from even getting onto the first rung of the ladder for an EHCP through the tribunal, it may be that people, like my colleagues are going to be taking them to court, which is going to be much more expensive.

Nuala McGovern: I should say the Department for Education has said “We do not comment on speculation”. But in the past few days, the government has made it known that they want suspensions to stay in school rather than sending pupils home if they're suspended, and that this will be in the school's white paper. I'd be curious for your thoughts, Kelly, on the coal face or the chalk face?

Kelly Mooney: I mean, you know, I can completely understand some of the rationale behind that. You know, children are safe if we know where they are. They have an opportunity to access education if they're in school, but I think because of all of the financial constraints that schools are under at the moment and the budget cuts, you know, my school is in a huge deficit and we're having to make really difficult decisions about staffing, our leadership team are in classes now, you know? Who is going to be the person looking after that child? If they're kept in school, is it going to be our office staff or caretaker? You know…

Nuala McGovern: The real practical day to day, what happens?

Eleanor Wright: They're not gonna catch up on their education.

Carrie Grant: No. And there is a lot more nuance to this story, I think, because there are parents who would say, stop sending my child home, keep them in school. And that's fair enough. But we also have to consider that 45% of those children that are suspended have SEND. So are we then saying, finally this child that's been under the radar has put their head above the parapet and caused something, some ruckus to happen, they are then going to be punished for the very thing that their parents have been crying out for help for for years? So I think that I hate this punitive system. There has to be a gentler way of doing this.

Nuala McGovern: I believe with those that have violence against a child or an adult, I think the most serious cases will still be out of school suspensions.

Um, I was surprised actually to read some of the figures when it came as primary school, as well as secondary school. And the majority was for disruptive, uh, continued disruptive, uh, behaviour. The government has previously told us at SEND in the Spotlight, that for too long families have been failed by the SEND system.

They acknowledge parents across the country are forced to fight for every scrap of support, and that rising demand means children's needs are spiralling to crisis point, and hence, of course, the need for the Schools White Paper, which we will discuss when it comes.

Now, if you want to put your child in the spotlight for an achievement, big or small what you need to do is email us, send@bbc.co.uk and this week it is the turn of 11-year-old Amaya from Norfolk. Her mum Colette got in touch because she wanted to celebrate her daughter's environmental actions on the beach near her home.

Clip: Mother: What you doing on the beach?

Amaya: Picking rubbish.

Mother: And what kind of rubbish do you find when you go on the beach?

Amaya: Socks. Wipes. Pants.

Mother: And do you think it's important to clean the beach?

Amaya: Yeah, because the animals can get injured. I am Amaya, age 11.

Mother: I'm Colette, Amaya’s mum. Amaya was diagnosed with autism sensory processing and Ehler-Danlos syndrome when she was five.

Mother: And was it this beach you found an injured animal?

Amaya: Yes. It was a seal that was injured, so we rang Sea Life to come to help it.

Mother: Since she was the age of five, she saw a seal that'd been deceased on the beach with a ring around his neck. This upset her 'cause she couldn't understand why she'd picked up rubbish and other people couldn't. So she made a poster and we sent it to the mayor of Hunstanton. The mayor loved it that much that he had it made into a postcard and the mayor donated the money from the postcards to Sea Life, making over 500 pounds. Since then Amaya does daily beach cleans with us, but she also helps Norfolk beach clean by running their beach cleans once a month, getting people from the local community involved in this.

Mother: Do you think other people should be looking after the beach?

Amaya: Yes.

Mother: And what, how do you make other people look after the beach?

Amaya: Beach cleans every month.

Mother: And do you get lots of people that come to them?

Amaya: Yes.

Mother: And do you pick, do you pick up lots of rubbish that when you're doing the beach cleans?

Amaya: Yes.

Mother: After that, Amaya wanted to carry on further, so she wrote and illustrated her first book when she was eight about saving sea animals and all the different ways that the pollution in the sea, can hurt them. This got published and she donated the money to charity. Since then, she's had six other books published, all about saving different sea animals, and Amaya loves being on the beach and she loves raising money for charities. So each book that she donates, she gives money to a different charity.

Mother: And what are your books about?

Amaya: Seals, jellyfish, sharks, hedgehogs.

Mother; And who's the main character in your book?

Amaya: Boo.

Mother: And who's, who is Boo?

Amaya: My assistance dog.

Mother: And do you think that everyone should do their part to help?

Amaya: Yes.

Amaya and Mother: Thanks for listening. It's a goodbye for me and a goodbye for me.

Nuala McGovern: That is all for this episode, but do make sure you tune in next week when we will be talking about school transport for children with SEND, and it is a…

ALL: Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Nuala McGovern: From all of us.