We would like to invite you to a consultation meeting about a new project we are developing at the University of Lincoln to help school recognise and respond to the needs of children with SEND (diagnosed and undiagnosed). 

We are aiming to adapt an existing tool for assessing and highlighting a person’s cognitive strengths and areas for development, to make it fit for use in a school setting to improve understanding of individual needs amongst staff who support these pupils.

This tool is called the Cognitive Daisy, which is a visual tool for describing a person’s cognitive strengths and areas of difficulty for use in providing care and support for that person. The original project has been developed in the context of supporting adults with dementia and neurological conditions and is aimed at those caring for people living with cognitive decline. It provides a way of consistently mapping and communicating areas where that person may need additional help and assists when there are lots of different individuals involved in the person’s care, as not all may be familiar with their cognitive needs. Once a brief assessment is done (by non-experts), the petals on the daisy are displayed visually to indicate which aspects of cognition the person may need extra support with. The project website with more detail about the tool and its application is here: http://www.cognitivedaisy.co.uk/

This project plans to adapt the Cognitive Daisy for use in schools. Research into support for children with neurodevelopmental disorders suggests that there may be considerable overlap in the needs between the two groups (older adults with neurological impairment, and children with SEND) in terms of relatively limited understanding about individual needs, and a tendency to assume all individuals with the same condition have the same cognitive deficits (i.e. all children with Dyslexia experience the same challenges). 

We are currently in the planning phase, and we would like teaching staff involved in the coordination or management of SEND or pastoral support across primary and secondary settings to input thought and ideas about the feasibility and usefulness of this tool in your work. This does not commit you to being involved in the project or the pilot scheme that we intend to run, but we would greatly appreciate your time at this stage to help us identify and address any key issues.

The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 12th July at 4pm on Teams. It will start with a 10-15 min presentation from the Cognitive Daisy Project lead about the tool and how it has been developed and used to improve care for older adults. We will then outline our proposal for adapting this for use with children, to support the understanding and communication of a child’s needs in the classroom. 

Please RSVP Via this form link: https://forms.office.com/r/sWcJRQep5u

We very much hope that you can join us and please do forward to interested colleagues too!

Dr Jessica Hodgson

Dr John Hudson

Dr Carol Callinan

Dr Rachael Sharpe