Helen-Jane Ridgeway and myself have met with the SENDC0s of the schools in the Education South West Trust, all of whom are both interested and supportive of the project.

We will be launching a series of community meetings in local schools and venues to introduce the project to parents, staff and local business people.

These will co-incide with the launch of the project’s Crowdfunder page. We have identified a bus that we can convert and we are working closely with Occupational Therapists who have a specialism in working with Sensory Processing Differences to discover the pieces of specialist equipment that we will need to have on the bus.

The idea is that the bus will offer a peripatetic service to identified schools over a minimum of a two year period so that children  (who need it) will have access to weekly sessions on the bus with a qualified OT.

We will be collecting the evidence of any impact on the children’s learning and any reduction of low-level disruptions in class.

We believe this project has the potential to make a real difference.

It is currently really hard to gain access to OT sessions, even if your child is on a pathway to a diagnosis of an Autistic Spectrum Disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Hyper-activity Deficit Disorder or school- related anxiety.

The excellent service offered by the Devon Children’s Development Centre staff  is somewhat overwhelmed by the level and range of needs.

Special Educational Needs provision has recently been the subject of a concerned discussion in the House of Commons.

This project is for parents and community members to be able to DO something. We have some amazing, hard-working staff in our local schools; money is tight and the level of SEND needs keeps rising.

So Lynne, Helen-Jane and other local people really want to invite you to make a difference. They will need to raise something in the region of £120,000 to buy and equip a bus, employ a specialist OT for two years and employ a bus driver.

The two originators have a wealth of previous experience in schools and in relation to sensory-motor and  trauma provision. (See brief biographies on the handout).

We very much hope that local people and businesses will recognise the level of need in our children and want to contribute their skills, fund-raising efforts and / or prizes for a Crowdfunder page.

Together, we can make a difference.