Hello my name is Karen Guldberg and I'm Professor in Autism Studies at the University of Birmingham.
I'm also Director of the Autism Centre for Education and Research. We've undertaken
research looking at the experience of parents of autistic children during lockdown
and we've created a series of short films. The first topic we explore is best practice.
Can you tell me what it was like for you as a family in that first period of lockdown and and
how did school support you? At lunchtime I suppose on that day I received a message saying that his
school was going to close that day so when he got home from school it was this is it then. The
first thing that was particularly hard about that was a lack of information about what COVID was
um in in a way that I would be able to explain to him. All sorts of um visuals and ways of
explaining what what COVID was became available as the time went on at that particular point in time
I would say there was a lack of information a lack of preparation. They were in regular contact
during the lockdown very good communication and support but before not a lot because I don't think
they really knew what was happening themselves the teacher was saying we may be going into lockdown
or we may not they really didn't know day by day. Well the problem became where there was
no interaction from his class teacher so it went from him seeing her you know five days a week to
him not seeing or hearing so even the online work that was provided her face wasn't present
so it was just a screen with the mouse moving around which for him it didn't work at all.
The teacher was really good he'd film little videos of what he was doing and he'd post them
and he don't you know he checked with me in advance he'd say would it help her if
she knew what I was doing that I'm okay that I'm up to this yeah and she could just see actually
everyone is okay it was all by email and it was just um a lot of it was positive encouragement
activities getting people to join um do activities posting pictures and the school work of course
and just regular communication really saying what facilities
were available every day there'd be a the day's lesson online.
and there was that was linked into those YouTube resources and I believe they had
some educational websites that weren't normally available as well. The way the work was presented
was really beneficial to him so he was getting some quite clear concrete descriptions of what
he needed to do and it was all visually supported and the tasks were broken down
as opposed to a lot of verbal instructions. Over lockdown we had very little contact from school
so we only really had initially sort of the normal check-ins they were doing with all the students.
So they they phoned once to talk to us see how she was and at that point she was fine because
she wasn't having to go to school and it was a big relief to her to not have to go to school.
One of the things we noticed was that everything they were setting all of the work on their school
website and everything was quite one size fits all and none of it really fitted her
the other thing that was quite difficult was a lot of it was focused on probably things that were
easier for them to set and monitor remotely like spellings and times tables and things like that
handwriting exercises which unfortunately were all the things she really hates about school
and doesn't want to do. Contact with the family liaison was nice because she wasn't just checking
on the kids she was checking on all of us they were checking we could get adequate food they were
checking you know we weren't short of anything we weren't struggling so that was really nice to have
that. They were there 24 7 almost just if you had a message you got an answer almost straight back.
In terms of school we had a phone call a day which I understand because he has an EHC plan
so I understand they were duty found to give us that phone call um did I find them productive
no did they offer support no they let they listened I would tell them the same story
things are really bad and it would be I will phone you tomorrow and that's all it was.
Though don't get me wrong I spoke to his pastoral manager a few times and she's lovely I have to be
honest she's lovely and there was also one other teacher so you'd speak to different teachers you
didn't know who you were getting some of the teachers didn't even know him they didn't even
know anything about him so it was you were talking to people that didn't even know your child.
He's very scientific and he is incredible his brain is incredible
and he made a Tesla coil and we posted it to his pastoral manager who then posted it to his science
teacher and his science teacher actually contacted us and said could I phone him and that was lovely
she must have been on the phone for no more than five minutes but the difference that made to him.